Pulmonary Medicine

Host: Joshua Sharfstein, MD

Guest: Tom Inglesby, MD

Does the virus cause male sterility? Are false negatives a problem with COVID tests? Is there a connection between how much virus you’re exposed to and how serious the illness is? Should people on immunosuppressive drugs stop taking them? Does the virus “reactivate?” Can people really become immune? Why are there so many more cases in the northern hemisphere? Why will a COVID-19 vaccine take so long when we come up with a new flu vaccine every year?

Tom Inglesby, Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, answers a grab bag of listener questions.

Published April 17, 2020

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: 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

Host: Linda Bernstein, Pharm.D.

Critical medicine shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for drugs required to support patients on mechanical ventilation, is the focus of this episode of The Drug Report. Pharmacist Dr. Linda Bernstein describes the urgent appeals made by major healthcare organizations, related reports highlighting the serious impact of these shortages on fill rates for critical medicines, and progress being made at the federal level to remedy the situation.

Published April 21, 2020