Public Health On Call

Admiral Rachel Levine, MD, is the Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Health and Human Services—the "connective tissue" of all the divisions of HHS including the FDA and CDC—and a four-star admiral for the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. As assistant secretary, Dr. Levine focuses on coordinating the HHS response to priorities like COVID-19, health equity, mental health and substance abuse, and climate change. Dr. Levine is also the first transgender official to serve in this capacity.

From the first Taliban government exit in 2001 to 2015, Afghanistan went from having some of the worst indicators for health in the world to dramatic improvements in maternal mortality and childhood malnutrition. But when the Taliban stepped back into power in August of this year, thousands of health clinics were shuttered almost overnight and outcomes for women and children already look much worse. Afghanistan-born Dr. Nadia Akseer, a Johns Hopkins scientist in International Health, talks with Stephanie Desmon about the country's post-Taliban health system, and why the international community will need to wait and see what might happen under this "new Taliban" coming to power 20 years later.

Back in February, Jim Golen, a nurse in Minnesota, was on the podcast talking about his agonizing experiences as a COVID-19 long-hauler. Today, Stephanie Desmon checks in with Jim to see how he's doing nearly 19 months after contracting COVID in March 2020. If you or someone you know if suffering from long COVID, please consider taking a short survey as part of the Johns Hopkins COVID Long Study: https://covid-long.com/

Dr. Preeti Malani, the University of Michigan's Chief Health Officer, was a guest on the podcast back in the spring of 2020 and again in the fall of that year talking about how COVID-19 had affected Michigan's oldest university. Dr. Malani returns to talk with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about how vaccines have made a stark difference for a return to campus this fall, what life looks like on the North Quad and in the residence halls, and how the school is centering the well-being of students who have had to miss out on so much the last two years.

If a vaccinated person is exposed to COVID but doesn't get sick, does that affect that person's immunity? Is weekly testing for unvaccinated coworkers really sufficient to protect everyone? Are any new variants keeping you up at night? Should people switch vaccines for their booster doses? Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Josh Sharfstein address COVID-19 questions submitted to publichealthquestion@jhu.edu.

Children miss out on opportunities when they're not in school, and chronic absenteeism can actually affect their health and well-being throughout their lives. Guest host Andrea McDaniels, the Director of Communications for the Bloomberg American Health Initiative, talks with two leaders at Children's National Hospital who are part of an innovative program to share absenteeism data with pediatricians: Dr. Danielle Dooley, a pediatrician and Medical Director of Community Affairs, and Tonya Vidal Kinlow, Vice President of Community Engagement, Advocacy, and Government Affairs. The Chronic Absenteeism Reduction Effort (CARE) is a high-impact project of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative.

A few months ago, the state of Idaho declared Crisis Standards of Care when COVID cases peaked and hospitals were full. Dr. David Pate, a member of the governor's Coronavirus Working Group, talks with Stephanie Desmon about the difficult decisions health care workers have to make during Crisis Standards of Care, how this is and isn't the same as rationing care, why vaccination status shouldn't come into play for those decisions, and what has contributed to Idaho being the state with the lowest vaccination rates in the U.S.

After months of scrutinizing data from clinical trials, the FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for children 5-11. Many parents and guardians are eager for their child to be first in line but what do those who might feel hesitant need to know? Dr. Gigi Gronvall, parent and immunologist at the Center for Health Security, returns to the podcast to talk with Stephanie Desmon about the importance of vaccinating kids, why it's not worth it to wait for the "adult" dose for kids who are 11, and why authorization took longer for children than for adults.

Fear of COVID exposure and overflowing hospital units are two of the known stressors contributing to burnout among nurses and doctors. But there are a slew of other factors exacerbating health care workers' distress—many of which don't just affect clinical staff. Researchers Dr. Johannes Thrul and Dr. Svea Closser talk with Stephanie Desmon about a recent report from the Center For Health Security looking at the pandemic burnout and anxiety on people often left out of the "Health Care Heroes" narratives—and lower on the payscale—such as security staff, cleaners, and food workers in hospitals.

Happy Halloween! Today, epidemiologist Dr. Emily Gurley talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about bats and why they are so critical for public health. They also discuss theories of why bats tend to harbor viruses capable of infecting humans, how we can coexist with bats, why some people consider bats cute, and what it's like to actually work with bats.