Complicating The Narrative

How does a medical doctor go from managing patients’ blood sugar and kidney failure to designing global health policy, and now to leading action on climate change? 
Sandro Demaio joins Salma to discuss his career from working as a clinician to leading health and climate change work for the Western Pacific Region of the WHO. They explore the skills that transfer across his roles in medicine and public health—systems thinking, communication, and entrepreneurialism—and examine why public health is often uncomfortable with that last word. They also discuss Sandro’s experience as a public communicator and advocate, from newspaper columns to a Netflix series to getting national vaping legislation through Parliament. Finally, they turn to climate change and discuss how to keep working on the same problems, while reframing the narrative, when the political or social environment isn’t receptive. 
This episode invites you to reflect on why careers are rarely well-defined or linear, which skills transfer across roles, and how an entrepreneurial mindset can help public health keep pace with a changing world. 
About the guest:  
Sandro Demaio is the Director of the WHO Asia-Pacific Centre for Environment and Health, based in Seoul. He is a physician with a PhD in noncommunicable diseases. His experience spans the World Health Organization in Geneva, where he worked on nutrition and food systems; leading the EAT Foundation through the launch of the EAT-Lancet Commission; running Victoria’s health promotion agency through the pandemic; and co-hosting a medical series that aired on national television in Australia and on Netflix. 
Notes:  
Acronyms used in this episode include:  
AI: artificial intelligence 
CEO: chief executive officer 
GP: general practitioner 
MPH: Master of Public Health 
NCD / NCDs: noncommunicable disease(s) 
PhD: Doctor of Philosophy 
UN: United Nations 
VicHealth: Victorian Health Promotion Foundation 
WHO: World Health Organization 
 
Useful resources: 
Ask The Doctor. Netflix; 2017. https://www.netflix.com/title/81003997 
Demaio S, Edwards SJ, Ji JS, Nordström A, Shinee E, Mercado S. The next five years of the WHO Asia–Pacific Centre for Environment and Health. The Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific. 2026;66:101782. doi:10.1016/j.lanwpc.2025.101782 
Willett W, Rockström J, Loken B, et al. Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. The Lancet. 2019;393(10170):447-492. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31788-4 
If you have any questions or feedback, email us at healthierfutureslab@wustl.edu. 
 
Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla 
Producer: Catalina Melendez Contreras 
Production assistant: Mateo Diaz Quiroz  
Marketing and social media: Kinkini Bhaduri  
Research for episode preparation: Catalina Melendez Contreras and Mateo Diaz Quiroz 
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.   

How much of what you believe about health comes from your political identity and who you are listening to?
Matt Motta joins Salma to explore how political identity shapes what people believe about health. They start by discussing vaccines, revisiting the story of how a Lyme disease vaccine for humans failed to be socially accepted after it launched in 1998, and then turn to why vaccines have become a way to signal where you stand rather than a technical question. They cover state vaccine legislation, the stigmatization of mRNA vaccines after the COVID-19 pandemic, and where healthy scrutiny of new vaccines ends and stigma begins.
They then shift the conversation to discuss effective communication strategies, with Matt describing his field experiments with social media creators, discussing his current research on gambling ads and reflecting on what it has been like to communicate his own research to the public about politically contested topics.
This episode invites you to pause and reflect on the effects of the advertisements and information you come across before making your next health decisions.
 
About the guest
Matthew Motta is an Associate Professor of Health Law, Policy, & Management at Boston University's School of Public Health. He is also Affiliated Faculty with Harvard's TH Chan School of Public Health and a Research Fellow at the Policy Lab at Brown University. His research has two main foci around (i) the social and political determinants of anti-science attitudes and (ii) the design of effective communication strategies pertaining politically contentious scientific matters.
 
Notes
Acronyms used in this episode include:
AI: Artificial intelligence
AJPH: American Journal of Public Health
BU: Boston University
CDC: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
CFTC: Commodity Futures Trading Commission
GLP-1: Glucagon-like peptide-1
GOP: Grand Old Party (also known as Republican Party)
HIV: Human immunodeficiency virus
KFF: Kaiser Family Foundation
MAGA: Make America Great Again
MAHA: Make America Healthy Again
MMR: measles, mumps, rubella
mRNA: Messenger ribonucleic acid
PAHO: Pan American Health Organization
 
Useful resources:
Liu Y, Motta M, Brenna K, et al. Training TikTok creators in mental health communication can benefit their audiences. Computers in Human Behavior Reports. 2026;22:101101. doi:10.1016/j.chbr.2026.101101
Louis C, Ross JC, Motta M. Sports Betting Ads are Everywhere. That Could be a Public Health Problem. J Gambl Stud. 2026;42(3):1321-1325. doi:10.1007/s10899-026-10497-0
Motta M. Anti-Scientific Americans: The Prevalence, Origins, and Political Consequences of Anti-Intellectualism in the U.S. Oxford University Press; 2024.
Motta M, Callaghan T. Quantifying the Polarization of Vaccine Policymaking Across State Legislatures. Published online 2026.
Motta M, Callaghan T, Lipson SK, Ross J, Strombotne K, Louis C. The Public Health Impact of GLP-1 Advertising Exposure in the U.S. SocArXiv. Preprint posted online January 16, 2026. doi:10.31235/osf.io/gs5x4_v1
Motta M. The potential public health consequences of “mRNA vaccine stigmatization” in the US. Polit life sci. Published online July 31, 2026:1-10. doi:10.1017/pls.2026.10027
 
Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla
Editor and producer: Catalina Melendez Contreras
Production assistant: Mateo Diaz Quiroz
Marketing and social media: Kinkini Bhaduri
Research for episode preparation: Catalina Melendez Contreras
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. 

