General Medicine and Primary Care

Host: Joshua Sharfstein, MD

Host: Stephanie Desmon

Guest: Roni Neff

Bare shelves in grocery stores feed pandemic anxiety but Roni Neff, an expert on food systems and public health at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, says this is not the biggest concern. Neff talks to Stephanie Desmon about how our robust food industry depends largely upon keeping its workers safe and well, how a pandemic completely shifts the model of emergency food access, and what’s being done to address these unique challenges to ensure everyone is fed.

Published April 16, 2020

Host: Joshua Sharfstein, MD

Host: Stephanie Desmon

Guest: Crystal R. Watson, DrPH

Contact tracing is a core tool of public health. Now, it could be a way to reopen the world. Crystal Watson of the Center for Health Security is the lead author of a recent report with a national plan to scale up our capability to conduct contact tracing. Watson talks to Stephanie Desmon about what contact tracing entails, how technology could help, how to approach privacy concerns, and why the plan could help employ thousands of people with some basic training.

Published April 16, 2020

Host: Joshua Sharfstein, MD

Host: Stephanie Desmon

Guest: Allison Barlow, PhD

Poor health care, lacking infrastructure, and generational poverty combine to make Native Americans especially vulnerable to COVID-19. With previous infectious respiratory illnesses like H1N1, mortality rates were sometimes four to five times higher than US averages among tribal communities. Allison Barlow, Director of the Center for American Indian Health, talks to Stephanie Desmon about COVID-19’s particular threats to Native Americans, what’s being done to help mount a “culturally informed” response, and how the virus is “revealing the cracks in our systems.”

Published April 15, 2020

Host: Joshua Sharfstein, MD

Host: Stephanie Desmon

Guest: Meghan F. Davis, PhD, DVM

Most new diseases originate from “spillover events” where humans come into contact with wild animals. Veterinarian and scientist Meghan Davis talks to Stephanie Desmon about the rise of infectious diseases and what is being done to prepare for future spillover events. She also covers how a tiger in the Bronx Zoo got a test, and the threats COVID-19 may pose to your own pets.

Published April 14, 2020

Host: Joshua Sharfstein, MD

Guest: Beth Blauer

The COVID-19 dashboard run by the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering has been a critical source of near real-time tracking of the spread of the novel coronavirus since it first emerged. Beth Blauer, Executive Director of Centers for Civic Impact and an expert on the public’s use of data and analytics, is part of the team that manages the map. Blauer talks to Dr. Josh Sharfstein about how the global dashboard originated, what new features have been added, and how the data can help individuals and officials make informed decisions for COVID-19 response.

Published April 14, 2020

Host: Matt Birnholz, MD

Guest: Kathryn J. Ruddy, MD

Guest: Joerg Herrmann, MD

To give us a better sense for how some cardiology and oncology specialists have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Joerg Hermann and Dr. Kathryn Ruddy, who are two members of the cross-disciplinary Cardio-Oncology clinic at Mayo Clinic, discuss their perspectives on this pandemic and how they’ve been treating immunosuppressed patients.

Published April 21, 2020

Host: Jennifer Caudle, DO

Guest: Neilanjan Nandi, MD

Are you able to explain the difference between inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and inflammatory bowel syndrome (IBS)? Test your knowledge with Dr. Jennifer Caudle and Dr. Neil Nandi, who tackles the common misconception that IBD and IBS are the same condition by providing essential tips for diagnosing and treating each of them.

Host: Jennifer Caudle, DO

Guest: Neilanjan Nandi, MD

Join Dr. Neilanjan Nandi as he discusses his experiences with patients presenting with GI issues, key symptoms to be on the lookout for, and how primary care clinicians and gastroenterologists can work together with their IBD patients to provide optimal care.

Host: Linda Bernstein, Pharm.D.

Tune in as pharmacist Dr. Linda Bernstein looks at a few of the novel approaches researchers all over the world are taking to conquer the novel coronavirus in addition to evaluating what these approaches may mean for today and potential viral mutations going forward.

Published April 21, 2020

Host: John Russell, MD

In the absence of FDA-approved therapies and vaccines to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals on the frontlines are turning to malarial medicines like chloroquine and hydroquinone to treat their patients—despite the fact that there’s no evidence to support their use. But this isn’t the first time that medicines have been used for a different purpose than what they were intended for, as Dr. John Russell explains.

Published April 21, 2020