The HPP Podcast

“I also think together we can build resiliency through education and prevention to address the opioid fentanylepidemic at its root cause.” – Neeraj Wadhwa

The HPP Podcast observes National SubstanceAbuse Prevention Month! On this episode of the HPP Podcast, Neeraj Wadhwa shares the development and implementation of a fentanyl overdose harm reduction intervention designed for adolescent students in Los Angeles County, California.He provides context for the study, as well as pertinent components of the study’s design, implementation, and evaluation. He further situates the study within the month’s observance and shares implications for participants andpractitioners alike. Listeners are left with creative and evidence-based strategies to address fentanyl use in adolescents.

To read the article, visit: FentanylOverdose Harm Reduction Intervention: A Pretest-Posttest Study Among HighSchool Students in Southern California.

“Opioid misuse is a significant public health challenge, particularly for adolescents and young adults. We know that substance misuse in general often begins before the age of 18, and for people who experience higher adversity, like mental health challenges, isolation, unmet basic needs, lack of resources, things like that, the risk remains high through young adulthood. So early intervention is key. However, a part of the challenge lies with interventions not reaching adolescents and young adults who need it most.”

– Ryan R. Singh

It is National Substance Abuse Prevention Month! On this episode of the HPP Podcast, Ryan R. Singh discusses one coordinating center’s efforts to implement an opioid preventive intervention for various adolescent and young adult populations in different community settings within the National Institute of Health’s Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) initiative. He shares relevant statistics, intervention strategies, and the implications for other opioid misuse interventions with adolescents and young adults.

To read the full article, visit: Overcoming Challenges to Recruitment and Engagement of Adolescents and Young Adults for Opioid Misuse Prevention in Practice.

“We're trying to find hard answers to hard questions, and when we find those hard answers, the only thing that we will find is bigger, harder questions, and we shouldn't be threatened by that. That should be the driving engine of the things that we do for our community and for the research that we love so much.” – Julian Rodriguez

The HPP Podcast celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month! In this episode, Karishma Chatterjee, Chyng-Yang Jang, Grace Ellen Brandon, and Julian Rodriguez share recruitment approaches used within a larger community initiative in Texas to understand the local Hispanic population’s perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines and how those perceptions informed health messaging. The authors discuss the importance of community collaboration and unique attributes of the Hispanic participants of the study while sharing the significance of the work, how the PEN-3 Model informed the design of the study, and what the stud did to inform COVID-19 vaccination uptake messaging. The authors also share practical tips about how to work with similar communities and discuss the potential legacy of the study.

To read the article in its entirety, visit: Lessons Learned in Recruiting for a Community Project on COVID-19 Vaccination Messaging Within a Hispanic Population.

"For those of us in health and medicine and related fields that were really focused on promoting HIV prevention through PrEP, one of the ways that we realized that where we needed to invest was around health communication, increasing awareness that there was a new strategy available, demystifying what it was and what it wasn't.” – Pedro A. Serrano

This episode of The HPP Podcast features the work of the Chicago Queer Latine Collaborative. Pedro A. Serrano, Harita S. Shah, and Gregory Phillips II share how The Collaborative utilized a health communication campaign to engage LGBTQ citizens in PrEP awareness and uptake. The authors share the relevant background information, the context for the work, how The Collaborative was developed, and how to effectively engage similar communities. Best practices for engaging relevant stakeholders and optimizing financial investments are shared by the authors.

To read the full article, visit: The Chicago Queer Latine Collaborative: Catalyzing Health Equity Through Community-Engaged Opportunities.

“We found that there was kind of a nuanced perspective on statistics.” – Susan Racine Passmore

This August, The HPP Podcast celebrates National Immunization Awareness Month! Susan Racine Passmore joins The HPP Podcast to share her research team’s work to advance vaccine uptake among pediatric populations in rural Wisconsin. The author provides the foundational background for the work, discusses how focus groups and co-design processes were utilized to develop and tailor messages, and highlights the importance of incorporating community partners into this crucial work. She delves into how theory guided the research and provides practical tips for engaging with rural communities surrounding pediatric vaccine uptake.

Engage more with this work! Read the article at: Co-Designing Effective Pediatric Vaccine Promotion Strategies: Insights From Rural Wisconsin Parents.

