It's July, 2024. Happy summer! This month, we talk with Emily Parker, a marine scientist and advocate with Heal the Bay, a nonprofit aquarium and institute based in Santa Monica, CA. The video below is an in-depth discussion of ocean health and human health — and how they intersect. Video and transcript at https://www.themedicalcareblog.com/podcast-ocean-human-health/

June is Alzheimer's Awareness Month. To recognize the importance of brain health, we hosted a round-table discussion between Dr. Lisa Lines, principal investigator for the RTI Rarity project (RTIRarity.io); Chloe McGlynn, a research public health analyst at RTI; Dr. Vicki Johnson-Lawrence, social epidemiologist and community-based participatory researcher at RTI; and Dr. Jazmyne McNeese, an expert on race, wealth, and business ownership and senior data analyst at PolicyMap (PolicyMap.com). We discuss disparities in the prevalence of Alzheimer's Disease & Related Dementias, or ADRD, and explore some of the top modifiable risk factors for ADRD. We share ideas for improving access to care for people with ADRD and show how prevalence, and some of the top predictors, are distributed across the US. You can watch the video for this episode, and leave your feedback, at https://www.themedicalcareblog.com/podcast-adrd-2024-06/.

March, 2024: Four years since the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, where are we now? What accounts for more than 1 million Americans dead? We talk with Christina van Hal and Nate Rowan, researchers at RTI International, about our analyses of excess mortality from 2020-2022.

Welcome to the February, 2024 edition of the Healthy Intersections Podcast! This month, we sit down with David Introcaso, PhD, to discuss the healthcare industry's carbon footprint. Dr. Introcaso is the host and producer of the Healthcare Policy Podcast as well as an experienced researcher.

He talks us through understanding the scope of the problem and makes excellent points about the role of policies in addressing the climate crisis. Why not require healthcare organizations to publicly report their carbon footprints and what they are doing about sustainability? How else can we decarbonize the industry? If the healthcare industry leads on sustainability, it could transform the supply chain!

Be sure to visit The Medical Care Blog to access an extensive set of notes and further reading provided by Dr. Introcaso. Please share widely!

January, 2024:  We're kicking off a year of climate action here on the podcast and blog. To start us off, we interview Dr. Imari Walker-Franklin, a research chemist at RTI International, science communicator, and the co-author of a new book from MIT Press, Plastics. We connect the dots between climate change, public health and medical care, and plastics, covering multiple angles and identifying priorities for research to fill the gaps in our knowledge. 

On the Healthy Intersections podcast for November 2023, we do a deep dive on structural racism and its effects in the United States. Joining us to talk about the new Structural Racism Effect Index (SREI) is Dr. Zach Dyer, lead author on the analysis. Check out the dashboard at SREIndex.com and the journal article in Health Affairs. A video of our discussion is available at The Medical Care Blog.

 Welcome to the Healthy Intersections podcast for October, 2023. Today's podcast focuses on the links between suicide and social determinants of health in the United States. Suicide is one of the deaths of despair, along with deaths from drug and alcohol. We will be discussing some key statistics and findings related to this topic as well as discussing a new study on the topic. 

Happy fall! This month's Healthy Intersections Podcast focuses on food and agriculture -- a timely topic during the fall harvest months. Healthy food is necessary for overall wellbeing. Yet, climate change is forcing us to confront several realities:

1. Agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to climate change
2. Agriculture and the food supply are greatly affected by climate change
3. Agriculture and food have the potential to be solutions to addressing climate change

Our special guests this month are Robert Beach, PhD, a Fellow in the Agricultural, Resource & Energy Economics and Policy Program at RTI International, and Carol Schmitt, PhD, Chief Scientist at RTI. You can check out the video at our blog.