Public Health On Call

This week, Stephanie Desmon and Josh Sharfstein are teaming up to talk to experts about COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Today, they look through the ethical lens with Nancy Kass, a leading ethicist at Johns Hopkins. They discuss why vaccine mandates should never be Plan A, when mandates can become critically necessary and how mandates shouldn't be put in place for frivolous reasons or settings, just when public health is at stake.

As pandemic-related, federal unemployment insurance is set to expire, Stephanie Desmon talks to Mallika Thomas, PhD, of Brookings Institution about its impacts, what will happen to those who remain unemployed but will no longer be eligible for weekly checks, and how the program was actually designed to keep people at home during the early days of COVID-19 so they'd be less likely to spread the virus.

What goes into the decision to mandate a vaccine? Today, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein and Stephanie Desmon continue the conversation on COVID-19 vaccine mandates and speak to the senior director of infection prevention at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Lisa Maragakis, who is leading the implementation of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Maragakis explains the history of vaccine mandates, the decision to create such mandates, and how it's going.

Why has it come to mandates as a way to get people vaccinated against COVID-19? Stephanie Desmon and Dr. Joshua Sharfstein talk to Saad Omer, MBBS, MPH, PhD, FIDSA, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, about vaccine hesitancy, as well as the benefits and risks of vaccine mandates.

I am fully vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine. If I catch the delta variant will I acquire additional immunity—in addition to the immunity to the vaccination? If I received the COVID-19 vaccine and I'm now breastfeeding, will my baby receive antibodies? Do masks get less effective depending on how long they're worn? Dr. Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security addresses your questions submitted to publichealthquestion@jhu.edu.

Caring for Kids with COVID-19 in Florida. There are more children sick with COVID-19 in Florida today than ever before. Joseph Perno is an emergency department physician and the chief medical officer of Johns Hopkins All-Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg. He speaks to Dr. Josh Sharfstein about why the rising number of sick children has yet to change many minds about measures to combat the pandemic.

Public Health On Call producer Lindsay Smith Rogers speaks with Elinor Cleghorn, author of the book Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World. The book covers how misogyny and mythology were baked into western medicine and has attributed to gender bias on women's health, how some of these biases remain today and what needs to be done to create a more equitable health system for all people.

It's back-to-school time and the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging in many places. Stephanie Desmon talks to Keri Althoff and Elizabeth Stuart of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health about how important it is for K-12 students to get back into the classroom, how safe it is to do so right now, how to navigate masking for kids too young to be vaccinated and how to talk to your kids about any worries they may have about returning to in-person learning.

2020 marked a historically high number of overdoses with more than 93,000 deaths in the United States. A particular risk for overdose is recent incarceration, yet few people who are incarcerated have access to effective, life-saving treatment. Dr. Brendan Saloner, talks to Dr. Josh Sharfstein on the urgency of jails and prisons providing needed care.

Overdose death rates in the U.S. reached record highs during the pandemic. Stephanie Desmon talks to Sika Yeboah Sampong about a recent report from the Legal Action Center about the role of emergency departments in saving lives from overdose. Clinicians can screen for and diagnose addiction, provide life-saving therapy, and refer to ongoing care. Many emergency departments, Yeboah Sampong argues, are failing to provide care backed by evidence -- and could be in legal jeopardy as a result. Read the full report here: https://americanhealth.jhu.edu/addiction-emergency