Dr. Bisola Ojikutu, the executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, joins Dr. Josh Sharfstein to talk about her shift during the pandemic. She began supporting community coalitions that came together to fight COVID-19. In July 2021, she became the city's leading health official, focused on creating new connections with community organizations—for the pandemic and beyond.

Guest host Shelley Hearne, director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy, speaks with Jaime Madrigano, Visiting Associate Professor, with the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Bloomberg School, whose research examines the health impacts of environmental air pollution and weather. Together they discuss how health and cost implications must be tied to climate change policies, communications, and real community engagement.

For decades, improvement in diagnostic tools for cancer have led to a movement of early screening from mammograms to colonoscopies. Today, Dr. Otis Brawley, a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, tells Stephanie Desmon that many people think screening is better than it actually is. While early screening can save lives, they discuss the how to be sure you’re getting high-quality screening when you need it, and about some of the harm of over-screening in certain cases.

Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings joins Dr. Josh Sharfstein to talk about her late husband, the Honorable Elijah E. Cummings, who represented Baltimore for more than 35 years in the Maryland General Assembly and in Congress. Dr. Rockeymoore Cummings explains the origins of the Congressman's successful efforts to expand access to dental care, reduce prescription drug prices, and tackle addiction. She also tells some amazing behind the scenes stories, including the moment when Congressman Cummings met with President Trump.

Today, guest host Shelley Hearne, director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy, talks with Natalia Linos, a social epidemiologist and executive director of Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, and 2020 Congressional candidate. Linos talks with Hearne about why “all public health is political,” how to approach politics as a public health professional, and the importance of not only naming climate change problems, but getting involved with them “at every level” to advance change.

In this bonus episode, Johns Hopkins Professor Thomas Burke joins Dr. Sharfstein to talk about  the risk to residents following the train derailment and toxic release of chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio— the knowns, the unknowns, and where to go from here. Dr. Burke is a former environmental official for the state of New Jersey and a former science adviser of the Environmental Protection Agency

Mark Miller, the executive vice president of health care at Arnold Ventures joins Dr. Josh Sharfstein to talk about the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act for Medicare patients this year, as well as two areas of future work to bring down the cost of prescription drugs. They discuss patent reform and opportunities to increase transparency for pharmaceutical benefit managers.

Amany Qaddour, regional director for Syria Relief and Development, a nonprofit humanitarian organization on the ground in Syria, joins Dr. Sharfstein They discuss the enormous challenge of responding to a natural disaster in a part of the world that has suffered from conflict, displacement, and crisis for years. To make a contribution to the organizations mentioned in the podcast, see https://srd.ngo/  and https://www.whitehelmets.org/en/ .

Today, guest host Shelley Hearne, director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy brings us to the south lawn of the White House for a conversation with Catherine Flowers, environmental justice advocate and a MacArthur Genius Award winner. Flowers talks about working with grassroots advocates, celebrities, politicians, and influencers of all kinds to raise awareness around serious sanitation issues in US cities that we usually associate with underdeveloped nations.

The average life expectancy in the United States has dropped precipitously during the pandemic—and COVID-19 is not the only culprit. Dr. Josh Sharfstein, who leads the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at Johns Hopkins, talks to co-host Stephanie Desmon about a new report on how we can halt U.S. life expectancy declines by focusing on major causes of the declines: COVID, opioids, gun homicides and suicides, motor vehicle crashes, heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. This report sets out ten feasible ideas for reversing the decline and setting the nation on a path of greater equity and health.