Public Health On Call

Choosing the right sunscreen for you can be overwhelming with so many options on the market. This episode debunks common myths and uncovers essential facts about sunscreen, explaining the differences between UVA and UVB coverage, mineral vs. chemical sunscreens, and why European sunscreens are often considered superior to American-made ones. We address concerns about sunscreen safety and discuss the importance of sun protection for all skin tones all year round.

Host:

Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, the largest center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Shafat Hassan, MD, PhD, and MPH candidate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

• 9 Things to Know About Sun Safety and Skin Cancer—The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

• The Winter Skincare Routine—The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Instagram

• What Happens To Our Skin in Winter?—Public Health On Call

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Every four years, the Olympics brings athletes and spectators together from all over the world in one of the largest mass gathering events. Planning begins years in advance, and public health security is a major consideration. Experts are brought in to map out possible threats and think through preparedness for everything from terrorist attacks to addressing rumors to responding to infectious disease outbreaks. Today: Considerations for Paris 2024 and lessons learned from the last two historic Olympics held during the pandemic.

Lucia Mullen is a preparedness and response expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a member of the WHO’s Collaborating Centre for Mass Gathering network.

Lindsay Smith Rogers, MA, is the producer of the Public Health On Call podcast, an editor for Expert Insights, and the director of content strategy for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

• The Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 Olympic Games held during the COVID-19 pandemic: planning, outcomes, and lessons learnt–The Lancet

• Mass-gathering decision making and its implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic—The Lancet

• Bonus Episode: The 2022 Pandemic Olympics–Public Health On Call

• Episode #337: The Tokyo Olympics and COVID-19–Public Health On Call

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About this episode:

Maryland receives the greatest number of unaccompanied migrant children of all U.S. states. Many have experienced significant trauma, underscoring the need for enhanced mental health services and improved language access in healthcare for this group.

Guests:

Sarah Polk is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her areas of clinical expertise include general pediatrics and adolescent medicine, with a particular focus on adolescent mental health and sexually transmitted infections.

Kiara Alvarez is an assistant professor in the department of Health, Behavior, and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, the largest center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

• Commentary: Migrant children are vital to the fabric of our communities (The Baltimore Banner)

• The Health Care Crisis At the U.S.-Mexico Border Part 1: Children and Families (podcast)

• The Health Care Crisis At the U.S.-Mexico Border Part 2: Border Walls and Traumatic Brain and Spinal Injuries (podcast)

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The CMS Innovation Center at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid is tasked with research and development to improve health care costs and delivery. It’s also grappling with a challenging reality: The health care sector is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions which, in turn, are changing the climate in ways that impact our health. This is especially true of Medicaid/Medicare recipients such as children, older adults, and low income communities who bear the brunt of health issues from climate change. The Center’s new Decarbonization and Resilience Initiative aims to understand the scope of the problem and identify creative solutions by collecting, monitoring, assessing, and addressing hospital carbon emissions and their effects on health outcomes, costs, and quality.

Purva Rawal is the chief strategy officer at the CMS Innovation Center at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Dr. Josh Sharfstein is vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a faculty member in health policy, a pediatrician, and former secretary of Maryland’s Health Department.

• TEAM Decarbonization and Resilience Initiative Fact Sheet—The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

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Gain-of-function research involves altering a virus to make it more transmissible or deadly in order to develop vaccines, therapies, and perform other research. But the practice has long raised concerns about safety. In May, the White House released new policies around gain-of-function research hoping to shore up both safety measures and trust in this field of research. In this episode: a breakdown of the new policies and their general reception among scientists and the public.

Gigi Gronvall is a senior scholar at the Center for Health Security and an associate professor in Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Lindsay Smith Rogers, MA, is the producer of the Public Health On Call podcast, an editor for Expert Insights, and the director of content strategy for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

• United States Government Policy for Oversight of Dual Use Research of Concern and Pathogens with Enhanced Pandemic Potential—The White House

• White House overhauls rules for risky pathogen studies—Science

• Lab practices go under the microscope—Politico

• Gain-of-Function Research: Balancing Science and Security—Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health Magazine

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Meteorologists look at data and history to help make sense of weather patterns and make predictions. This work, in turn, helps inform individuals and policymakers to prepare for and respond to weather events. But with climate records being shattered at every turn, and extreme weather like flooding, violent storms, and heat domes becoming more common, patterns and precedent start to fall away. So how are meteorologists making sense of all these changes and what could we expect to see in the future?

Brian McNoldy is a senior research associate at the Rosenstiel School of Marine Atmosphere and Earth Science at the University of Miami.

Lindsay Smith Rogers, MA, is the producer of the Public Health On Call podcast, an editor for Expert Insights, and the director of content strategy for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

• Brian McNoldy’s Blog

• @‌BMcNoldy on X

• 2023 was the world’s warmest year on record, by far—http://NOAA.gov

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Pulse oximeters—devices used to read blood oxygen levels in hospitals and at home—are far less reliable for people with darker skin tones... Falsely normal readings create the potential for clinical staff to miss life-threatening conditions.

In this three-episode special series, we explore a longstanding issue that only caught the nation’s attention in recent years. In episode 1: How COVID-19 shined a light on an issue that was known, but largely ignored.

