American Journal Of Public Health Podcast

Inspired by the editorials, "Pronouns Are a Public Health Issue," by Prof Lori Ross (Uni of Toronto) and “Sexual and Gender Minority Health in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Why Data Collection and Combatting Discrimination Matter Now More Than Ever,” by Dr Sean Cahill (Fenway Institute, Boston) the conversation centers around the importance for addressing and tracking inequities and injustices that impact trans-and-gender-diverse people of: 1) inclusive language in both public/private settings and 2) survey/surveillance data about sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) .

Regional Editor of AJPH, Professor Stella Yu, assisted by contributor Pengfei Guo, doctoral candidate at Yale University, reviews highlights of the September, October, November and Supplement 3 2021 "Public Health 3.0 and Beyond: Incorporating Systemic Racism" issues of AJPH. The featured Associate Editor is Professor Daniel Tarantola

The pandemic has masked for now two years the epidemics that were on-going in the years prior. One of them is the obesity epidemic. We were reaching 40% of obesity among US adults before COVID-19, 19% of childhood obesity. With my two guests, Marion Nestle (New York University) and Ben Chrisinger (Oxford University) we discuss the role of poverty, soda, and, particularly, ultra-processed food in fueling the obesity epidemic. Also available on youtube https://am.ajph.link/VIDEO_December21

COVID-19 has shed a new light on why workers are essential for our everyday life. They kept going to work for the rest of society not to completely collapse. Today, there seems to be a shortage of job seekers which creates a situation in which workers may have their say on how work should be organized on the workplace. My guests are Lisa Berkman (Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health), Francisco Diez (Center for Popular Democracy), Ashley Gates (United for Respect), and Marcy Goldstein-Gelb(National Council for Occupational Safety and Health). There is a video version of the podcast here: https://am.ajph.link/VIDEO_October2021

What are the characteristics of the Senate Bill 8 (Tx Heartbeat Act) law in Texas? Who will be most affected in the State? How socioeconomic factors mediate its impact.? What will happen to minors now in TX? What can be the impact of the invitation of Gov. Kathy Hochul to TX women? I address these questions with my guests, Prof Farzana Kapadia (NYU and AJPH), Prof Dovile Vilda (Tulane U), and Prof Amanda Stevenson (U Colorado). The podcast can also be seen in youtube here: https://youtu.be/_nDejLUGg_I

Regional Editor of AJPH, Professor Stella Yu, assisted by contributor Pengfei Guo, doctoral student at Yale University, reviews highlights of the July and August issues of AJPH. The guest presenter is Dr. Dongshan Zhu from Shandong University, China. He discusses the topic of “Disease-Specific Excess Mortality During the Covid-19 Pandemic”.

New: the podcast also exists as a youtube video here: https://youtu.be/-RR-WL3Ll_4 In the absence of a FDA authorization to vaccinate for children under the age of 12, teacher vaccination, non pharmaceutical measures and contact tracing are the tools available to allow for school reopening while the highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant” is spreading. Is there a way to avoid the political polarization on these issues and be effective on the ground? Listen to the experience from Alabama, New Hampshire, and Indiana with Ana Isabel Bento, Margaret Franckhauser, Brea Louise Perry, and Andrew C Rucks.

In this issue, Prof. Vickie Mays, Jody Heymann, and Mary Bassett discuss the contents of the supplement guest-edited by Vickie Mays and Susan Cochran,(UCLA), entitled When Dying Really Counts. It is about which data a public health surveillance system should be collecting to reduce and not worsen health inequalities. This discussion is a formidable reminder that public health involves the art of making sense of population data to generate health and equity.

Regional Editor of AJPH, Professor Stella Yu, assisted by contributor Pengfei Guo, a doctoral student at Yale University, reviews highlights of the April to June issues of AJPH. The guest presenter is Dr. Sue Lin from HRSA, DHHS. She discussed the topic of Covid-19 vaccine distribution equity in underserved populations.

Today with my guests, representing voices from the LBGTQ, Latinas, and Black women communities, we discuss what they see as the top priority now to finally end the HIV epidemic. George Ayala, Alameda County Public Health Department, CA; Hortensia Amaro, Florida International University, and Dázon Dixon Diallo, Sister Love in Atlanta, Georgia and Johannesburg in South Africa.

