Follow the Data Podcast

As more data about the impact of the pandemic becomes available, it is increasingly clear that the coronavirus is affecting the most vulnerable and disadvantaged populations in the U.S. the hardest.

As the Director of The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity and the Director of the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute, Dr. Lisa Cooper and her team work to make health care institutions more equitable, communities more engaged, and health policies and practices more effective to eliminate disparities in health and health care in Baltimore, the United States, and around the world.

Dr. Cooper sat down with Dr. Jessica Leighton from our public health team to tell us more about what can be done to reduce the toll of COVID-19 on Black and Latino communities, how the public health community is tackling systemic racism, and how listeners considering joining Black Lives Matter protests in their communities can protest safely.

The coronavirus pandemic continues to surge across the country – and contact tracing is one of our best tools to slow the spread.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Bloomberg Philanthropies, together with New York State, launched a free online course, called "COVID-19 Contact Tracing," in order to train an army of contact tracers to reach and assist people who have been exposed to the virus.

Dr. Emily Gurley, the infectious disease epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who designed the course, joined Kelly Larson from our public health team on June 26th to tell us more about what contact tracing really is and what makes a contact tracer effective, what material is covered in the free COVID-19 Contact Tracing Course, and the role technology plays in fighting COVID-19.

Bloomberg Associates – the philanthropic consulting arm of Bloomberg Philanthropies – has been working with the City of Houston, Texas, on the My Brother’s Keeper Initiative and with other key partners across the country in order to tackle how school discipline practices contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline.

One of those key partners is Rev. Dr. Bryant Marks of The National Training Institute on Race and Equity at Morehouse College, whose team is providing city-wide implicit bias training for the City of Houston. Rev. Dr. Marks recently joined Mariama N’Diaye of our Bloomberg Associates team to discuss what implicit bias training entails, what implicit bias looks like in schools, and how school discipline practices contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline, and shares advice for listeners who may be beginning to identify inequities in their own communities.

As mayor of New York City, Mike Bloomberg started working on gun safety and co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns – a coalition that grew to 1,000 current and former mayors. And when he left City Hall, he created Everytown for Gun Safety alongside Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts by combining Mayors Against Illegal Guns with her army of volunteers and millions of other Americans committed to ending gun violence.

Everytown is now the country’s most powerful grassroots advocacy group for common sense gun policies, and the counterweight to the gun lobby. As part of their effort to better understand and reduce gun violence in America, Everytown has a robust research arm that helps inform policymakers, advocates and experts working on the gun violence crisis.

According to the team’s latest study, historic precedent suggests that economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic could contribute to a 20 to 30 percent increase in firearm suicides in the US this year. Everytown's Director of Research, Sarah Burd-Sharps, joined us to discuss how her team reports on new data, how we can be mindful of possible firearm suicides and prevent them from happening, and precautions that gun owners can take to prevent unintentional shootings during the pandemic.

Cities and states are reopening, even as coronavirus cases are surging in the United States. Dr. Tom Inglesby and his team at the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health use research, data, and expert analysis to advise decision makers about public health practices to mitigate the effects of epidemics and disasters like COVID-19.

In this episode, Dr. Inglesby sat down with Bloomberg Philanthropies public health program lead Dr. Kelly Henning to tell us more about how states are looking at data to inform school and office reopenings, whether we’re in the first or second wave of COVID-19, and the power of social media during the pandemic.

Follow the Data is on hiatus while we work on a slate of exciting episodes starting next week.

In the meantime, we wanted to highlight a few of our team's favorite podcasts: The American Health Podcast, Public Health on Call, Southbank Centre’s Podcasts, and Public Art Works: A Podcast by the Public Art Fund.

To express our appreciation for health care workers risking their lives to protect others during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bloomberg Philanthropies teamed up with Chef José Andrés and his nonprofit, World Central Kitchen, to provide almost 1.1 million meals to those working on the frontlines at 16 NYC Health + Hospitals facilities.

In a conversation recorded on June 4th, World Central Kitchen CEO Nate Mook joined Bloomberg Philanthropies Senior Advisor Brynne Craig to share an update on our partnership, to tell us more about how re-opening will shift World Central Kitchen’s work, and to let us know how you can help people across the country that are in need of a meal or groceries.

As cities continue to grapple with the public health challenges posed by COVID-19, Mayor Jan Vapaavuori of Helsinki, Finland, joined Kelly Larson, who works on our public health team, two weeks ago to discuss how Helsinki is responding to COVID-19, how the Partnership for Healthy Cities is encouraging global collaboration between cities, and what’s keeping mayors hopeful right now.

The entertainment industry has grinded to a halt as a result of the coronavirus crisis. Film and television production is speculated to resume in the fall at the earliest, and live theaters are bracing for a six month shutdown – yet the entertainment community has adapted to continue creating during this time.

Michelle King, the co-creator of “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight;” Brooke Kennedy, executive producer of “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight,” actress Christine Baranski, actor Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Joseph Benincasa, President and CEO of The Actors Fund, joined host Katherine Oliver for a conversation around how film productions are transitioning to Zoom, how we can keep casts and crews safe, and how The Actors Fund is helping people in performing arts and entertainment in need.

As COVID-19 spreads rapidly in cities around the world, the virus poses an urgent challenge to mayors and city health officials worldwide. Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr of Freetown, Sierra Leone, joins Dr. Kelly Henning, who leads the public health program at Bloomberg Philanthropies, to discuss how Freetown is responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, how global mayors are sharing information during the crisis, and what’s keeping mayors hopeful right now.