Public Health On Call

Shortages of lifesaving drugs—the result of failures at every step of complex supply chains—have far-reaching impacts on patients, providers, and the broader field of medicine. Hopkins oncologist Dr. Amanda Nickles Fader and policy researcher Dr. Mariana Socal talk with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about the broader systems problem resulting in the shortages of a vast range of drugs and how it's changing treatment protocols and the patient experience.

A new committee in Maryland is charged with a big undertaking: investigating deaths by suicide to help inform prevention efforts. Mental health expert and committee member Dr. Holly Wilcox talks with Stephanie Desmon about how they'll gather data, which includes psychological autopsies, digital health care records, social service agency data and more, and gives some examples of how similar committees in other states have used data in innovative ways to inform interventions. Learn more: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/investigating-the-why-of-suicide

Philanthropy is a critical part of global public health but funding cycles, donor preferences, and other systems can fundamentally impact organizations and cause mission creep. Vital Talks, a podcast from Vital Strategies, digs into current funding trends and features conversations with leaders from the Lwala Community Alliance and the Center for Effective Philanthrophy about hopes for a better funding landscape and new financing models to ensure organizations can deliver on their missions. Learn more about Vital Strategies here: https://www.vitalstrategies.org/

Mosquitoes are excellent hunters. Anopheles gambiae—the mosquito in sub-Saharan Africa that spreads malaria—in particular loves to feast on humans and, it turns out, relies heavily on peoples' scent to track them. Hopkins researcher Conor McMeniman talks with Stephanie Desmon about his team's new study looking at the molecular components of human scent that are most attractive to mosquitoes, and how learning more about these alluring scent signatures could help in the fight against malaria.

Alcohol plays an outsize role in gun deaths and a new study finds that alcohol misuse can be a better predictor of future violence than any other risk factors. Josh Horwitz and Silvia Villarreal of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions talk with Lindsay Smith Rogers about this connection and a set of new recommendations that include limiting access to guns for people with alcohol-related convictions and in places where alcohol is consumed. Read more about the report here: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/new-report-offers-policy-recommendations-to-address-alcohol-use-as-risk-factor-for-gun-violence

Dr. Phyu Phyu Thin Zaw was a research scientist at Myanmar's ministry of health before she emigrated to teach global health at Hong Kong University. After the military coup in 2021, she and many of her friends and colleagues felt unsafe returning to Myanmar and some even had their passports blacklisted. Thin Saw talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about her experience, what happens when doctors and researchers are forced to flee in conflict situations, and what the scientific community can do to help those in exile.

Workplace wellness goes beyond safe offices to consider how employees can live healthy and productive lives at home while being focused on work at work. Hopkins health and productivity management expert Ron Goetzel talks with Lindsay Smith Rogers about this unique aspect of public health where the business community and public health collaborate on the psychosocial, organizational, and environmental facets of health at work—and how ensuring that people get to live healthy and joyful lives outside of work is a necessity in business. https://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/institute-for-health-and-productivity-studies/

Active shooter and lockdown drills are part of a broader spectrum of emergency preparedness but there are differing levels of effectiveness and risks. Katelyn Jetelina, aka "Your Local Epidemiologist," talks with Stephanie Desmon about the benefits and real harms of these activities and why she does have hope that we will make progress with gun violence solutions, though at a "snail's pace." They also discuss the wide-ranging ripple effects of violence beyond the victims such as community-level mental health impacts.

Redlining and other discriminatory practices represent structural racism in housing. Efforts to counter the legacy of this injustice include voucher programs that help people move out of areas of poverty into "opportunity neighborhoods." Hopkins researcher Craig Pollack talks with Stephanie Desmon about evidence that these programs improve childhood asthma. They discuss opportunities to help people both through relocation and by improving conditions where they are. Read the study here:https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2804846

In the frenzy of research for COVID-19 prevention and treatment, there were many disagreements about what really did—or didn't—work. The nature of the debates reveals a broader problem in how data are interpreted in medicine. Dr. Arturo Casadevall and Dr. Josh Sharfstein discuss the nature of evidence and Dr. Casadevall's new paper, Misinterpretation of Clinical Research Findings and COVID-19 Mortality. You can read the paper here: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M23-0737?af=R