Civic Rx
37 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 2 years ago -In ways both historic and difficult to anticipate, the COVID-19 pandemic is every day transforming how we live, work, build community and define ourselves as Americans. How did we get here? What might a post-pandemic future hold? At a time of pervasive uncertainty, who are the arbiters of truth? And how can we leverage this moment to reimagine and demand a society that better cares for its most vulnerable? From her position on the front lines, Dr. Sejal Hathi, M.D., M.B.A., brings you wide-ranging conversations with leaders in government, public health, culture, and technology who are shaping our collective response to these questions.
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Episodes
Fixing America's long-term care system, with Dr. David Grabowski (EP.31)
September 24, 2021 08:00 - 43 minutes - 20.5 MBToday, we peer into long-term care in America — those services, both medical and non-medical, that patients in old age or with chronic illness need to perform activities of daily living. More than half of older Americans will eventually require long-term care. And this number will only swell as we reach into the next decade when, for the first time in our nation’s history, there will be more elderly than children. Of these Americans, the vast majority would prefer to age at home and in thei...
America's maternal mortality crisis, with Dr. Elizabeth Howell (EP.30)
September 17, 2021 08:00 - 44 minutes - 30.9 MBWhile COVID-19 continues to dominate news headlines, another crisis lurks unabated and largely unaddressed: climbing maternal deaths. Among industrialized nations across the globe, the United States stands out as the most dangerous for pregnant women. Over 700 women die each year, 60% of them from preventable causes, during pregnancy or delivery. And Black women are 3 times more likely to die than White women. Perhaps surprisingly, it didn’t used to be this way. For much of the...
It's time to end gun violence in America, featuring Moms Demand Action's Shannon Watts & DeAndra Dycus (EP.29)
September 03, 2021 08:00 - 1 hour - 41.5 MBJust last week, Dr. Rochelle Walensky became the first CDC director in more than 20 years to call for federal action against gun violence. Meanwhile, President Biden both on the campaign trail and since has vowed his commitment to advancing meaningful gun reform, publishing six executive orders on the issue this April. And the NRA — long the swaggering villain in this saga — has been steadily losing sway, as it’s mired in bankruptcy and litigation. Is this a tipping point in the fight ...
Building a better model for mental health recovery, with Fountain House's Dr. Ashwin Vasan (EP.28)
August 06, 2021 08:00 - 52 minutes - 36.8 MBWe were just approaching the cusp of normalcy this summer when Delta, abetted by a silent revolt of the unvaccinated, pulled us back into a war against the coronavirus. Once again, now, COVID-19 cases are surging, hospitals are brimming, deaths are rising, and Americans across the country are being beseeched to don their masks. For even the most resilient among us, this relentless tug between progress and regress on the pandemic is exhausting. But for thousands of Americans, this stress ha...
Climate change is a public health emergency, with Dr. Ari Bernstein (EP.27)
July 21, 2021 08:00 - 47 minutes - 32.8 MBClimate change is “the greatest global health threat… in the 21st century.” Even and especially in the wake of pandemic, climate change accelerates transmission of infectious disease, disrupts our health care supply chain, overwhelms our public infrastructure, and exacerbates chronic illness — from lung cancer to chronic kidney disease. Here to talk with us about what this means is Dr. Ari Bernstein, a pediatrician, assistant professor, and the interim director of The Center for Climat...
Peering beyond COVID-19: introducing Season 2
June 25, 2021 08:00 - 3 minutes - 2.82 MBWe’re back! Our first season featured the voices of everyone from Tony Fauci to former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, each of them grappling with the pandemic and with the daily crises it created. But the stories we unspooled are only the beginning. There are still countless threats to our public health, from climate change to structural racism, that during COVID, have been either exacerbated or ignored. Enter Season 2. This summer, I invite you to join me in cutting into the...
How the pandemic is changing health care delivery, with Dr. Meena Seshamani (EP.26)
May 06, 2021 08:00 - 37 minutes - 26.2 MBThe COVID-19 pandemic has unsparingly exposed the flaws of our fragmented and exorbitant healthcare system, but it has also highlighted opportunities to better deliver care. Chief among these are new models to bring care closer to patients, be it in the form of virtual medicine, mobile health clinics, community health workers, or home-based care. Indeed, now more than ever, brick-and-mortar hospitals are working hand in hand with community-based organizations, public health departments, a...
