How can we think about the long-term impacts of disruption caused by COVID-19 on kids and adults? How can we get kids to talk about their feelings? Are we becoming "numb" to COVID and taking more risks? How can we reconcile feelings of blame towards people who might be making decisions we wouldn't make? Clinical psychologist Dr. Laura Murray returns to the podcast with Stephanie Desmon to answer your COVID-19 mental health questions.

Since Baltimore shut down in mid-March, health commissioner Dr. Letitia Dzirasa and her team have been working to implement response strategies that meet the city's unique needs. Public-private partnerships have bolstered mobile testing in COVID-19 hotspots. A historic hotel was converted to care for unstably housed people in isolation and quarantine. Workforce development efforts shifted to hiring contact tracers and community health workers. Dr. Dzirasa talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about these and other innovative approaches, and her hopes and concerns for the future.

How should schools react to positive cases? What should trigger shutdowns and how can leaders know when it's safe to reopen? How can teachers and parents help children manage distress caused by uncertainty, distance learning, and what may be a year of continuous closings and reopenings? In a webcast last week, Johns Hopkins University experts Josh Sharfstein, Jennifer Nuzzo, Annette Anderson, and Tamar Mendelson weighed in on what's next—and specifically the different scenarios that leaders, teachers, parents, and students may face in the coming months depending on the pandemic's trajectory in their communities.

COVID-19 has presented a variety of challenges for employers including leave needed by employees who are sick or taking care of someone who is, employees with children who are out of school or daycare, and employee concerns of risk as they return to the workplace. Maryland employment lawyer Jennifer Curry talks with Stephanie Desmon about how employers are thinking about these challenges, existing legislation, and what the next year might look like for schools in terms of employment and safety.

UNC Chapel Hill brought students back to campus for fall and had to close a week later after COVID-19 cases began surging among students. Dr. Mimi Chapman, chair of faculty, talks with Stephanie Desmon about the decision to bring back students, what the university has since learned, and why UNC's outbreak is not unique in the context of the US's larger problems with controlling the epidemic.

COVID-19 has revealed many weaknesses about the US food system: 14 million children are now regularly missing meals while farmers are dumping millions of pounds of food, and COVID-19 death rates are higher among people with food-related illnesses such as diabetes. Dr. Roy Steiner and Paula Daniels, co-contributors to Reset the Table, a new report from the Rockefeller Foundation, talk with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about these failures and propose solutions to fix the supply chain, close gaps in healthy food access, and keep food workers safe.

Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease researcher at the University of California at San Francisco, argues that a key to beating COVID-19 is increasing the proportion of infections that cause no symptoms. But how? Dr. Gandhi explains to Dr. Josh Sharfstein the answer may be as simple as having more people wear masks.

Nursing homes and other long term care facilities have been heavily impacted by COVID-19 in part because of inherent weaknesses in their structure and management that leave residents vulnerable to infectious diseases. Most private companies also have a financial model that is critically challenged by the pandemic. Dr. David Grabowski, a health policy researcher and professor at Harvard, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about how COVID-19 has exposed an existential crisis facing U.S. nursing homes.

Regardless of whether schools kick off online, in person, or with a hybrid approach this fall, there will be learning disruptions to consider. Dr. Ruth Faden of the Berman Institute of Bioethics and Dr. Annette Anderson of the Johns Hopkins School of Education talk with Stephanie Desmon about now COVID-19 is exacerbating growing inequities around achievement, development, and graduation rates, how under-resourced schools could rethink instruction, and the data still needed to show policymakers definitive gaps in learning loss.

On April 1, 2020, the first case of COVID-19 was recorded among Arizona's White Mountain Apache tribe. New cases quickly mounted to 70 a day among the close-knit community. Even though the state remained fairly relaxed, Tribal Chairwoman Gwendena Lee Gatewood quickly shut down the reservation and implemented strict stay at home orders. Her fast and effective response to the crisis means that, today, the number of daily new infections is less than 10. Guest host Allison Barlow, director of the Center for American Indian Health, speaks with Gatewood about the response and how the community is faring.