Public Health On Call

Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings joins Dr. Josh Sharfstein to talk about her late husband, the Honorable Elijah E. Cummings, who represented Baltimore for more than 35 years in the Maryland General Assembly and in Congress. Dr. Rockeymoore Cummings explains the origins of the Congressman's successful efforts to expand access to dental care, reduce prescription drug prices, and tackle addiction. She also tells some amazing behind the scenes stories, including the moment when Congressman Cummings met with President Trump.

Today, guest host Shelley Hearne, director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy, talks with Natalia Linos, a social epidemiologist and executive director of Harvard's FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, and 2020 Congressional candidate. Linos talks with Hearne about why "all public health is political," how to approach politics as a public health professional, and the importance of not only naming climate change problems, but getting involved with them "at every level" to advance change.

In this bonus episode, Johns Hopkins Professor Thomas Burke joins Dr. Sharfstein to talk about the risk to residents following the train derailment and toxic release of chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio— the knowns, the unknowns, and where to go from here. Dr. Burke is a former environmental official for the state of New Jersey and a former science adviser of the Environmental Protection Agency

Mark Miller, the executive vice president of health care at Arnold Ventures joins Dr. Josh Sharfstein to talk about the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act for Medicare patients this year, as well as two areas of future work to bring down the cost of prescription drugs. They discuss patent reform and opportunities to increase transparency for pharmaceutical benefit managers.

Amany Qaddour, regional director for Syria Relief and Development, a nonprofit humanitarian organization on the ground in Syria, joins Dr. Sharfstein They discuss the enormous challenge of responding to a natural disaster in a part of the world that has suffered from conflict, displacement, and crisis for years. To make a contribution to the organizations mentioned in the podcast, see https://srd.ngo/ and https://www.whitehelmets.org/en/ .

Today, guest host Shelley Hearne, director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy brings us to the south lawn of the White House for a conversation with Catherine Flowers, environmental justice advocate and a MacArthur Genius Award winner. Flowers talks about working with grassroots advocates, celebrities, politicians, and influencers of all kinds to raise awareness around serious sanitation issues in US cities that we usually associate with underdeveloped nations.

The average life expectancy in the United States has dropped precipitously during the pandemic—and COVID-19 is not the only culprit. Dr. Josh Sharfstein, who leads the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at Johns Hopkins, talks to co-host Stephanie Desmon about a new report on how we can halt U.S. life expectancy declines by focusing on major causes of the declines: COVID, opioids, gun homicides and suicides, motor vehicle crashes, heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. This report sets out ten feasible ideas for reversing the decline and setting the nation on a path of greater equity and health.

The Stoop Storytelling Series and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health partnered last fall to present a night of storytelling by scientists, activists, and community members sharing personal stories about urgent public health issues. In part 1, Carolyn Sufrin, an obgyn and medical anthropologist, tells her story of how she began working in reproductive health care in prisons, and Cicely Franklin, an overdose prevention specialist with the Baltimore City Health Department, talks about the dual dynamic of working in harm reduction and having a family member with substance abuse issues. These stories were recorded on September 22, 2022 at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore.

In a two-part conversation that begins while facing down a tiny yet fierce migratory bird on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Refuge to a celebration on the south lawn of the White House, guest host Shelley Hearne, director of the Johns Hopkins Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy, and David Kieve, president of the Environmental Defense Action Fund, discuss why the new climate bill is so critical, what it took to get this massive piece of legislation to the finish line.

Astronomer Andy Rivkin led the team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory that sent a rocket into space last year to change the trajectory of an asteroid. Stephanie Desmon talks to him about how this proof of concept launch could one day aid in the ultimate public health mission: To save humans from the fate of the dinosaurs.