Complicating The Narrative

In this last episode of the Building Better Ways of Knowing (BBWK) mini-series, Kumanan joins Salma to discuss knowledge systems and their articulations with public health practice in the global context. They begin the conversation by reflecting on knowledge systems, how they have privileged and excluded different forms of knowledge, and how they have lagged behind transformations across other dimensions of society. They then touch on Kumanan’s experience working for a meningococcal B vaccine randomized control trial (RCT) in New Zealand to depict how some forms of knowledge generation don’t reflect real-world scenarios.
They then shift course to discuss the emergence of The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research in 1999 and the functions it serves in the global health scenario to close the “know-do gap”: supporting high-quality research in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), building research capacity in LMICs, and advocating for and building the field. Finally, they discuss the changing global power dynamics with increased within-country inequities and rising health sovereignty, Professor Wasi’s concept of "The triangle that moves mountains” to describe what is needed for long-lasting change, and the expected future of universities and healthcare with the rise of artificial intelligence.
This closing conversation sums up the interdisciplinary conversations hosted during this BBWK summer mini-series and invites you to comprehensively reflect on how knowledge generation intersects with real-life scenarios.
About the guest:
Kumanan Rasanathan is the Executive Director of The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. He is a public health physician with a strong background in health policy and systems research and extensive experience working at different levels of the World Health Organization and within the wider UN system. As part of The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, Kumanan and his team lead the global learning component of the Building Better Ways of Knowing initiative.
 
Notes:
Acronyms mentioned in this episode include:
AI = Artificial Intelligence
LLM = Large Language Model
RCT = Randomized Controlled Trial
SAS = Statistical Analysis System
WHO = World Health Organization
 
Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla
Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri
Music: Helmut Schenker / Omnia from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/60e14d61-23ca-4899-9c56-9a9018634986/
 
The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team. 

Almost nothing about how the United States government funds health research was chosen. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) began with leftover penicillin money and a letter to medical school deans. The decision to fund projects rather than people came from a foundation protecting itself during the Depression. The paperwork came from a congressman who was annoyed in 1962.
Michael Lauer spent nearly two decades at the NIH, serving as Deputy Director for Extramural Research from 2015 until 2025. He joins Salma to trace how these accidents hardened into a system that leaves scientists dependent on grants for their salaries, concentrates most of the money in a small number of hands, and does not grant most researchers independence until their mid-forties. They discuss what could be done differently, and the question that has gone unanswered since the 1940s: who should decide what science gets done.
Dr. Lauer suggests that the current situation being faced by the NIH and researchers is the result of these structural problems and highlights that while there is a crisis, it is also an opportunity to restructure funding and research incentives.
This episode asks whether the current inflection point in research funding might be the opening needed to rethink a system that was never quite designed to work.
 
Notes:
Acronyms used in this episode include:
CTSA = Clinical and Translational Science Awards
IACUCs = Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees
IRB = Institutional Review Board
MIRA = Maximizing Investigators' Research Award
NASA = National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NCI = National Cancer Institute
NHLBI = National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
NIAID = National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
NIGMS = National Institute of General Medical Sciences
NIH = National Institutes of Health
NSF = National Science Foundation
PCORI = Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute
R01 = Research Project Grant
Fact checks:
Glenn Seaborg was Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley between 1958 and 1961
 
About the guest:
Michael Lauer is a cardiologist and physician-scientist who served as the Director of the Office of Extramural Research and the Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) between October 2015 and February 2025. As Director for Extramural Research he led the NIH funding processes for universities, medical schools, and research organizations outside of the United States government.
 
Useful resources:
Bush V. Science, The Endless Frontier - 75th Anniversary Edition. National Science Foundation. Published online 2023. https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/2023-04/EndlessFrontier75th_w.pdf
Kratsios M. Science, A New Golden Age. Office of Science and Technology Policy; 2026. https://www.whitehouse.gov/science/
 
Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla
Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri
Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/
 
The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team. 

Sara and Darren join Salma to discuss Civic City’s community-first model. They start the conversation by exploring how Civic City uses knowledge, narrative, and design to co-create solutions with communities. To make this tangible, they delve into the Food City STL initiative, which started off by deep community listening and led to a city resolution declaring food as a human right.
Pertaining to the role of academic research and knowledge generation, Sara and Darren talk about their collaboration with University of Missouri St. Louis, which began as something transactional and evolved to a true co-creation partnership. They also highlight the value of data, acknowledging that “data is gold”, and argue that communities sit on valuable knowledge that institutions often extract without returning value instead of sharing the findings back with the communities. Finally, they emphasize that knowledge, agency, and capacity are the three things needed to move from knowledge to action, and underscore the importance of creating new spaces to foster interaction and collaboration between academia, journalism, and community. However, they note that these interactions must acknowledge that knowledge generation and co-creation processes are scalable, but the solutions that result from them are not.
If you’ve wondered what true community involvement in research looks like, and how it can evolve to ensure true co-creation of knowledge, this episode will give you concrete ideas to help catalyze this shift.
 