“I think our biggest hope, I know in writing this paper, was that people will understand that accessibility is more than a compliance issue. It's more than checklist at the end of your training development; that this is a human rights issue, this is the civil rights issue, and we need a mindset shift from compliance and from making individual accommodations and feeling like almost like, oh, we're doing that person a favor by accommodating them to totally shift that thinking to creatingaccessible, equitable environments where people can thrive and learn.” – Leah A. Roman

The HPP Podcasts celebrates Disability Pride Month! Leah A. Roman and Nailah Henry join us to celebrate this observance through the lens of civic health equity. The authors provide the context for voting and civic health equity, the barriers to civic engagement for people living with disabilities, and practical tips for public health professionals to take actionable steps to make voting and other acts of civic engagement more inclusive. They also share how current policies impact people living with disabilities’ ability to navigate civic engagement, and what recommendations make it easier.

To read this article in its entirety, visit: AdvancingAccessibility to Improve Civic Health Equity.

Review the Americans withDisabilities Act (ADA), Title II updated digital accessibility rule and compliance dates. Like the rest of Title II, the rule applies to all state and local governments (which includes any agencies or departments of state or local governments). Examples include State and local government offices thatprovide benefits and/or social services, like food assistance, health insurance, or employment services, public schools, community colleges, and public universities, State and local elections offices, and public hospitals and public healthcare clinics.

Visit the Center forAmerican Progress Accessible Democracy Tracker.

“Pay attention to your community. Always look at them asyour big boss. You've got to make sure that they understand what it is you're trying to communicate, and ultimately, they're the ones you are serving.” Adriane K. Griffen

The HPP Podcast continues its celebration of DisabilityPride Month! In this episode, Dr. Adriane K. Griffen shares updates on her Inclusion Wheel of Factors and Conditions to Include People With Disabilities in Public Health Efforts, and where she is in evaluating its utility. She shares the applicability of the Inclusion Wheel to professional practice and its potential to improve the lives of people living with visible and invisible disabilities.  

Read the article in its entirety at ⁠https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15248399211070809⁠.

“When our patients delay getting care, it can really lead to worse health outcomes down the line, so it has had a myriad of very positive impacts on many different veterans' lives.” – Sylvia V. Haigh

The HPP Podcasts celebrates Pride Month with Syliva V. Haigh. In this episode, Sylvia shares how the Pride In All Who Served (PRIDE) was implemented and scaled up to serve 70 Veterans Administration Medical Centers in the United States of America. Sylvia provides the context for the program and the impact of the program on veterans’ wellbeing and quality of life. She also shares the significance of this work in the context of Pride Month.

To read this article in its entirety, visit:Adaptation of the PRIDE in All Who Served Facilitation Manual to Support Scale-Up of a Novel Program for LGBTQIA+ Veterans.

“What we're experiencing is not naturally occurring. It is produced. And if it is produced, it can be interrupted. And that, I think, requires us to just be honest about what is producing them.” – Carrie Rosario

The HPP Podcasts celebrates the 2025 Sarah Mazelis Paper of the Year award winner, Dr. Carrie Rosario! In this episode, Dr. Rosario sits down with Dr. Shanaé Burch to discuss the context, significance, and implications of the poem she published in Health Promotion Practice. She discusses how Black American culture emerges in her work, and she even recites an excerpt from the poem to add color to the black and white on the paper. Of note, this is the first poem to be recognized as a Sara Mazelis Paper of the Year.

On behalf of The HPP Podcast and Health Promotion Practice, we pause to celebrate and elevate the contributions of Dr. Carrie Rosario to the health promotion literature! We congratulate her on this milestone achievement and look forward to seeing how lives are transformed as a result of her actions!

To read this profound work, visit:  Public Enemy #1: How Many More?

Everyone has a role to play in helping deliver formal or informal concussion education and influence athletes' willingness to report a concussion.” Julia D. Drattell

The HPP Podcast observes National Concussion Awareness Day! On this episode of The HPP Podcast, Julia D. Drattellshares information about the current landscape of concussion education as discussed in the article, “Concussion as a Public Health Crisis: Multilevel Approaches for Improving Athlete Care-Seeking.” She incorporates the statistics, describes who is affected, and provides the implications forathletic trainers and health educators. Furthermore, she discusses the culture surrounding concussions socially, environmentally, and politically.

Visit the following link to read the entire article:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/15248399251363166