Humans in Public Health
How should we prepare for the next pandemic? How is noise pollution affecting my neighborhood? And how can we prevent opioid overdose from a public parking lot? From epidemiology to behavioral science, Megan Hall covers it all as she interviews public health researchers about their work and what brought them to the field of public health in this award-winning podcast.
- Update frequency
- every 27 days
- Average duration
- 16 minutes
- Episodes
- 22
- Years Active
- 2024 - 2025
The power to transport
We all understand the power a song can have to recall vivid memories, seemingly sending us back in time. Professor Ellen McCreedy is a musician whose gerontology research harnesses music’s power to r…
A Revolutionary Approach to Health Care Pricing
Since the 1980s, the U.S. has experimented with various forms of managed health care. But none of them has managed to control costs or improve health outcomes, argues Senior Fellow Hayden Rooke-Ley. …
LIVE RECORDING: How Do Urban Landscapes Shape Our Health?
A special live Commencement & Reunion Weekend episode of Humans in Public Health brings experts from epidemiology together with the director of Urban Studies at Brown for a discussion on cities: How …
Rhode Island's Response to the Overdose Crisis
This episode of Humans in Public Health features Professor Alex Macmadu, an epidemiologist who has spent her career studying the opioid and overdose crisis. She shares insights on Rhode Island’s bold…
Who Employs Your Doctor?
What happens when private equity firms buy hospitals and doctor’s offices? In this episode of Humans in Public Health, host Megan Hall sits down with health care economist Yashaswini Singh to unpack …
The Moment Everything Changed: Voices from the Start of the Pandemic
March 2020—life as we knew it changed overnight. In this special episode of Humans in Public Health, we take you back to the early days of the pandemic, when uncertainty loomed, fear spread and the w…
Forever Chemicals: Hidden Dangers in Everyday Beauty
They’re not just in your nail polish. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals are everywhere—in our homes, clothing, the personal care products we use, and in our bodies. Postdoctoral researcher Amber Hal…
How Research Shapes Health Policy on Capitol Hill
Host Megan Hall sits down with Jared Perkins, director of health policy strategy at Brown University's Center for Advancing Health Policy through Research. They discuss how academic research makes it…
Harnessing AI for Smarter Health Policy Research
Professor Alyssa Bilinski set out to answer a seemingly simple question: how often are pregnant people included in medical trials? Finding the answer, however, was anything but simple. With 90,000 re…
How Rwanda's Health System Stopped Marburg in Its Tracks
The East African country of Rwanda is currently in the midst of a Marburg virus disease outbreak, but the picture is far from bleak. Global health expert Dr. Craig Spencer, who survived Ebola in 2014…
Counting Coal’s Casualties
Picture a coal power plant: a building with tall smoke stacks with big plumes of gasses coming out of them. By now, we know that those gasses aren’t great for our health or the environment. But how b…
Guns, Ammo and Lead Exposure
The dangers of firearms are well understood, but their ammunition is the source of a little-known health threat: toxic lead. Brown doctoral student Christian Hoover studies the connection between gun…
Unwinding Anxiety (Rerun)
In this summer replay of a previous episode, host Megan Hall speaks with Dr. Jud Brewer, associate professor of psychiatry at the Brown Medical School about anxiety. In uncertain times, how do we add…
A psychedelic pathway toward PTSD recovery
Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the most common conditions facing U.S. Veterans, and there is currently no effective cure—what’s more, many Veterans use alcohol in an effort to allevi…
Rebuilding Information Trust
How do we receive the information that shapes our beliefs, and how do we know if we can trust our sources? Stefanie Friedhoff directs the Information Futures Lab at the Brown University School of Pub…
BONUS: Trending Globally
Today we’re sharing an episode of the show Trending Globally, from our friends at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. In our last episode we talked about the new safe injection…
To Protect and Serve
Providence, Rhode Island is set to become the location of the first state-sanctioned safe injection site in the country. Professor Brandon del Pozo, who spent over two decades serving as a police off…
BONUS: H5N1 Bird Flu
Professor Jennifer Nuzzo, epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, joins host Megan Hall for a timely update on the recent outbreaks of H5N1…
Harmonizing International Health Data for Better Outcomes
Different countries around the world have very different ways of providing health care. In order to learn from these varied systems—each with its own unique goals and priorities—and to compare their …
Short-Haul Truckers, Long-Term Noise Exposure
MPH student Rosemelly Jimenez Medal comes from a family of truckers—her father has worked as a short-haul trucker for over 25 years. The cab of a commercial truck can be a noisy place, and she notice…