About the guests:
Darren Jackson is Founder of Civic City, a community-first civic venture studio in St. Louis that works with communities, industry, and government to build solutions and opportunities to public challenges. He is a civic innovation leader specializing in human-centered design, applying data, empathy, and creative problem-solving to help communities and institutions build cities for all. He previously served as Executive Sourcing Partner and Advisor to Meta, Adobe, Block, and IDEO, aiming to bridge innovation with civic impact.
Sara Bannoura is Co-Founder of Civic City, where she helps lead the Food for All campaign. She is a journalist and civic systems leader who explores how storytelling, community knowledge, and lived experience shape public systems and policy. She previously served as senior producer in local television news, produced a feature documentary on the fentanyl crisis in St. Louis, and led coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic and reported daily on public health data and disparities while documenting the lived realities of communities navigating unequal access to essential resources.
 
Notes:
Acronyms mentioned in this episode include:
CDC = Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
CEO = Chief Executive Officer
COO = Chief Operating Officer
DRC = Democratic Republic of Congo
USML = University of Missouri, St Louis
 
Useful resources:
1.For the Sake of All: A Report on the Health and Well-Being of African Americans in St. Louis and Why It Matters for Everyone. Washington University in St. Louis and Saint Louis University; 2015. https://bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.wustl.edu/dist/3/1454/files/2018/06/FSOA_report_2-17zd1xm.pdf
 
Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla
Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri
Music: Helmut Schenker / Omnia from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/60e14d61-23ca-4899-9c56-9a9018634986/
 
The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

This episode is a re-run of the Ideas Matter podcast episode “The Future of Higher Education” hosted by Dean Sandro Galea—Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Initiatives at WashU and Co-Director of the Building Better Ways of Knowing initiative—in conversation with Professor Mitchell Stevens. The original episode was released by Ideas Matter on May 26, 2026.  
In this episode, Dean Galea and Dr. Stevens discuss the current state of higher education, and the challenges and opportunities that result from thismoment of institutional change and fourth industrial revolution.  
Looking back, Dean Galea and Dr. Stevens examine the values that have sustained higher education throughout its history, the historical role of education as a service, economic, civic and moral provider to the nation, and the main pathway towards economic mobility. They highlighted that the majority of the nation does not access or complete college, which has resulted in the economic, cultural, and political splits that have contributed to current polarization levels. They unpack challenges related to unaffordability, unrestrained costs, and the student-debt crisis; the moral/civic question of who should be responsible for the lifelong employability of American people; the threats posed to current higher education by the shrinking pool of youth and young adults, technological leaps, and the “casualization” of faculty. 
Looking forward, they discuss the challenge that AI poses to the long-held idea that expert knowledge lives irreplaceably in human minds and Dr. Stevens suggests that a paradigm shift, moving away from school-centric logics of human capital towards new hybrid models and the investment in people’s capabilities across the life course, should be adopted. 
If you wonder what higher education will look like amidst the fourth industrial revolution catalyzed by AI and the demographic shift, this episode will offer a clear framework to understand how we got here and how things might unfold.  
About the guest:  
Mitchell Stevens is Professor at the Graduate School of Education and Faculty Affiliate at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) at Stanford University, where he also convenes the Pathways Network and the Futures Project on Education and the Learning Society. His research focuses on educational sequences, lifelong learning, alternative educational forms, and the formal organization of knowledge. 
 
Notes:  
Acronyms mentioned in this episode include:  
- AI = Artificial intelligence  
- K-12 = Kindergarten through 12th grade  
- MOOC = Massive open online course  
 
Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla  
Editors: Ryan Rhea and Catalina Melendez Contreras  
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri  
Music: Helmut Schenker / Omnia from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/60e14d61-23ca-4899-9c56-9a9018634986/
 
The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.   

How do values shape the actions and agenda of public health science?  
Anya and Salma begin their conversation by discussing how values are inherently embedded in every decision that scientists make, but cannot be considered a contaminant of science, as they are an unavoidable part of how research is designed and conducted. To elaborate on this point, Anya explains the concept of inductive risk—the risk resulting from a value-laden choice—and highlights how it constantly shapes science, for example by setting the standard of evidence of p-values or the guidelines to classify mental health disorders. From there, they also discuss the current debate about the politicization of public health, acknowledging that science is inherently political and highlighting the importance of transparency about values to promote objectivity in research. Finally, they reflect on the factthat the public health field continues to ask meta-science questions that philosophy of science has been addressing for decades rather than engaging with other fields.  
 