On the "vaccine passports" debate, with NYU's Dr. Arthur Caplan (EP.25)
April 29, 2021 09:30 - 35 minutes - 24.4 MBHave you been vaccinated? And if so, can you prove it — should you need to? These are the questions that countless Americans are asking themselves as the United States vaults past 200 million doses, or more than a quarter of its population now vaccinated, against COVID-19. These numbers will only continue to rise, and already, we’ve been thrust into a fierce debate over the utility, the equity, and the logistics of vaccine passports — proof for the holder of inoculation — that could af...
We need a national genomic surveillance plan for COVID-19, with Dr. Jono Quick of The Rockefeller Foundation (EP.24)
April 01, 2021 09:30 - 38 minutes - 26.3 MBIn order to get ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to understand where it’s going. And key to this is genomic surveillance, or the systematic collection and interpretation of viral genetic sequences to identify new variants and detect transmission patterns. Genomic surveillance is one of the most powerful tools officials can wield in crafting public health interventions, on everything from lockdowns to travel bans to vaccine policy. Unfortunately, the United States is not doing e...
COVAX, and the fight for global vaccine equity, with UNICEF's Gian Gandhi (EP.23)
March 18, 2021 09:30 - 49 minutes - 34.2 MBAfter more than 2.5 million deaths and widespread economic devastation, finally, the world has a shot of hope: multiple, effective COVID-19 vaccines. But as wealthy countries race to inoculate their populations, the majority of poor countries have yet to administer a single dose. Enter COVAX, the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access initiative. COVAX is a coalition of organizations — from the World Health Organization, to Gavi, to the Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness and their key implem...
Fighting COVID-19 in the Navajo Nation, with President Jonathan Nez (EP.22)
March 11, 2021 10:30 - 47 minutes - 33 MBFor much of the last year, the highest per capita rate of coronavirus infections belonged not to New York City, nor New Jersey, but to a 27,000-square-mile territory in the southwestern US called the Navajo Nation. Encompassing 3 states and 309,000 members, the Navajo Nation is the country’s largest Native American tribe. It was also, in 2020, one of its worst hot spots. But the COVID-19 crisis, like so many others that have afflicted Indian Country, was decades in the making — borne of a...
Bhutan's unexpected triumph against COVID-19, with Minister of Health Dechen Wangmo (EP.21)
March 04, 2021 10:30 - 49 minutes - 34.3 MBNestled between India and China in the heart of the Himalayas, the Kingdom of Bhutan has long been known for its philosophy of Gross National Happiness, as a more holistic alternative to GDP. Over the last year, Bhutan has acquired yet another source of fascination and acclaim: its pandemic response. Even as countries the world over have struggled to contain the pandemic’s spread, Bhutan, somehow, has emerged relatively unscathed. Since March 2020, in the 12 months since the pandemic first ...
On public policy and health in the Trump era: a scathing indictment, with Dr. Steffie Woolhandler (EP.20)
February 19, 2021 10:30 - 46 minutes - 31.8 MBOne year ago this month, America lost its first life to the coronavirus. Since then, nearly 500,000 Americans have succumbed to the pandemic, and many more have lost their family, their classrooms, and their livelihoods. No person has been more widely reviled for dooming our response than former President Donald Trump. But a new report published in the British medical journal The Lancet finds that as damaging as were Trump’s actions and his antagonism toward science, they represented...
In science we trust: Dr. Celine Gounder on trust, disinformation, & COVID-19 (EP.19)
January 21, 2021 10:30 - 43 minutes - 30.2 MBYesterday, we inaugurated a new president and vice president, and with them, a government invested in science, grounded in evidence, and committed to transparent and compassionate leadership. Today, they face a global pandemic that has devastated the American economy, stolen 400,000 lives, and disproportionately harmed the poor and people of color. They also inherit a country deeply divided, suspicious of truth, and more vulnerable to disinformation than perhaps at any other time in...
