Climate Change Is Already Disrupting Health Care in the U.S.
The Dose
Yes, the planet is getting hotter, tropical storms are becoming ever more fierce, and the Arctic is melting — but what’s that got to do with health care? This week on The Dose podcast, host Joel Bervell explores the intersection of climate change and public health with Admiral Rachel L. Levine, M.D., the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health. Levine, who oversees the federal Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, talks about how weather-related events are already having a serious impact on our fragile health system supply chain, even though those effects can go unnoticed by the broader...
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Climate Change as a Public Health Issue
The Dose
As climate change intensifies and New Yorkers face record-breaking heat, the city is taking new measures to protect residents’ health. Landlords will soon have to provide air conditioning to tenants, school bus fleets are going electric, and efforts are underway to make housing more affordable. Cameron Clarke of WE ACT for Environmental Justice is on the front lines of the push to build a healthier New York City. One recent initiative focused on developing an asthma policy agenda. “We wanted to talk about housing, transportation, education, and the actual landscape of the built...
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Reforming Mental Health Support for Students and Health Care Workers
The Dose
Evidence of a mental health crisis is everywhere — from the recent surgeon general advisory about social media’s effects on our youth to the pandemic’s documented impact on medical professionals. To whom does a college student turn for help so far from home? And who cares for the mental health of those caring for us? Enter Dr. Jessi Gold, a psychiatrist and the University of Tennessee’s first chief wellness officer, who aims to change the way student mental health is addressed on campus. She favors an open, flexible approach to helping students find the kind of help that’s right for...
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Advancing Health Equity Through Disruptive Innovation
The Dose
Moving the needle on health care access and health disparities is no easy task. Inequities for people of color are embedded in the U.S. health system, shaping their health care journeys and often leading to outcomes worse than those experienced by white Americans. That’s where Dr. Chris Pernell, director of NAACP’s Center for Health Equity, comes in. “Sometimes you got to make those systems bend, and other times you got to disrupt those systems, innovate and invent, and create and design.” In this episode of The Dose podcast, host Joel Bervell talks to Dr. Pernell about her work...
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More Conversations from Aspen Ideas: Health
The Dose
In this special two-part edition of The Dose, we’re bringing listeners along to an exhilarating gathering of health care’s most innovative thinkers and changemakers — Aspen Ideas: Health. In part 2, host Joel Bervell talks to two people who are reshaping how we think about community health: Mary Oxendine, a Lumbee and Tuscarora woman and the former North Carolina Food Security Coordinator at Durham County; and Shameca Brown, a mental health provider and advocate for Black and brown people in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and former member of the Mental Health Association of Oklahoma’s board of...
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Conversations from Aspen Ideas: Health
The Dose
In this special, two-part edition of The Dose, we’re bringing listeners along to an exhilarating gathering of health care’s most innovative thinkers and changemakers—Aspen Ideas: Health. In part 1, host Joel Bervell speaks with two people dedicated to supporting communities that have been excluded from our health care system: Lola Adedokun, executive director of the Aspen Global Innovative Group at the Aspen Institute and leader of the Healthy Communities Fellowship; and Elizabeth Lutz, executive director of The Health Collaborative in San Antonio, Texas.
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A New Day for Sickle Cell Patients
The Dose
This month, a 12-year-old boy in Washington, D.C., became the first person in the world to undergo a grueling gene therapy treatment that could cure his sickle cell disease. It is a game-changer for a disease whose history has been plagued by the racism baked into our health care system. On The Dose podcast, host Joel Bervell sits down with Dr. Cece Calhoun, a leading adolescent sickle cell specialist from Yale University. The two dive into what it means to be a young Black person in America with the disease; why it took nearly 100 years for us to get to this point; and how...
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Dr. Betancourt’s Blueprint for an Equitable Health Care System
The Dose
In Dr. Joseph Betancourt’s vision for the future of U.S. health care, “any patient who goes to any health care system around the country should get the highest quality of care, no matter who they are or where they’re from.” As the Commonwealth Fund’s new president, he’s tackling some of the biggest challenges facing the U.S. health system while trying to ensure equity is embedded in health care policy, coverage, technology, and practice. Join Joel Bervell, host of The Dose podcast, for a wide-ranging conversation with Betancourt about AI and health care, America’s primary...
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Lived Experience Is a Key to Health Equity
The Dose
As a physician, researcher, and educator, Dr. Cheryl R. Clark wants her students to understand what vision, love, and equity can bring to health care if we prioritize them — and why she believes doing so is critical to advancing health equity. In the latest episode of The Dose podcast, host Joel Bervell talks with Clark about how she brings health equity to life, taking medical residents to Mississippi to break bread with the Civil Rights leaders who founded community health centers. They also discuss her work at the forefront of emancipatory research to connect the dots...
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On the Need for Diversity in Medical Illustrations
The Dose
In medical school, students learning about illness, pathology, and disease are trained almost exclusively on images of white patients. Even materials on illnesses that predominantly affect Black people, like sickle cell disease, and textbooks used in medical schools in countries where most people are Black, are filled with illustrations of white bodies and white skin. This leaves doctors underprepared to care for Black patients. For Nigerian medical student and illustrator Chidiebere Ibe, accurate representation is a starting point for health care equity. Ibe has founded Illustrate Change, the...
info_outlineIn medical school, students learning about illness, pathology, and disease are trained almost exclusively on images of white patients. Even materials on illnesses that predominantly affect Black people, like sickle cell disease, and textbooks used in medical schools in countries where most people are Black, are filled with illustrations of white bodies and white skin. This leaves doctors underprepared to care for Black patients.
For Nigerian medical student and illustrator Chidiebere Ibe, accurate representation is a starting point for health care equity. Ibe has founded Illustrate Change, the world's largest open-source digital library of medical illustrations featuring people of color.
In the newest episode of The Dose podcast, host Joel Bervell talks to Ibe about his efforts to make inclusive imagery widely accessible — a critical step toward building health systems that can provide Black patients with the care they deserve. This is the third episode in a new series of conversations with leaders at the forefront of health equity.