About the guest:  
Anya Plutynski, PhD is Professor of Philosophy at the Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on the philosophy of science, with an emphasis on the research conducted by biologists and biomedical researchers.  
 
Notes:  
Acronyms mentioned in this episode include:  
DSM = Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 
HAM-D = Hamilton Depression Rating Scale  
HITOP = Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology 
NIH = National Institutes of Health 
RCT = Randomized Controlled Trial  
RDoC = Research Domain Criteria 
 
Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla  
Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras  
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri  
Music: Helmut Schenker / Omnia from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/60e14d61-23ca-4899-9c56-9a9018634986/
 
The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.   

How and why have certain methods, topics, and assumptions been favored by public health throughout history, and how has that shaped the truths we know today?
Merlin joins Salma to discuss how history provides the framework to understand how specific moments in time have shaped the research preferred by public health, illustrating that these priorities are not timeless but shift according to time-bound contexts. They use the Toxic Docs project as a prime example to highlight the value of archival data, showing how once-secret corporate records can expose the interference of industry interests on scientific activities and knowledge building. Shifting focus, they also examine the risks associated with the field's over-reliance on federal funding and the importance of understanding the legal and legislative frameworks governing these resources to better protect public health initiatives from political tensions and policy shifts. Finally, they discuss the friction between community knowledge and institutional expertise, emphasizing that neither "communities always know best" nor "experts are always right" serves as a sufficient answer.
 
About the guest:
Merlin Chowkwanyun, PhD, MPH is the Donald H. Gemson Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health. Their research is focused on the history of health, with an emphasis on community and environmental health, racial inequity, and social activism for health.
 
Notes:
Acronyms mentioned in this episode include:
DEI = Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
MAHA = Make America Healthy Again
NIH = National Institutes of Health
RWJF = Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
TSCA = Toxic Substances Control Act
 
Useful resources:
Toxic Docs: Toxicdocs.org
 
Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla
Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri
Music: Helmut Schenker / Omnia from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/60e14d61-23ca-4899-9c56-9a9018634986/
 
The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team. 

What is the relevance of history, and individual stories, when framing current public health research and practice?  
Rebecca and Salma discuss the role of population-level history, and individual stories, in public health as part of the active tools for framing and translating research and interventions. To illustrate this, they use a historical case from 18th century Bologna and show how authority over the body and knowledge has shifted across time, and whose stories get remembered or erased. Similarly, they analyze examples from the 1348 plague, the 1918 influenza, and Covid to explore the long history of mistrust in medical authority. Overall, they make the case for the routine integration of humanists, artists, and historians into public health institutions, and argue for the potential of performance and the arts as tools for reshaping public health narratives and behavior.  
About the guest:  
Dr Rebecca Messbarger is Professor of Italian and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Italian at the Washington University in St louis Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and has a secondary appointment as Professor of Public Health at the Bursky School of Public Health. Rebecca researches the Italian Enlightenment, with a focus on the role of women in civic and academic life, and the intersections of anatomy and art, and medicine and religion.  
 
Notes:  
Acronyms mentioned in this episode include:  
AIDS = Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome 
 
Useful resources: 
The Eye: A Medical Humanities Podcast — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-eye-a-medical-humanities-podcast/id1814000357  
 
Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla  
Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras  
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri  
Music: Helmut Schenker / Omnia from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/60e14d61-23ca-4899-9c56-9a9018634986/
 
The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.   

This episode is a re-run of the Ideas Matter podcast episode “The Future of Science and the Replication Crisis” hosted by Dean Sandro Galea, Co-Director of the Building Better Ways of Knowing initiative, in conversation with Professor John Ioannidis. The original episode was released by Ideas Matter on May 19, 2026.
This episode begins with a discussion of Dr. Ioannidis’ paper about how most research findings cannot be replicated. Following the argument of this paper, Dean Galea and Dr. Ioannidis unpack the structural and statistical forces—incentives, funding, tenure, and conflicts of interest—that drive this replication challenge, and highlight the progress that has been made despite these challenges, using genetic epidemiology as an example. They also discuss the pandemic, and how it served as a stress-test for science, requiring disciplines to show their capacity to rapid response but also promoting low-quality research.
Forward-facing, Dean Galea and Dr. Ioannidis discuss the role of AI and LLMs in both improving and potentially deteriorating science, including the rise of fake papers and the privatization of knowledge, they formulate what success for science might look like in 20-30 years, debate how scientists should handle controversy and pushback, and highlight the of humility in science and remaining open to being wrong.
If you have ever questioned whether science is getting things right, this conversation will give you both an honest answer and reasons for cautious optimism.
 