A conversation about health equity, with Dr. Kermit Jones (EP.18)
January 14, 2021 10:30 - 38 minutes - 26.6 MBIn countless ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed, exploited, and exacerbated the racial inequities long endemic to our healthcare system. Today we talk with Dr. Kermit Jones, a primary care physician, lawyer, and former Navy flight surgeon about the interaction between COVID-19 and longstanding structural racism in medicine. To learn more, check out: - the CDC's primer on the racial and ethnic disparities of COVID-19 - The Washington Post's analysis of 5.8 million COVID-19+...
Highlighting a community-driven approach to gun safety, featuring Dr. LJ Punch (EP.17)
December 17, 2020 10:30 - 54 minutes - 37.6 MBDr. LJ Punch (they/them/theirs) is a critical care surgeon, a former professor of trauma surgery at Washington University St. Louis, and a staunch advocate for gun violence prevention. For the past four years, they have been building the T, an anti-violence center in St Louis that supports the local community in recovering from trauma — be it from guns, opioid addiction, COVID-19, or homelessness. Most recently, they opened the Bullet Related Injury Clinic, or the BRIC, to provide both physi...
From pandemic to policy: prescriptions to treat our national mental health crisis (EP.16)
December 03, 2020 10:30 - 52 minutes - 36.6 MBToday I’m thrilled to welcome two friends and brilliant policy leaders, Dr. Ben Miller and Dr. Kavita Patel, to explore what policies the Biden-Harris administration might undertake to redress the country’s rapidly worsening mental health and addiction crises. America is on the brink of an unprecedented mental health pandemic. A full third of Americans have reported symptoms of clinical anxiety or depression — a 200% increase from pre-pandemic levels; rates of opioid-related deaths are in...
Let's talk about our mental health, with Dr. Jessi Gold (EP.15)
November 20, 2020 10:30 - 1 hour - 43.8 MBFor 10 months, we have borne witness to the unsparing ravages of a pandemic that has plundered over 250,000 lives, millions of jobs, countless life milestones and, normalcy. Throughout it all, the overwhelming feeling has been that of being unmoored. Which is why, as we enter what appears a resurgent phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s another crisis on my mind: mental health. Yes, we are also in the throes of a mental health pandemic. Orders of magnitude more people, in the United Sta...
Designing a new approach to urban health, with Cityblock's Dr. Toyin Ajayi (EP.14)
November 06, 2020 10:30 - 46 minutes - 32.1 MBWhen the dust settles on this year, this election, this pandemic, one of the many truths that will knell clear is that our healthcare system desperately demands reform. Never before has the interdependence of health, social privilege, and economic security been so grossly on display. We need a wholesale reimagination of how we define, deliver, and pay for care. Fortuitously, we have a model for what this might look like. And it comes in the form of Cityblock Health, a growing public heal...
COVID-19’s disproportionate toll on women, with Australia’s 27th Prime Minister, the Honorable Julia Gillard (EP.13)
October 22, 2020 07:00 - 54 minutes - 37.5 MBWe are at a time of unprecedented upheaval and none is more affected, around the world, than women and women of color. On the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Platform of Action, in the very year that we were meant to honor and redouble our commitment to gender equity, even the limited gains of the last two decades hazard being swiftly and summarily rolled back. Here to discuss why these inequalities are so critical to redress is (my and) a #shero of global proportions: the Honorable Ju...
Reflections on fixing America’s broken health care system, with Dr. Bob Kocher (EP.12)
October 16, 2020 09:30 - 46 minutes - 31.8 MBMore fundamentally than any other event of the past decade, the COVID-19 crisis has kindled a wholesale re-imagination of how we conceive, deliver, evaluate, and pay for health care. Foremost among these changes is the sudden ubiquity of telehealth, but the pandemic has also unleashed a wave of investment and regulatory innovation not seen perhaps since the launch of the Affordable Care Act. Few are better poised to unpack these trends than Dr. Bob Kocher, an industry titan who fo...