Why does public health still struggle to be trusted both at home and abroad?
Craig and Salma discuss the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has disappeared from the news but continues building up to be the largest outbreak in history.  They discuss Craig’s personal experience as an Ebola survivor in 2014, and analyze how Ebola, and other global health emergencies, can seem very different from an epidemiologic perspective versus the perspective of the community living through it.
They then pivot to discuss domestic public health and Craig’s recent piece in The Atlantic highlighting that public health needs to take seriously the roughly 40% of Americans who support the MAHA movement and critiques of the piece, as well as Craig’s work on In Health We trust project.
This episode invites you to step outside the biomedical lens of public health crises and listen to people to understand their priorities from a social and humane standpoint.
 
About the guest:
Craig Spencer is an emergency physician and an Associate Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy and Practice at the Brown University School of Public Health. His research is focused on community engagement and public trust in health systems, both in global and domestic settings. His current community-engaged research program, In Health We Trust, is focused on understanding how Americans relate to health, and aims to serve as a foundation for building a more responsive and equitable US public health system.
 
Notes:
Acronyms used in this episode include:
AAP = American Academy of Pediatrics
DC = Washington, DC
DRC = Democratic Republic of Congo
DOGE = Department of Government Efficiency
EKG = Electrocardiogram
FDA = Food and Drug Administration
HHS = Health and Human Services
HIV = Human Immunodeficiency Virus
IRBs = Institutional Review Boards
MAGA = Make America Great Again
MAHA = Make America Healthy Again
NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NIH = National Institutes of Health
PEPFAR = President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
ROI = Return on investment
UK = United Kingdom
US = United States
USAID = United States Agency for International Development
WHO = World Health Organization
 
Useful resources:
Spencer C. Public Health Needs MAHA. The Atlantic. July 25, 2026. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/07/public-health-maha-rfk/688014/
If you have any questions or feedback, email us at healthierfutureslab@wustl.edu.
 
Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla
Producer: Catalina Melendez Contreras
Production assistant: Mateo Diaz Quiroz
Marketing and social media: Kinkini Bhaduri
Research for episode preparation: Catalina Melendez Contreras
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. 

When was the last time a health system asked people for what they needed?
Margaret Kruk joins Salma to discuss health systems and one of their key components: the experience of patients. They start their conversation with an overview of the functions and components of a health system and highlight that, similar to other service industries, healthcare needs to function for the people it serves and should check-in with these end-users. Margaret revisits her early-on experiences as a family doctor in rural Canada and in Kigoma, Tanzania, where she realized health systems were not responding to people’s needs, despite being designed as systems that should perform well. The conversation then shifts to discussing The Lancet Global Health Commission on High Quality Health Systems, a joint effort of researchers, healthcare providers and health systems decision makers, to understand what data were available to track quality and what data were missing to respond to the most relevant questions of quality healthcare practice, finding that available measures of quality did not map to patients’ outcomes.
Shifting course, Margaret and Salma explore the People’s Voice Survey, a global survey currently measuring health systems’ quality in 23 countries based on people’s perceptions and confidence in the system. Margaret highlights the importance of confidence—reflecting security and endorsement of systems that people can count on when they need it—and the differences between mental health and chronic physical conditions.
Finally, they reflect on the future of primary care, starting with a brief recount of its history and mission. They examine the role of emerging technologies, and especially artificial intelligence, on empowering patients and getting them to demand better quality of systems, considering the improvement of health systems should be a shared endeavor.
This episode will invite you to reconsider what a truly patient-centered health system looks like, and what it takes to build one.
 
About the guest:
Margaret E. Kruk, MD, MPH is the Distinguished Professor of Health Systems and Medicine at Washington University Bursky School of Public Health and the Director of the QuEST Centers and Network. Her research focuses on how health systems, both in low- and high-income countries, can improve quality of care and health outcomes, as well as build public confidence in systems.
 
Notes:
Acronyms used in this podcast include:
AI = Artificial Intelligence
GDP = Gross Domestic Product
QI = Quality Improvement
UK = United Kingdom
US = United States
UN = United Nations
UNDP = United Nations Development Programme
Useful resources:
Kruk ME, Gage AD, Arsenault C, et al. High-quality health systems in the Sustainable Development Goals era: time for a revolution. The Lancet Global Health. 2018;6(11):e1196-e1252. doi:1016/S2214-109X(18)30386-3
Kruk ME, Pate M. The Lancet Global Health Commission on High Quality Health Systems 1 year on: progress on a global imperative. The Lancet Global Health. 2020;8(1):e30-e32. doi:1016/S2214-109X(19)30485-1
Kruk ME, Kapoor NR, Arsenault C, et al. Health system use and experience among people with poor mental health: A cross-sectional analysis of the People’s Voice Survey in 18 countries. Tang S, ed. PLoS Med. 2026;23(5):e1004745. doi:1371/journal.pmed.1004745
MAVEN-Primary Care: AI-Powered Patient-Provider Collaboration to Transform Chronic Disease Management. Digital Intelligence & Innovation Accelerator. 2026. https://di2accelerator.wustl.edu/digital-transformation-corps/2026-projects/maven-primary-care-ai-powered-patient-provider-collaboration-to-transform-chronic-disease-management/
If you have any questions or feedback, email us at healthierfutureslab@wustl.edu.
 
Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla
Editor: Zach Linhares
Producer: Catalina Melendez Contreras
Production assistant: Mateo Diaz Quiroz
Marketing and social media: Kinkini Bhaduri
Research for episode preparation: Mateo Diaz Quiroz
 
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. 

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.