On March 18, two months after its installation, the new US Presidential Administration achieved the symbolic mark of 100 million vaccine shots. The vaccines are safe, but the speed of vaccination has been slowing down across the country. There is a tendency to assign the slowdown to a lack of confidence in the vaccine. But there is also evidence that former vaccine hesitant have changed their minds. Have we reached the vaccine rollout tipping point? What is the best strategy to get the largest possible coverage? I am discussing these questions with Mike Fraser, Executive Director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and with Professor David Broniatowski from George Washington University.

In this context of growing violence against persons of Asian descent and exactly one year after the former president of the United States, referred to coronavirus as "the Chinese Virus," in an infamous tweet, I discuss with Dr Gilbert Gee from UCLA and and Dr Sylvia Chou, from the National Cancer Institute, how the hashtag Chinesevirus has impacted anti-Asian racism and xenophobia. We also approach the role of social media in feeding or preventing racism and xenophobia.

Regional Editor of @AMJPublicHeath, Professor Stella Yu, assisted by contributor Pengfei Guo, a doctoral student at Yale University, reviews some articles recently published in the January to March issues of AJPH. The guest presenter is Professor Lisa Bowleg, Associate Editor of AJPH, and Professor at George Washington University. She discussed the importance of intersectionality research in public health. (Translated and read by S. Yu).

As it is now a tradition, in the April issue of AJPH, we publish several points and counterpoints between democrats, republicans and libertarians about key issues in public health. This podcast focuses on one of these conversations, dealing with the future of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC. My guests are Drs Rebekah Gee, who advised the Biden team during last presidential elections and Dr Julie Gerberding who was director of the CDC under the George W Bush administration. They approach the future of the CDC from very different political perspectives. It will be fascinating to see where their opinions diverge, and whether they can converge.

History has always occupied an important place in the Journal. In this podcast, we show how the tables were turned over the course of a century and left three countries, the USA, China, and Spain, in very different relations to each other and to the pandemics in just about a century. I am meeting with with Dr. Ted Brown and Dr. Miguel Hernan in a panel session and separately with Dr. Ruth Rogaski to explore these historical turnarounds.

Mark Ryan, from WHO, points out that we may still not facing what “the big one”. I met with Dr Renuka Tiperneni (U. Michigan), Dr Jeremy Greene (Johns Hopkins), and Dr. Rebekah Gee (Louisiana State U) to explore how public health can be galvanized so that a new administration best prepares the country to face a future pandemic that is worse than Covid-19.

Label Regional Editor of AJPH, Professor Stella Yu, assisted by contributor Pengfei Guo, a doctoral student at Yale University, reviews some articles recently published in the September to December issues of AJPH. The guest presenter is Professor Yinghua Ma , Associate Director of the Adolescent Health Institute at Beijing University. She discussed the article on “Body Mass Index Trajectory and Incident Hypertension: Results From a Longitudinal Cohort of Chinese Children and Adolescents, 2006–2016”.

In this podcast, with Profs. Lisa Bowleg (AJPH & GWU), Skyler Jackson, (Yale) and Jennifer Nazareno (Brown), we discuss what is intersectionality and why early career public health researchers are attracted by a framework that is premised on the interplay of science and society and on the heterogeneity of people’s lived experiences. It also features a song by KJ Denhert.

We review the evidence relating medical care expenses and health and discuss whether diverting part of the resources now wasted in medical care, which is expensive per capita and of inequitable access, and investing these resources in prevention can help reinvent public health. My Guests are Dr Sanne Magnan (MN) and Professors Phillis Meadows (MI)and Mac McCullough (AZ).

Regional Editor of AJPH, Professor Stella Yu, reviews some articles recently published in the June, July, and August issues of AJPH, including: financial toll of untreated perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, Covid-19 in Asia, and impact of Covid-19 and Asian populations in the US. The guest presentation features a preview of the article, entitled, “Estimation of the outbreak severity and evaluation of epidemic prevention ability of COVID-19 by province in China”, presented by Yilei Ma, a doctoral candidate at Huazhong Technical University.