About the guest:
John Ioannidis is the George E. and Lucy Becker Professor of Medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and Professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University. His research focuses on improving research methods and practices to generate more reliable, trustworthy, and useful evidence. He is among the most cited scholars in Clinical Medicine, Social Sciences and Psychiatry/Psychology, and is the author of the most-accessed article in the history of Public Library of Science.  
 
Notes:
Acronyms mentioned in this episode include:
AI = Artificial Intelligence
LLM = Large Language Models
 
Useful resources:
Ioannidis JPA. Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Med. 2005;2(8):e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
 
Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla
Editors: Ryan Rhea and Catalina Melendez Contreras
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri
Music: Helmut Schenker / Omnia from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/60e14d61-23ca-4899-9c56-9a9018634986/
 
The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team. 

What does it take to shift a public health narrative and are researchers ready when the moment comes? 
Whitney and Salma start their conversation discussing Whitney’s move from obesity to gynecologic research, highlighting how gynecologic conditions and overall women’s midlife health are understudied, as well as how obesity narratives remain focused on the individual willpower, despite a strong body of evidence pointing to environmental and structural causes. Then, they delve into Whitney’s experience as a social epidemiologist embedded in a clinical environment, discuss the tensions between quantitative work and advocacy in social epidemiology, and highlight the dangers of academics making assumptions about communities without talking to them.  
Reflecting on the Covid-19 pandemic, Whitney and Salma also analyze how the pandemic pushed researchers toward more public-facing communication and look at the role of narrative and political moments in shifting public health paradigms, the importance of being ready when those windows of opportunity open, and the need for academics to engage with political stakeholders as a long-term investment. 
This conversation will challenge you to think about who public health researchers are actually talking to and who they should be aiming to reach. 
About the guest:  
Whitney R Robinson is Associate Professor in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Duke University School of Medicine, Member of the Duke Cancer Institute, and Core Faculty Member of the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy. Her research currently focuses on understanding why rates of disease for non-cancerous gynecologic conditions like endometriosis, fibroids, and PCOS vary across population groups. Previously, her research had focused on disparities for obesity.  
 
Notes:  
Acronyms mentioned in this episode include:  
HIV = Human Immunodeficiency Virus  
NIH = National Institutes of Health  
RCT = Randomized Controlled Trial  
MAHA = Make America Healthy Again  
AI = Artificial Intelligence  
SER = Society for Epidemiological Research  
OBGYN = Obstetrics and Gynecology 
 
Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla  
Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras  
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri  
Music: Helmut Schenker / Omnia from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/60e14d61-23ca-4899-9c56-9a9018634986/
 
The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.   

Katherine Keyes joins Salma to discuss the strengths and limitations of epidemiology, beginning with the gap between what averages tell us about populations and what they fail to predict about individuals. They explore how that gap is a frequent source of public misunderstanding, how self-experimentation can mislead through placebo effects and confounding, and why public health needs to be more transparent and humble about the strengths and limitations of its evidence base. As Katherine and Salma argue, the public can handle nuance when it is communicated honestly.
They then turn to what makes a research question worth asking, arguing that good questions should aim probe where existing theories produce anomalies in addition to expanding the existing evidence base, and that the questions any of us can ask are shaped by the "thought collectives" we operate within. Drawing on Katherine's work in psychiatric epidemiology, they discuss why rising mental health trends are likely multifactorial, before closing on the importance of engaging communities and carrying knowledge beyond traditional academic environments.
This episode invites you to look beyond the data, to understand the context in which it was produced, recognize its limits, and consider what it means to communicate those limits honestly to the public.
 
About the guest:
Dr. Katherine Keyes is the Susan Lasker Brody Professor of Population Mental Health and Vice Chair for Research at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. Her research focuses on psychiatric and substance use epidemiology across the life course, with a particular interest in methodological challenges and in outcomes such as suicide and overdose.
 
Notes:
Acronyms mentioned in this episode include:
DSM = Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
GLP-1 = Glucagon-Like Peptide-1
RCT = Randomized Controlled Trial
 
Useful resources:
Keyes KM. What Makes Something Worth Knowing? Epistemology and Public Health Impact. Epidemiology. 2026;37(3):371-373. doi:1097/EDE.0000000000001957
 
Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla
Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri
Music: Helmut Schenker / Omnia from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/60e14d61-23ca-4899-9c56-9a9018634986/
 
The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.