Listen to Part 2: What Went Wrong?

Listen to Part 3: Fixing Pulse Oximeters.

View the transcript for this episode.

Annalies Winny is a co-producer of the Pulse Ox series for the Public Health On Call podcast, an associate editor for Global Health NOW, and a contributor for the Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health magazine.

• The Problem with Pulse Oximeters: A Long History of Racial Bias

• Estimating COVID-19 Hospitalizations in the U.S.—JMIR Public Health Surveillance

• How a Popular Medical Device Encodes Racial Bias–Amy Moran-Thomas

• People with darker skin are 32% more likely to have pulse oximeters overestimate oxygen levels, report says–CNN

• Racial Bias in Pulse Oximetry Measurement—The New England Journal of Medicine

• Dynamic in vivo response characteristics of three oximeters: Hewlett Packard 47201A, Biox III, and Nellcor N-100—Sleep (1987)

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Pulse oximeters—devices used to read blood oxygen levels in hospitals and at home—are far less reliable for people with darker skin tones. Falsely normal readings have the potential for clinical staff to miss life-threatening conditions.

In this three-episode special series, we explore a longstanding issue that only caught the nation’s attention in recent years. In episode 2: What went wrong, including inaction from manufacturers and regulators, market forces, and racism in medicine that goes beyond this one device.

Listen to Part 1: A Problem Hiding in Plain Sight.

Listen to Part 3: Fixing Pulse Oximeters.

View the transcript for this episode.

Nicole Jurmo is co-producer of the Public Health in the Field series on pulse oximeters, the associate director for public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, and a current MPH student. She recently completed a practicum with the Public Health On Call podcast.

• The Problem with Pulse Oximeters: A Long History of Racial Bias

• Racial Bias in Pulse Oximetry Measurement—The New England Journal of Medicine

• Pulse Oximeters Are Not Racist—Orange County Business Journal

• Inventing conflicts of interest: a history of tobacco industry tactics—American Journal of Public Health

• Performance Evaluation of Pulse Oximeters Taking Into Consideration Skin Pigmentation, Race and Ethnicity—FDA Executive Summary (pdf)

• Pulse Oximeter Accuracy and Limitations—FDA Safety Communication

• Dynamic in vivo response characteristics of three oximeters: Hewlett Packard 47201A, Biox III, and Nellcor N-100—Sleep (1987)

• Racial bias is built into the design of pulse oximeters—The Washington Post

• November 2023 Attorneys General Letter to the FDA On The Inaccuracies of Pulse Oximetry When Used On People With Darker Toned Skin (pdf)

• Defining race/ethnicity and explaining difference in research studies on lung function—European Respiratory Journal (abstract)

• Is Facial Recognition Software Racist?—The Daily Show

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Pulse oximeters—devices used to read blood oxygen levels in hospitals and at home—are far less reliable for people with darker skin tones. Falsely normal readings create the potential for clinical staff to miss life-threatening conditions.

In this three-episode special series, we explore a longstanding issue that only caught the nation’s attention in recent years. In episode 3: How engineers are working to improve the design of pulse oximeters, and how advocates from across the medical industry including patients and students are leading efforts to keep the pressure on to improve equity in pulse oximetry…and beyond.

Listen to Part 1: A Problem Hiding in Plain Sight.

 Listen to Part 2: What Went Wrong?

View the transcript for this episode.

Annalies Winny is a co-producer of the Pulse Ox series for the Public Health On Call podcast, an associate editor for Global Health NOW, and a contributor for the Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health magazine.

• The Problem with Pulse Oximeters: A Long History of Racial Bias

• Right2Breathe.org

• US race-neutral lung assessments to have profound effects, study finds—Reuters

• Why more than 14,000 Black kidney transplant patients are moving up on the waitlist–NPR

• COVID-19 made pulse oximeters ubiquitous. Engineers are fixing their racial bias.—NPR

• Innovative technology to eliminate the racial bias in non-invasive, point-of-core (POC) haemoglobin and pulse oximetry measurements—BMJ

• Roots Community Health Center Sues to Halt Sales of Flawed Pulse Oximeters—Roots Community Health Center press release (PDF)

• Racial Bias in Medicine Episode 1: Disparities with Pulse Oximeters.—Joel Bervell (YouTube)

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The Supreme Court has issued decisions in the two major abortion cases on its docket this year. For the time being, the drug mifepristone remains on the market and a federal law requiring that emergency rooms provide life-saving abortions even in states banning the procedure is upheld. But the court’s decisions—both upholding the status quo—all but guarantee both cases will be back, putting mifepristone and EMTALA once again under fire.

Joanne Rosen is an expert in public health law and a co-director of the Center for Law and the Public’s Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Dr. Josh Sharfstein is vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a faculty member in health policy, a pediatrician, and former secretary of Maryland’s Health Department.

• The Two Major Abortion Cases Coming to The Supreme Court—Public Health On Call

• Despite Supreme Court ruling, the future of emergency abortions is still unclear for US women—ABC News

• OB-GYN Training and Practice in Dobbs’ Shadow–Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health Magazine

• The Threat to Abortion Rights You Haven’t Heard Of—Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

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