Public Health On Call

Ukraine's strangled food exports of commodities like wheat and sunflower oil are disrupting food supplies and causing food insecurity around the world. William Masters, professor of food economics and policy at Tufts University, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about these and other consequences of the war for food, in the United States and internationally. They also discuss short- and long-term solutions.

Emerging research shows that COVID-19 infection can accelerate the aging process, especially for older people with chronic conditions. But the pandemic may also be aging those who haven't been sick, from social isolation and depression to burnout and worsening of chronic conditions. Hopkins geriatrician Dr. Alicia Arbaje talks with Stephanie Desmon about how chronic stress and uncertainty may be affecting us. They also discuss implications of the health care staffing crisis, including an increased burden on an "invisible workforce" of caregivers.

How did omicron numbers affect hospitalization rates? Why are positivity rates so high in some areas, and should we even pay attention to those? How accurate are rapid tests, and how forgiving are they of user error? Are our immune systems more "naive" after two years of physical distancing and masks? Dr. Amesh Adalja from the Center for Health Security returns to the podcast to talk with Lindsay Smith Rogers and answer your questions sent to publichealthquestion@jhu.edu.

Wastewater surveillance has become an indispensable leading indicator of community COVID levels, providing real time data a week or so ahead of health department testing reports. Johns Hopkins environmental health scientist Dr. Natalie Exum talks with Stephanie Desmon about wastewater surveillance for COVID and tracking new variants, why it's not a replacement for nasal testing, and how the technology could help warn hospitals about other outbreaks like flu, RSV, and antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.

The federal "test-to-treat" program was designed to reduce hospitalizations and deaths by getting antivirals to people who test positive for COVID-19 as quickly as possible. Hannah Recht, a reporter at Kaiser Health News who has written about the topic, talks to Stephanie Desmon about how confusing websites, lack of up-to-date information and costs have kept many of the neediest from receiving prompt care.

Malaria, a serious disease caused by the plasmodium pathogen which is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes, affects some 228 million people worldwide each year and kills more than 600,000—90% of whom live in Africa. On World Malaria Day, Dr. George Dimopolous of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute talks with Stephanie Desmon about his lab's research into genetically modifying mosquitoes so they can't carry plasmodium—a potential game-changer in the fight against malaria. They also talk about other approaches to controlling and ending malaria, and techniques being used in the US to fight dengue and Zika.

In-patient treatment for severe COVID has come a long way since 2020 thanks, in part, to the rare opportunity of real-time data collection from so many people sick with the same disease at the same time. Dr. Brian Garibaldi, director of the Johns Hopkins Biocontainment Unit, returns to the podcast to talk with Stephanie Desmon about treating severely ill COVID patients, advances in therapeutics like antivirals and anti-inflammatory treatments, and why vaccines remain "the most astounding achievements."

The Biden administration recently approved nearly $10 billion to broaden access to PrEP, a medication that is 99% effective at preventing HIV and key to ending the nation's HIV epidemic. Amy Killelea, a policy expert on HIV and public health financing, talks with Stephanie Desmon about why health policies have meant this game-changing drug hasn't yet delivered on its potential, how experts hope Biden's budget will build a better nationwide PrEP distribution system, and how much is at stake at this particular turning point in the epidemic.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Black physicians and social scientists connected racism to a host of health consequences. Dr. Ayah Nuriddin, a Princeton scholar of race and science in this era, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about this emergence of Black public health and its efforts to push back against prevailing messages. Long underappreciated, these insights are now front and center in discussions of health equity.

Russia has claimed that the US and Ukraine were working on bioweapons in labs across Ukraine, dangerous disinformation being used in part to justify the Russian invasion. Biosecurity expert Gigi Gronvall returns to the podcast to talk with Lindsay Smith Rogers about the dangers of this disinformation, the attempted cover-up of a 1979 bioweapons anthrax accident in Russia, why biosecure labs are so critical to public health, and the potential impacts of this disinformation campaign.