March, 2024: Four years since the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, where are we now? What accounts for more than 1 million Americans dead? We talk with Christina van Hal and Nate Rowan, researchers at RTI International, about our analyses of excess mortality from 2020-2022.

Welcome to the February, 2024 edition of the Healthy Intersections Podcast! This month, we sit down with David Introcaso, PhD, to discuss the healthcare industry's carbon footprint. Dr. Introcaso is the host and producer of the Healthcare Policy Podcast as well as an experienced researcher.He talks us through understanding the scope of the problem and makes excellent points about the role of policies in addressing the climate crisis. Why not require healthcare organizations to publicly report their carbon footprints and what they are doing about sustainability? How else can we decarbonize the industry? If the healthcare industry leads on sustainability, it could transform the supply chain!Be sure to visit The Medical Care Blog to access an extensive set of notes and further reading provided by Dr. Introcaso. Please share widely!

January, 2024:  We're kicking off a year of climate action here on the podcast and blog. To start us off, we interview Dr. Imari Walker-Franklin, a research chemist at RTI International, science communicator, and the co-author of a new book from MIT Press, Plastics. We connect the dots between climate change, public health and medical care, and plastics, covering multiple angles and identifying priorities for research to fill the gaps in our knowledge.

On the Healthy Intersections podcast for November 2023, we do a deep dive on structural racism and its effects in the United States. Joining us to talk about the new Structural Racism Effect Index (SREI) is Dr. Zach Dyer, lead author on the analysis. Check out the dashboard at SREIndex.com and the journal article in Health Affairs. A video of our discussion is available at The Medical Care Blog.

Welcome to the Healthy Intersections podcast for October, 2023. Today's podcast focuses on the links between suicide and social determinants of health in the United States. Suicide is one of the deaths of despair, along with deaths from drug and alcohol. We will be discussing some key statistics and findings related to this topic as well as discussing a new study on the topic.

Happy fall! This month's Healthy Intersections Podcast focuses on food and agriculture -- a timely topic during the fall harvest months. Healthy food is necessary for overall wellbeing. Yet, climate change is forcing us to confront several realities:Agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to climate changeAgriculture and the food supply are greatly affected by climate changeAgriculture and food have the potential to be solutions to addressing climate changeOur special guests this month are Robert Beach, PhD, a Fellow in the Agricultural, Resource & Energy Economics and Policy Program at RTI International, and Carol Schmitt, PhD, Chief Scientist at RTI. You can check out the video at our blog.

This month, we talk with Dr. Amanda Onwuka, a social epidemiologist and health services researcher at RTI International, as well as Jeremy Ney, author of American Inequality. We discuss the epidemic of drug overdose deaths in the US, mental health, and opioid prescribing rates, along with multi-level interventions aimed at preventing addiction and overdoses in the first place.

Our July 2023 Healthy Intersections Podcast features the brand-new RTIRarity.io dashboard and focuses on Florida, with Lauren Pierce. Visit TheMedicalCareBlog.com for the video and transcript! And don't forget to subscribe!

Welcome to the June 2023 episode of the Healthy Intersections podcast!This month, we sit down again with Carol Schmitt, Chief Scientist at RTI International, along with Juliet Sheridan, to talk about another of the RTI Rarity interactive state maps. This time, we are looking at North Carolina. We talk about historical redlining, climate change, and mental health -- and how these all intersect. You can watch the episode and read the transcript at The Medical Care Blog. And don't forget to subscribe. Thanks for listening/watching, and please be sure to share with your colleagues who may be interested!

This month, we sit down again with Carol Schmitt, Chief Scientist at RTI International, to talk about another of the RTI Rarity interactive state maps. This time, we are looking at Oklahoma. You can watch the episode, download the audio file, and read the transcript on our blog here. And don't forget, you can subscribe to the audio version here, or anywhere you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening/watching, and please be sure to share with your colleagues who may be interested!

This month's HIP features Part 1 of a conversation between Lisa Lines (in her professional role as Senior Health Services Researcher, RTI International, and Director of the RTI Rarity™ project) and her colleague, Dr. Carol Schmitt (Chief Scientist, RTI International). We discuss the interactive map produced by RTI International for Illinois, which is publicly viewable.  Zooming in on several areas, we discuss the local social inequity in life expectancy (LSI-LE) scores and some of the underlying social and behavioral determinants of those scores, including:PovertyLack of insuranceUnemploymentBias, stress, and traumaSmokingSedentary behaviorsFor the video, please visit The Medical Care Blog!

This month we recap the blog posts and interview  Dr. Daniel Harris, whose recent paper discusses the use of antipsychotics in nursing homes.

This month's podcast features a round-up of this month's blog posts and a summary of three articles recently published in the journal Medical Care. Head to TheMedicalCareBlog.com for transcripts and links!

This month's podcast features a round-up of this month's blog posts and an interview with Sungchul Park of Drexel University about his recent Medical Care publication on disparities in ambulatory care sensitive hospitalizations. Head to TheMedicalCareBlog.com for transcripts and links!

In this month's podcast, co-editor Jess Williams recaps blog posts from November and talks about some December journal articles.

In this month's podcast, Dr. Samy Anand gives an overview of The Medical Care Blog posts published in October and a preview of the journal articles in the November issue of Medical Care. Then, co-editor of the blog, Dr. Gregory Stevens, discusses the results of the midterm election and the results of ballot measures relevant to public health.

In this month's podcast, Dr. Samy Anand gives an overview of the Medical Care Blog posts published in September and a preview of the journal articles in the October issue of Medical Care. Then, co-editor of the blog, Dr. Lisa Lines, discusses an article in the October issue in more detail. Please visit TheMedicalCareBlog.com for a transcript of this month's episode, as well as a place to leave your feedback.

This special podcast episode contains an interview with Dr. Julie Donohue about the Medicaid Outcomes Distributed Research Network, MODERN.

The September podcast recaps blogs and previews journal articles. This month we also talk about the health harms of carceral systems.

On this month's episode of the Healthy Intersections Podcast, Samy Anand from the Medical Care Section recaps last month's blog posts and preview's June's issue of the Medical Care journal. Some great articles to check out for your summer reading list. Next, Lisa Lines, co-editor of the blog and podcast, interviews Dr. Pia MacDonald, an infectious disease epidemiologist. Clocking in at over 20 minutes, the interview dives deep into what we can learn from the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of bridging gaps between public health practitioners and academics - and much more.Listen here or your favorite podcast streamer - we are on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more.Transcript available at https://www.themedicalcareblog.com/podcast-june-22/