Investing in the next generation of Democratic leadership, with Swati Mylavarapu (EP.11)
October 08, 2020 09:30 - 48 minutes - 38.7 MBWe are now four weeks from November 3 and arguably the most consequential election of our lifetime. By that date, millions of Americans — hopefully, the vast majority of Americans — will have cast their ballot for our next president. Alongside that choice, as well, are myriad other offices at the state and local level that wield a profound impact on our day-to-day lives. These so-called down-ballot races are the site of the largest loss of Democratic power since the years of Eisenhower, as ...
Mayor Michael Tubbs and his mission to #ReinventStockton (EP.10)
October 01, 2020 09:30 - 47 minutes - 32.8 MBMayor Michael Tubbs is Stockton’s first Black mayor and America’s youngest mayor ever to lead a city of greater than 100,000 residents. Since his election in 2016, Mayor Tubbs has pledged himself to revitalizing and reinventing the city of his birth, spearheading a bevy of new programs to fight violent crime, boost the college enrollment rate, and lower unemployment. In 2019, he launched the country’s first mayor-led guaranteed income pilot; this summer, he mobilized 24 other mayors to advoc...
How COVID-19 is changing our universities, with President Marc Tessier-Lavigne (EP.09)
September 17, 2020 09:30 - 27 minutes - 19.2 MBA couple weeks ago we heard from Richard Barth, President of the KIPP public charter school network, about how K-12 schools across the country are navigating the capricious and unprecedented demands of COVID-19 this school year. Today we hear from a leader in higher education about how one major university is managing the same. Marc Tessier-Lavigne is a pioneering neuroscientist, biotechnology executive, and, since 2016, the president of Stanford University, where he has accelerated the un...
Fighting COVID-19 at the State Level, with NC Health Secretary Mandy Cohen (EP.08)
September 03, 2020 09:30 - 47 minutes - 32.6 MBSince the earliest weeks of 2020, we’ve seen the federal government take a backseat to the states in directing America’s COVID-19 response. Though we could devote an entire episode to the frailties of this laissez-faire federalism, instead I want to help us dissect where we stand at the state level, by talking with one of the most robust state leaders during this crisis: North Carolina’s Secretary of Health & Human Services, Dr. Mandy Cohen. Secretary Cohen held several leadership roles in t...
How COVID-19 is changing K-12 schools, with Richard Barth (EP.07)
August 27, 2020 09:30 - 39 minutes - 27.6 MBAs August slides into September, the absence of a national strategy on school reopening has left thousands of families to struggle alone with the decision about whether and how to send their kids back to school. In every state, school districts are fending for themselves to develop a plan that balances sometimes conflicting risks to public health, economic security, and emotional wellbeing. Here to elucidate the challenges and considerations demanded of such a decision is Richard Barth...
Ilyse Hogue, on reclaiming the fight for reproductive rights (EP.06)
August 13, 2020 09:30 - 46 minutes - 32.1 MBFor the past 7 years, Ilyse Hogue has served as the President of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the oldest organization dedicated to building political power around women's reproductive freedom and right to abortion. That time on the front lines has afforded her tremendous opportunity to reflect on the curious and complicated history of abortion rights advocacy — a history she's now distilled into a powerful new book, The Lie that Binds, which chronicles how the formerly non-partisan issue of abo...
Dr. Vivek Murthy, on overcoming our national loneliness epidemic (EP.05)
August 06, 2020 09:30 - 43 minutes - 20.3 MBI interviewed the United States' 19th Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, at a vibrant virtual town hall hosted last week with cultural heritage organization, Indiaspora. At a time of heightened physical isolation, sharing this space and this community to discuss one of the defining struggles of our age — loneliness, and social disconnection — was as cathartic as it was generative. In this episode, Dr. Murthy reflects on the Listening Tour he took as a new Surgeon General in 2014, when to ...
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, on his quest to heal our political epidemic
July 30, 2020 09:30 - 51 minutes - 35.5 MBI first met Dr. Abdul El-Sayed 7 years ago at a fellowship retreat. He was still in medical school, but even then it was clear, our healthcare system dismayed him: it was unaffordable, inefficient, and cruel to those who needed it most. The experience galvanized Abdul to pivot from practicing medicine to repairing public health, beginning with the city of Detroit, where he became the youngest health commissioner of a major American city when he was appointed to rebuild the Detroit Health Dep...
