Dr. Leana Wen, on why public health depends on public trust (EP.03)

Dr. 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 episode, Dr. Wen and I delve into her time in Baltimore and, particularly, the lessons it holds for the moment we’re in now, as cities hasten to respond to dual crises of racism and infectious disease. We also explore the critical role that trust — institutional trust, social trust, patient-to-physician trust — plays in an effective pandemic response, and discuss what we can do to restore trust in public health and public officials. And through it all, Dr. Wen reflects on her personal journey, and how she came to discover and inhabit her own voice.  

For more on Dr. Wen's work, check out:

her TED talk: "What your doctor won't disclose" her weekly column in The Washington Post  her reflections on 4 years as Baltimore's Health Commissioner, in Health Affairs her feature in The Atlantic, for a representative day-in-the-life: "Working a million hours to heal a city"

And for more on Civic Rx, visit www.civic-rx.org.