Public Health On Call

Missed diagnoses account for 800,000 deaths or permanent disabilities among Americans every year. Johns Hopkins neurologist Dr. David Newman-Toker talks with Stephanie Desmon about the consequences of missed opportunities and diagnoses, especially for vascular events, infections, and cancers. They also discuss why solutions are complex and will require major efforts in terms of research and resources.

Since the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, many states have passed restrictive, confusing, and sometimes contradictory laws impacting health care. Dr. Jack Resneck, Jr, the new president of the American Medical Association talks with Stephanie Desmon about the challenges physicians are facing when making critical decisions with patients about often lifesaving health care, the threat of a “mass exodus” of practitioners from states with more restrictive laws, and who ultimately pays the highest price for the “egregious allowance of government in the exam room.” We want to hear from you!

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.

Dr. Lisa Gwynn, president of the Florida chapter of the American Academic of Pediatrics and a professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, was fired from a state board for advocating for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for kids under 5. She talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about how politics and misinformation in Florida are contributing to a situation that’s harmful to children’s health and strips away medical choices and access from parents.

On a special episode, Tradeoffs host Dan Gorenstein talks about how the pandemic has affected the public health workforce: More than 300 officials quit, were fired, or retired while, at the same time, applications to public health programs jumped 40%. Gorenstein introduces a conversation between Jen Miller, who left her job with the Montana Department of Public Health after constant harassment and conflict, and Nicole Snyder, a first-year master’s student at UNC Chapel who was called to public health after seeing impacts of the pandemic—two individual examples of a nationwide trend in public health.  Learn more here: https://tradeoffs.org/