First Opinion Podcast

In this week's episode of the "First Opinion Podcast," Lizzy Feliciano talks about her brother, Louis, who died after years of suffering from depression, anxiety, and alcohol abuse. She struggled to help him find a program that could treat all of his issues holistically, not just one at a time. In a cruel twist of fate, just hours after moving into a facility, Louis Feliciano died of natural causes at age 51. Joining the conversation is Chuck Ingoglia, the president and CEO of the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, a membership organization that supports mental health centers across the country. Chuck shares the provider perspective on Lizzy’s situation and the state of mental health care in the U.S.

Priscilla Chan, co-founder and CEO of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, talks about the urgent need for more single-cell research in pediatrics. Chan broke down the science and reflected on how becoming a parent to two young children has intersected with her professional interests. "Over the course of Covid, I've also asked myself, would I enroll them in a Covid study?" she said. "And I think for me the answer is yes."

This week is a special two-part episode focusing on last week’s controversial — some say inflammatory — decision to approve aducanumab, a new Alzheimer’s drug. In these episodes, I talk with two Alzheimer’s experts with vastly different viewpoints on the news. Second up: Jason Karlawish, an Alzheimer’s physician who wrote a First Opinion in May about how he would not prescribe the drug, were it to be approved.

This week is a special two-part episode focusing on last week’s controversial — some say inflammatory — decision to approve aducanumab, a new Alzheimer’s drug. In these episodes, I talk with two Alzheimer’s experts with vastly different viewpoints on the news. First up: Dennis J. Selkoe, a physician and scientist whose research is at the core of how Aduhelm works.

This week, two First Opinion contributors join Pat to talk about the toll that medicine can take on a professional's mental health, and how the pandemic has only exacerbated those consequences. Corey Feist co-wrote his essay with his wife Jennifer Breen Feist, the sister of Lorna Breen, who died by suicide last year after contracting Covid-19. Wendy Dean is a psychiatrist who wrote an iconic First Opinion in 2018 about the moral injury that physicians experience. Corey and Wendy joined Pat for a discussion on how to heal the healers.

This week, Pat is joined by two members of the National Academy of Medicine’s Committee on the Future of Nursing. We discuss full practice authority, which gives advanced practice nurses the ability to diagnose, write prescriptions, and care independently for patients. It’s a contentious issue, but Regina Cunningham and Marshall Chin believe that with more autonomy, nurses are capable of dismantling the country’s health inequities.

Danielle Ofri experienced the pandemic firsthand at Bellevue Hospital in New York. As a primary care physician, Ofri makes life-long connections with her patients. She talks about the importance of recognizing the emotion that comes when a patient dies, how her experiences as a medical resident during the AIDS crisis shaped her career, and how the Covid-19 pandemic will have a similar career-sculpting effect on today's trainees. The conversation starts with Ofri's First Opinion essay, "My ‘postmortem’ folder and the intensely personal nature of the latest Covid-19 surge."

This week, Pat is joined by Chelsea Clinton, who recently wrote a First Opinion on the health dangers of fracking with two of her colleagues at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, Terry McGovern, and Micaela Martinez. The conversation covered global public health crises such as fracking, oxygen shortages, and the pandemic.

Reporter and editor Kalpana Jain details how India got to today's crisis with Covid-19. Although some blame hypernationalism, she calls on her two decades of writing about health and health care for the Times of India to show that the real issue is neglect of the health sector during India’s growth and development. Having covered multiple pandemics and epidemics, Jain says that she's seen the toll it can take on families. In some ways, Covid-19 is different, she says. But in others it's heartbreakingly the same.

It's easy to identify the physical manifestations of long Covid — severe fatigue, weakness, palpitations, brain fog, and more — but far trickier to understand what's causing them. Pat talks with critical care physician Adam Gaffney and philosopher Diane O'Leary about the blurred distinction between the direct effect of a viral infection and potential psychosomatic origins. The conversation jumps off from each guest's recent First Opinion: Gaffney's "We need to start thinking more critically — and speaking more cautiously — about long Covid" and O'Leary's "Needed for long Covid: a less authoritarian approach to understanding, treatment."