How an epidemic begins and ends

Jan 8, 2020

Jillian Weinberger, a Vox journalist and host of The Impact podcast, delves into the parallels between the AIDS epidemic and the current opioid crisis. She highlights the vital role of advocacy and grassroots movements in shaping public health policy. The conversation covers how legislation like the Ryan White Care Act informed strategies for tackling contemporary issues and emphasizes the necessity for compassion in addressing stigma. Weinberger also discusses the political challenges of implementing large-scale solutions to crises affecting marginalized communities.

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ANECDOTE

First AIDS Awareness Efforts

In 1981, Bobby Campbell showed Cleve Jones Kaposi's sarcoma lesions on his feet.
Campbell created the first AIDS awareness poster, becoming the community's representative.

ANECDOTE

Congressional Testimony

Tim Westmoreland, a congressional worker, invited Bobby Campbell to testify about AIDS in 1982.
Campbell offered to testify in a suit, nurse's uniform, or his Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence nun habit.

INSIGHT

Reagan Administration's Response

Reagan's focus on budget cuts hindered the government's response to the AIDS epidemic.
Public health officials privately admitted to lacking resources while publicly claiming sufficiency.

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Introducing season 3 of The Impact!

The 2020 candidates have some bold ideas to tackle some of our country's biggest problems, like climate change, the opioid crisis, and unaffordable health care. A lot of their proposals have been tried before, so, in a sense, the results are in.

This season, The Impact has those stories: how the big ideas from 2020 candidates succeeded — or failed — in other places, or at other times. What can Sen. Elizabeth Warren's proposal to fight the opioid crisis learn from what the US did to fight the AIDS epidemic? How did Germany — an industrial powerhouse that invented the automobile — manage to implement a Green New Deal? How did public health insurance change Taiwan?

Subscribe to The Impact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week.

On this special preview:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is running for president with a plan to fight the opioid epidemic. Her legislation would dramatically expand access to addiction treatment and overdose prevention, and it would cost $100 billion over 10 years. Addiction experts agree that this is the kind of money the United States needs to fight the opioid crisis. But it’s a really expensive idea, to help a deeply stigmatized population. How would a President Warren get this through Congress?

It’s been done before, with the legislation Warren is using as a blueprint for her proposal. In 1990, Congress passed the Ryan White Care Act, the first national coordinated response to the AIDS crisis. In the decades since, the federal government has dedicated billions of dollars to the fight against AIDS, and it’s revolutionized care for people with this once-deadly disease.

But by the time President George H.W. Bush signed the bill into law, hundreds of thousands of people in the US already had HIV/AIDS, and tens of thousands had died.

In this episode, Vox's Jillian Weinberger explores how an epidemic begins, and how it ends. We look at what it took to get the federal government to finally act on AIDS, and what that means for Warren’s plan to fight the opioid crisis, today.

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