Food Is Medicine, Let’s Treat It That Way (feat. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian)
Release Date: 10/16/2026
Food Is Medicine, Let’s Treat It That Way (feat. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian)
The Dose
Eighty-five percent of all U.S. health care spending goes toward managing chronic diseases connected to poor diet and nutrition. Yet most doctors receive little to no meaningful training in nutrition. As a result, food and nutrition remain absent from doctor–patient conversations, with medications the default option for most ailments. On the new episode of The Dose podcast, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, about why that gap exists, what it will take to close it, and what’s presently working. Increasingly,...
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New York City’s Health Commissioner Has a Plan to Protect Medicaid (feat. Dr. Alister Martin)
The Dose
The prospect of 900,000 New York City residents losing Medicaid coverage under H.R. 1, the tax and spending law passed by Republicans last year, amounts to “bureaucratic violence,” says Dr. Alister Martin. In response, he’s devised a plan that starts on the streets of Queens and builds out from there with strategically placed community health workers and people assisting with insurance enrollment. On the new episode of The Dose podcast, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Dr. Martin, an emergency physician, former White House Fellow, and now health commissioner for 8.5 million New Yorkers. They...
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The Dose
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The Dose
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In “Deep Care,” the Family Is the Sun Midwives Orbit Around (feat. Dr. Kaytura Felix)
The Dose
Dr. Kaytura Felix didn’t set out to document the Black maternal health crisis. She set out to find the people who are already doing something about it. On this episode of The Dose podcast, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Felix, founder of the Black Birthing Futures project, about what she discovered: a constellation of Black community midwives providing “deep care” — clinical, emotional, social, and spiritual support centered on care of the birthing family. “The family is the sun and all the providers are orbiting them,” says Felix. But keeping the family at the center isn't easy....
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The Dose
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The Missing Ingredient in Health Care AI? Community Voices
The Dose
Seventy billion dollars is flowing into health care AI, but the people building it and the patients who need it most are rarely in the same room. On this episode, host Dr. Joel Bervell talks with pediatrician, researcher, and tech optimist Dr. Ivor Horn about what responsible AI innovation in health care requires. Drawing on her work building open-access datasets and equity frameworks for machine learning, Horn says that rigorous research, community partnership, and critical thinking are not obstacles to the work of building powerful tools — they are the work. “If you build for the most...
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The Dose
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The Dose
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A Doula Network That’s Saving Lives (feat. Omare Jimmerson)
The Dose
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info_outlineEighty-five percent of all U.S. health care spending goes toward managing chronic diseases connected to poor diet and nutrition. Yet most doctors receive little to no meaningful training in nutrition. As a result, food and nutrition remain absent from doctor–patient conversations, with medications the default option for most ailments.
On the new episode of The Dose podcast, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, about why that gap exists, what it will take to close it, and what’s presently working.
Increasingly, doctors are beginning to prescribe produce or meals medically tailored to a patient’s condition, with the cost covered by the patient’s health plan. And a growing number of states are currently testing or planning to test food-as-medicine programs through Medicaid. Meanwhile, a third of U.S. medical schools have committed to meaningful nutrition education for doctors, something that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
“Food is the single biggest challenge and opportunity, not just in health care, but also in our economy and the environment,” says Dr. Mozaffarian. “And it’s all fixable.”