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MONDAY, MAY 31, 2021

Congressman Patrick Kennedy on Pandemic’s Impact on Increased Awareness of America’s Mental Health and Addiction Crisis

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with former US Congressman Patrick Kennedy, founder and CEO of The Kennedy Forum, an organization dedicated to advancing policies and best practices to improve access to mental health and addiction services. Congressman Kennedy, who co-sponsored the 2008 Mental Health Parity Act, addresses the devastating toll the pandemic has had on mental health and addiction, and talks about Biden Administration efforts to address the mental health crisis through expanded health coverage and more resources for addiction and mental health treatment.

MONDAY, MAY 24, 2021

Latino Community’s Pandemic Toll: National Hispanic Medical Association’s Dr. Elena Rios on Quest for Equity

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Elena Rios, President and CEO of the National Hispanic Medical Association, representing the interests of the nation’s 50,000 Latino Physicians. She discusses the devastating toll the pandemic has taken on the nation’s Hispanic population who have suffered a greater death toll and significant economic as well as mental health burdens. Dr. Rios NHMA’s efforts to improve pipelines for young Latinos to enter the medical field, and for measures to address health inequity impacting communities of color.

MONDAY, MAY 17, 2021

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky Talks Boosters, Masks and Health Equity

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Walensky defends the science behind lifting mask restrictions for vaccinated Americans, examines the ongoing research on vaccine efficacy against emerging COVID variants and possibility of a need for booster shots. She also outlines efforts underway by the CDC and the Biden Administration to leverage provisions in the American Recovery Act to address health inequity by strengthening the nation’s public health infrastructure
MONDAY, MAY 10, 2021

World Health Organization’s Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove Speaks About the Global Pandemic

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 Technical Lead at the WHO. They discuss the world’s lack of readiness and supply chain infrastructure to confront the pandemic. She says the lessons learned from this collective ‘trauma’ is sparking new efforts to build more robust surveillance and response systems for emerging pathogens, the concerning new variant out of India, and the need to accelerate global vaccinations to stop the continued spread of the pandemic.
MONDAY, MAY 3, 2021

Understanding Vaccine Resistance Among Conservative Voters: Dr. Tom Frieden

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden, President and CEO of Resolve to Save lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies seeking to save 100 million lives globally by addressing cardiovascular disease and preventing pandemics. Dr. Frieden discusses their report on building a stronger global health infrastructure that can deploy rapidly to contain the next threat. He talks about work with GOP pollster Frank Luntz to develop messaging to tackle vaccine resistance, and applauds the FDA’s recent decision to ban the sale of menthol cigarettes as a bold public health move.

MONDAY, APRIL 19, 2021

200 Million Vaccines and Counting: Emory’s Dr. Carlos Del Rio on Effort To Target Vaccine Resistance

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with leading infectious disease expert Dr. Carlos Del Rio, Executive Associate Dean at the Emory University School of Medicine, and lead researcher on HIV/AIDS and now, COVID-19. Dr. Del Rio applauds the Biden Administration’s achievement of 200 million vaccine doses delivered in the US, but warns vaccine resistance in this country, and lack of supply globally, must be addressed to bring the pandemic fully under control. He lauds the remarkable science around mRNA technology that will have far reaching implications for tackling many diseases.
MONDAY, APRIL 12, 2021

The J&J Vaccine Delay: Brown University’s Dr. Ashish Jha Says Minimal Clot Risk Shouldn’t Inhibit Vaccine Uptake

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter welcome Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. Dr. Jha is a world renowned expert on pandemic preparedness and addresses concerns around the rare blood clot risk with the J&J vaccine, saying the brief pause in distribution is further evidence our scientific surveillance is working. He also talks about the impact of the pandemic to propel meaningful change in public health in the US, and the global health infrastructure as well.
MONDAY, APRIL 5, 2021

White House Vaccinations Chief Dr. Bechara Choucair on the Road to Vaccinating America

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Bechara Choucair, White House Vaccinations Coordinator. Dr. Choucair discusses the remarkable pace of vaccine distribution in recent weeks, and the Biden Administration’s plans to deliver 200 million vaccines in 100 days. He addresses the challenges at vaccine production facilities, the impact of the American Rescue Plan on efforts to scale up vaccine production and delivery, as well as the important role played by community health centers to address the health needs the most vulnerable populations impacted by the pandemic.
MONDAY, MARCH 29, 2021

Biden COVID Transition Team Advisor Dr. Celine Gounder on Race Against Variants

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with renowned infectious disease expert Dr. Celine Gounder, who served as a COVID advisor on the Biden transition team. Dr. Gounder says we are in a race between vaccinations and the variants driving coronavirus infections in the US and around the world. She warns that we must scale up our genomic surveillance of the variants as they pose a continued threat to containment of the pandemic.
MONDAY, MARCH 22, 2021

Dr. Eric Topol on Variants, Vaccines and AstraZeneca’s Data Reporting

This week Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Eric Topol, Director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. Dr. Topol calls drug maker AstraZeneca’s recent controversial under-reporting of complete safety data to US regulators for its COVID-19 vaccine ‘disturbing’ and ‘unprecedented’ in his clinical trial career. He calls the rapid development of highly successful and effective COVID vaccines one of biomedicine’s greatest achievements and predicts the pandemic crisis will pave the way for more remarkable scientific breakthroughs, and a greater opportunity for the growth of personalized medicine via smartphones.
MONDAY, MARCH 15, 2021

Dr. Michael Osterholm Says Variants Will Cause More Havoc

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Michael Osterholm, renowned pandemic expert and Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Policy and Research (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota. A recent advisor to President Biden’s transition team, Dr. Osterholm warns of another COVID-19 surge on the horizon as the more contagious UK variant, which is causing more lockdowns across Europe, is becoming the dominant strain in the US. He says vaccination rates must be accelerated, and that more equitable distribution of vaccines around the world will be the only way to get the pandemic under control.

MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2021

Dr. Rick Bright to Lead Bold Pandemic Preparedness Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Rick Bright, Sr. Vice President for Pandemic Preparedness and Response at The Rockefeller Foundation, former chief of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) at HHS, and member of the Biden Transition Team on COVID-19. Dr. Bright is launching a new pandemic preparedness initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation, creating the first-of-its-kind national and global pandemic surveillance infrastructure to alert governments around the world about emerging pandemic threats. Dr. Bright resigned his post at BARDA after filing a whistleblower complaint against the previous administration for mishandling of the pandemic response.
MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2021

Nursing on the Front Lines: ANA President Dr. Ernest Grant on Protecting Nation’s 4.3 Million Nurses

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Ernest Grant, President of the American Nurses Association, the largest organization representing the nation’s 4.3 nursing professionals and the patients they serve. He talks about the myriad challenges nurses have faced throughout the pandemic, the need to ensure more protection is put in place to shield them against the effects of COVID-19 and other workplace harm, and plans to advance the nursing the profession across the health care spectrum, beyond the pandemic.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2021

From Ebola Survivor to COVID Warrior: Dr. Craig Spencer on the Pandemic’s Lingering Threat

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Craig Spencer, Director of Global Health in Emergency Medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and Population and Family Health at the Columbia University Medical Center. A an emergency medicine and epidemiology expert on the board of Doctors Without Borders, Dr. Spencer talks about what he learned battling Ebola in West Africa, surviving the deadly illness himself, and how COVID-19 is revealing huge gaps in health equity and public health readiness that need to be repaired.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2021

Vaccines and Communities of Color: Johns Hopkins’ Dr. Monica Schoch-Spana on Quest for Equitable Distribution and Lasting Solutions

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Monica Schoch-Spana, Senior Scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is Co-Chair of the Working Group on Equity in COVID-19 Vaccination, CommuniVax, which just released a detailed report, “Equity in Vaccination: A Plan To Work With Communities of Color Toward COVID-19 Recovery and Beyond”, with recommendations for state and local governments to support a vaccination campaign and coordinated pandemic recovery plan that addresses health disparities for people of color.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2021

COVID-19 Is Shape-Shifting: Dr. William Haseltine Warns Variants & Lack of Containment May Weaken Vaccine Efficacy

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with scientist and entrepreneur Dr. William Haseltine, founder and CEO of ACCESS Health International, who warns the growing number of COVID-19 variants will help the virus evade the vaccines currently being deployed. He cautions that lack of strict public health measures, particularly in the US, will lead to more widespread infection and endemic outbreaks. Dr. Haseltine urges the pharmaceutical industry to provide more nuanced data on the long term efficacy of vaccines, along with more widespread genomic testing of COVID strains to better understand their impact on COVID-related illness.

MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 2021

Pandemics and Social Networks: Influencer Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding on COVID-19 Messaging in the Age of Twitter

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, a global policy think tank dedicated to using science and scientific analysis to make the world more secure. The former Harvard professor and researcher has leveraged a significant Twitter following to share large volumes of aggregated information, research and data on the rapidly evolving pandemic, culled from multiple sources around the world.

MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2021

Will Vaccines Work Against the New Variants? Virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen on Unraveling the COVID Mysteries

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Angela Rasmussen, who leads the core virology team at the Viral Emergence Research Initiative at the Georgetown University Center for Global Health, Science and Security. A renowned expert on emerging pathogens that pose great harm to human health, she helps us unlock some of the mysteries around Sars-CoV-2, the COVID-19 virus. She talks about the swift production of the vaccine as a “scientific achievement of our lifetimes”. And looks at the risk of the growing number of variants of the virus, highlighting need to speed up global distribution of the vaccine to protect the population from greater threats.
MONDAY, JANUARY 11, 2021

WHO’s Vaccine Advisory Leader Discusses Global Readiness to Manage Pandemic: SAGE Chair Dr. Alejandro Cravioto

This week, Hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Alejandro Cravioto, Chair of SAGE, the international panel of experts making COVID-19 vaccine recommendations to the World Health Organization (WHO). Dr. Cravioto talks about their global team of scientists and the rigorous guidelines governing the approval process for emergency authorization for the Pfizer vaccine – as well as all others in the queue. He also discusses the need to scale up production for global distribution, as well as the need to ensure that vaccines are distributed equitably throughout all countries in the world.
MONDAY, JANUARY 4, 2021

FDA Advisory Committee Member Dr. Paul Offit on Vaccine Safety, Efficacy and Distribution

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Paul Offit, Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, co-creator of the rotavirus vaccine, and member of the FDA Advisory Committee that approved emergency authorization for the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer. Dr. Offit says development of this new vaccine is a remarkable achievement backed by decades of scientific research that the Advisory Committee found to be safe an efficacious for widespread distribution. He’s hoping the Biden Administration will accelerate distribution efforts.