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, on his quest to heal our political epidemic (EP.04)
July 30, 2020 09:30 - 51 minutes - 35.5 MBI first met Dr. Abdul El-Sayed 7 years ago at a fellowship retreat. He was still in medical school, but even then it was clear, our healthcare system dismayed him: it was unaffordable, inefficient, and cruel to those who needed it most. The experience galvanized Abdul to pivot from practicing medicine to repairing public health, beginning with the city of Detroit, where he became the youngest health commissioner of a major American city when he was appointed to rebuild the Detroit Health Dep...
Dr. Leana Wen, on why public health depends on public trust (EP.03)
July 16, 2020 09:30 - 40 minutes - 28.1 MBDr. Leana Wen is an emergency medicine physician and a professor of health policy & public health at George Washington University. Previously, she was the Health Commissioner for the City of Baltimore, where she led the nation’s oldest continuously operating health department. She’s the author of critically acclaimed book, When Doctors Don’t Listen, and its ensuing TED talk, now viewed over 2 million times. In 2019, Dr. Wen was named one of TIME 100’s Most Influential People. For this epi...
Leana Wen - Public Health Depends on Public Trust (EP.03)
July 16, 2020 09:30 - 40 minutes - 28.1 MBDr. Leana Wen is an emergency medicine physician and a professor of health policy & public health at George Washington University. Previously, she was the Health Commissioner for the City of Baltimore, where she led the nation’s oldest continuously operating health department. She’s the author of critically acclaimed book, When Doctors Don’t Listen, and its ensuing TED talk, now viewed over 2 million times. In 2019, Dr. Wen was named one of TIME 100’s Most Influential People. For this epi...
Dr. Fauci - "We're all in it together" (EP.02)
July 07, 2020 09:30 - 34 minutes - 24.1 MBDr. Anthony Fauci is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, where since 1984, he’s overseen a vast portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat infectious disease — everything from HIV/AIDS to malaria, Ebola, Zika, and now COVID-19. He was a chief architect of PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and today serves as one of the seminal members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, where he advises the feder...
Peter Sands on How We Prevent the Next Global Pandemic (EP.01)
June 30, 2020 09:30 - 50 minutes - 35.3 MBPeter Sands is the Executive Director of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, a multilateral organization that invests $4 billion a year to combat these three epidemics — and this year, too, COVID-19. To put that in perspective, the Global Fund serves as the single largest provider of external health financing for all the low- and middle-income countries in the world. A significant proportion of these resources go toward equipping health systems to respond to crise...
Peter Sands, on how we prevent the next global pandemic (EP.01)
June 30, 2020 09:30 - 50 minutes - 35.3 MBPeter Sands is the Executive Director of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, a multilateral organization that invests $4 billion a year to combat these three epidemics — and this year, too, COVID-19. To put that in perspective, the Global Fund serves as the single largest provider of external health financing for all the low- and middle-income countries in the world. A significant proportion of these resources go toward equipping health systems to respond to crise...
Introducing: CivicRx
June 21, 2020 16:51 - 2 minutes - 3.32 MBHi, everyone, my name is Dr. Sejal Hathi, M.D., M.B.A., and this is CivicRx: a podcast and a project to help all of us make sense of the million different ways our world has shifted in the wake of the novel coronavirus: Every episode, I bring you conversations with people whose work and ideas are challenging and transforming the way we live, work, and build community. Together, we reflect on how we can foster a healthier and more equitable society.
Introducing: Civic Rx
June 21, 2020 16:51 - 2 minutes - 3.32 MBHi, everyone, my name is Dr. Sejal Hathi, M.D., M.B.A., and this is Civic Rx: a podcast and a project to help all of us make sense of the million different ways our world has shifted in the wake of the novel coronavirus: Every episode, I bring you conversations with people whose work and ideas are challenging and transforming the way we live, work, and build community. Together, we reflect on how we can foster a healthier and more equitable society. Learn more at: www.civic-rx.org