Public Health On Call

Across the country, kids who fall into the foster care system are getting stuck in hospitals and institutions because there's nowhere for them to go. Molly Tierney, the leader of child welfare work at Accenture, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about these heartbreaking scenarios and how change starts with redefining the challenges, as well as what individuals can do in their own communities.

The unprecedented floods in Pakistan that have killed more than 1,600 people and directly affected 33 million are the result of years of planning failure coming head to head with climate change. In a two-part conversation, Dr. Josh Sharfstein talks with Dr. Debbie Guha, the head of the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Lovain School of Public Health in Belgium about the scale of the disaster and contributing factors, and then to Dr. Ben Zaitchik, a Johns Hopkins Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences about the role of climate change and why these floods are a warning to all of us.

It's a difficult time for public sector workers—health departments, social workers, sanitation staff, and more are burned out from doing so much with so little during an intense pandemic. Beth Blauer, associate vice provost for public sector innovation at Johns Hopkins, talks with Josh Sharfstein about contributing factors to the burnout, where there is innovation happening, and ways for public officials to embrace "the chutzpah of leadership."

On Indigenous Peoples' Day, Dr. Donald Warne, the new co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health and a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about the challenges and opportunities for the health of the world's indigenous populations. They also discuss the expansive work of the Center, and the hope that greater understanding of indigenous health will bring a broad range of benefits to the world.

The Biden administration's action plan for responding to long COVID is a good start, but much more is required to truly address the impacts of this "mass disabling event" on health, safety, and the economy. Journalist Ryan Prior and inaugural White House Director for Disability Policy Kim Knackstedt talk with Stephanie Desmon about what is included in the nation's long COVID plan, what was left out, and how the plan could pave the way for responding to other chronic illnesses.

Social media has long been criticized for its role in perpetuating dangerous misinformation. Dr. Garth Graham, the director and global head of healthcare and public health at Google and YouTube, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about how this came to a head during the pandemic and how he sees the opportunity for social media channels to be leaders in the evolution of science and public health communications.

Who should get a bivalent booster? How effective are they? How should people space out shots after infection, original strain boosters, and a host of other combinations of immunity and exposure? Can you get a bivalent booster and a flu shot at the same time and are there any benefits to spacing them out? How long did it take for us to get these boosters, and what's the hope for longer-term immunity? Virologist Dr. Andy Pekosz talks with Stephanie Desmon about bivalents and answers listener questions sent to publichealthquestion@jhu.edu.

Pandemic disruptions led to serious learning loss in K-12 education, and new research shows just how serious. Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, talks with Stephanie Desmon about what the data shows in terms of student performance, why these historic declines will have impacts for years to come, and what can be done to start closing the gaps.

A 2019 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine lays out irrefutable evidence that medications like methadone can save lives when used for opioid use disorder, but decades of policy rooted in racism and stigma keeps methadone largely out of reach for those who need it. Alan Leshner, CEO emeritus of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and chair of the planning committee for the report talks with Lindsay Smith Rogers about these policies and why this is a moment of opportunity to enact major reform in the methadone system and address the opioid epidemic. Read the full report here.

Malaria, a mosquito-borne infection, affects some 228 million people globally each year, killing over 400,000 of them—primarily children under the age of 5. In part two of a miniseries, Thomas Locke, host of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute podcast "Malaria Minute" looks back at 1955 when the WHO launched its "Global Malaria Eradication Programme" that was expected to end malaria worldwide in five years. What went wrong, and where are we now in terms of efforts to fight back against one of the world's most entrenched diseases? You can learn more about groundbreaking malaria research at malaria.jhsph.edu.