Humans in Public Health

The dangers of firearms are well understood, but their ammunition is the source of a little-known health threat: toxic lead. Brown doctoral student Christian Hoover studies the connection between guns and elevated blood lead levels in America’s children and adults. Host Megan Hall speaks with him about the results of the first national study of this problem, and his advice for gun owners on the healthiest way to minimize lead exposure.

In this summer replay of a previous episode, host Megan Hall speaks with Dr. Jud Brewer, associate professor of psychiatry at the Brown Medical School about anxiety. In uncertain times, how do we address fear and worry that grips us? How do we help our kids do the same?

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the most common conditions facing U.S. Veterans, and there is currently no effective cure—what’s more, many Veterans use alcohol in an effort to alleviate their trauma, making their medical treatment even more complex. For these high risk patients, two professors at Brown are thinking outside the box: Could a treatment involving psychedelic drugs potentially save Veteran lives?

In this episode, Megan speaks to Professors Christy Capone and Carolina Haass-Koffler, part of a team at Brown running the first study of a promising new treatment that combines therapy with MDMA (aka the party drug molly, or ecstasy) for Veterans with PTSD and alcohol use disorder. The researchers explain the science guiding their study, why they believe this treatment could be a game-changer and the upcoming FDA decision regarding MDMA’s role in medicine.

How do we receive the information that shapes our beliefs, and how do we know if we can trust our sources? Stefanie Friedhoff directs the Information Futures Lab at the Brown University School of Public Health, a group committed to understanding the contemporary information landscape and how mis- and dis-information impacts people's health outcomes.

She joined Evelyn Pérez-Verdía, community leader and founder of We Are Más, to pilot a project in Southern Florida that collaborated with 25 leaders in Hispanic diaspora communities to capture and respond to evolving questions and concerns of community members.

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Today we’re sharing an episode of the show Trending Globally, from our friends at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. In our last episode we talked about the new safe injection site coming to Rhode Island this summer. Trending Globally released an episode earlier this month about the new safe injection site as well, and we wanted to share it with you. In this episode, Trending Globally’s host Dan Richards talks to Colleen Daley Ndoye, the executive director of Project Weber/RENEW, the organization running the new site, and to Brandon Marshall, a School of Public Health faculty member researching substance use and harm reduction. 

If you like Trending Globally, you can find more episode of their show at trending-globally.captivate.fm or by searching "Trending Globally" wherever you get your podcasts.

Providence, Rhode Island is set to become the location of the first state-sanctioned safe injection site in the country. Professor Brandon del Pozo, who spent over two decades serving as a police officer, has researched the impact these sites have had on the neighborhoods in New York City where two centers opened in 2021. He discusses what he found and how he envisions police and public services can work in coordination to improve public health. 

Professor Jennifer Nuzzo, epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, joins host Megan Hall for a timely update on the recent outbreaks of H5N1 Bird Flu.

Different countries around the world have very different ways of providing health care. In order to learn from these varied systems—each with its own unique goals and priorities—and to compare their outcomes, researchers must devise new methodologies of working with highly sensitive data to overcome not only language differences, but vast organizational, operational and infrastructure differences between countries. 

Brown’s new Center for Health System Sustainability (CHeSS), led by Professor Irene Papanicolas, aims to standardize data from across global health systems, then compare them in order to inform policy choices and improve health care value and patient care.

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MPH student Rosemelly Jimenez Medal comes from a family of truckers—her father has worked as a short-haul trucker for over 25 years. The cab of a commercial truck can be a noisy place, and she noticed that her father was having trouble hearing conversations at the family dinner table. Could there be a link between his job and his hearing loss?

To find the answer, Jimenez Medal teamed up with her father and noise researcher Erica Walker, RGSS Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Brown University, to conduct hearing screenings on short-term truckers in her home state of California.

Host Megan Hall interviews Jimenez Medal and Walker to discuss their project and their findings.

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Join host Dan Richards as he talks with experts about some of the world’s most pressing public policy challenges, and how to fix them .Subscribe to Trending Globally wherever you get your podcasts.

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Liz Tobin-Tyler is a public health lawyer. She works on reproductive rights, maternal and child health, domestic violence and poverty—and the health policies around those issues—from a legal point of view. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding whether or not firearms should be restricted for people convicted of domestic abuse. Professor Tobin-Tyler talks us through the public health implications of this decision, and those leading up to it. She also explains why there should be a lawyer in every hospital, and discusses the important role of storytelling, in the courts and in public health.

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