Public Health Insight

Afleveringen

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  The Nefarious Influence of Big Tobacco 30.07.2026 39min

  A tobacco company promises jobs, investment and a factory, but only if a government makes health warnings smaller. Investigative journalist Matthew Chapman joins the Public Health Insight Podcast to examine how tobacco companies adapt their products and influence the rules governing them. Drawing on investigations in Kenya, Israel and the United Kingdom, he reveals undisclosed payments to experts, pressure on policymakers and efforts to weaken or delay regulation. The conversation explores Br...
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  Why Prevented Disasters Don't Make the News & Acting Earlier to Save Lives 14.07.2026 19min

  When a disaster is prevented, it doesn't make the news and most don't hear about it; and that's exactly the problem. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast with Dr. Barry Davis, biostatistician and author of The Preventioneers, we explore why prevention's biggest successes stay invisible. We discuss why climate warnings have gone unheeded for 170 years, why treatment beats prevention for the "popular vote," and how to rebuild trust with a public that distrusts experts. The answe...
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  The Preventioneers: Why We Wait Until It's Too Late 07.07.2026 27min

  A doctor proves handwashing saves lives and gets destroyed for it. A president dies of a preventable stroke. Scientists spend decades proving smoking kills while the industry fights back. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, Dr. Barry Davis, author of The Preventioneers, introduces us to people in history who saw catastrophe coming, built the evidence, and ran straight into resistance from industries, institutions, and a public that didn't want to hear it. If prevention saves...
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  Mathematics, Medicine, and the Stories In Between 30.06.2026 26min

  We often have the evidence to prevent harm long before we actually do something about it, and that delay costs lives. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, we sit down with a physician and mathematician whose career spans early machine learning research in the 1980s, landmark hypertension trials, and over 150 data monitoring committees. Dr. Davis reflects on the experiences that shaped his thinking and how resistance to change repeats throughout history. References for Our ...
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  Public Health Is Dead 23.06.2026 13min

  Daniella wanted to make a podcast for years, but she waited for the right idea. Then she noticed no one had made a public health show this honest and this bold, especially from a Black perspective. So she made it herself. In this episode, Daniella shares how she started Public Health Is Dead, built on years of teaching herself to record and edit on her own. It grew out of a frustration she kept running into: public health is known for holding the world accountable, but can fall short when it ...
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  A Public Health Story with a Snoop Dogg Cameo & a Mansion of 12 Strangers 16.06.2026 34min

  A cannabis conference. A front-row seat she wasn't supposed to have. A question to Snoop Dogg about racial justice in cannabis legislation that she absolutely was not going to leave unasked. In this episode of a 4-part series in collaboration between Public Health Insight Podcast and Public Health Is Dead, Gordon Thane rewinds to the early beginnings of Daniella Barreto's story, which includes a childhood in Zimbabwe, a mother who made immunology a dinner-table subject, immigration to Vancouv...
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  The Health Belief Model Explained 09.06.2026 11min

  Ever wonder why people ignore free health services, conveniently placed in their community, even when their life could depend on it? Looking back to the 1950s gives us some clues, and what researchers discovered led to the creation of one of public health's most enduring frameworks for understanding human behavior. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, host Gordon Thane unpacks the Health Belief Model and why it still shapes health promotion practice today. Source Material ...
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  What’s the ROI on an MPH? 02.06.2026 18min

  An MPH can cost two years, tens of thousands of dollars, the salary you would have earned if you continued to work instead, and the promise of the other degree that you decided not to pursue. So is it worth it? In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, host Gordon Thane breaks down how to think through the real return on investment of a Master of Public Health, from tuition and debt to opportunity cost and the alternatives most people never seriously compare. Whether you are...
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  10 Key Milestones In Health Promotion 26.05.2026 15min

  Health isn't created only in hospitals. It's achieved in housing, food systems, workplaces, and political decisions. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, host Gordon Thane traces the arc of health promotion through its defining milestones, from the Ottawa Charter to the Geneva Charter, revealing how each global conference pushed the field to see further: beyond behavior, beyond healthcare, beyond borders. Yet the gap between what we know and what we do remains wide. This epis...
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  Hantavirus: What They're Not Telling You 19.05.2026 14min

  Could hantavirus become the next pandemic? After a deadly outbreak on a cruise ship, that question is on everyone's mind. And "don't panic" isn't a real answer. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, host Gordon Thane explores what we know about hantaviruses so far, how Andes virus compares to COVID-19, and what the early science suggests about its potential to spread. He examines the key biological and ecological factors shaping the risk picture, and offers a way of thinking t...
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  Edwin Chadwick & The History of Sanitation 12.05.2026 14min

  How did sanitation become one of public health's greatest triumphs, while being its oldest unfinished problem? In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, host Gordon Thane traces the story from Victorian Britain's overcrowded streets to Edwin Chadwick's groundbreaking 1842 report, which reframed disease as a product of "removable circumstances" rather than individual fate. We revisit the Great Stink of 1858, when London's sewage crisis finally reached Parliament, where swift ...
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  I Taught an MPH Course. Here's What It Taught Me. 05.05.2026 12min

  Teaching is one of the most underrated ways to advance public health. In this episode, Gordon reflects on his first semester teaching Health Promotion in Western University's MPH program and what the experience revealed about the field itself. From designing a course to classroom moments that genuinely surprised him, Gordon shares the thinking behind his approach and the lessons that stayed with him. Because public health advances not only through programs and policy but through the people we...
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  I Was on an MPH Admissions Committee. Here’s What Hurt Applicants 28.04.2026 12min

  What really happens when a reviewer opens your MPH application? Host Gordon Thane has been on the other side of the table and what he saw might surprise you. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, he breaks down the most common mistakes applicants make: ignoring instructions, leaning on weak references, writing generic statements that sound like everyone else, and confusing healthcare with public health. More importantly, he shares what actually makes a file stand out. If you'r...
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  Practicums Are Here, Now What: A Thriver’s Guide 21.04.2026 12min

  By the end of your practicum, you'll land in one of three boxes — and you don't get to pick which one.. or do you? In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, host Gordon Thane draws on his own journey to show why the students who thrive aren't the ones who wait for direction. From an unpaid MPH practicum placement to now being on the advisory board of that same organization member; he explores: how to tailor your practicum experience to the next job opportunity you’d l...
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  Debate the Policy, Not the Science 14.04.2026 16min

  You can disagree on policy. You can't disagree on facts. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, Dr. Brian Castucci unpacks what it really means when science bends to political power, whether silencing dangerous voices is ever justified, why public health is losing the war it should be winning - culminating in an uncomfortable truth: if you can't stand the people you're trying to reach, you've already lost. References for Our Discussion ◼️About Brian C. Castrucci ◼️A Ne...
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  Turning Data To Action With Community Needs Assessments 07.04.2026 34min

  How often do public health organizations decide what a community needs — without actually asking them? This episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast sees Gordon sit down with Alexandra Piatkowski, epidemiologist and founder & CEO of Piat Public Health, to unpack one of public health's most foundational — and often misused — tools: the community needs assessment. They explore why existing quantitative data is never enough on its own, how health equity moves from buzzword to practice,...
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  Jumping From Health Systems Transformation to Public Health Consulting 31.03.2026 34min

  What does it take to hit the ground running after grad school? For Alexandra Piatkowski, the answer started long before graduation — by deliberately building real-world experience while still a student. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, Gordon sits down with the founder of Piat Public Health to trace a career that blends epidemiology, health policy, and project management into something entirely her own. Alexandra shares how stacking hands-on experience during school set...
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  Building A Better Future With 'Just' One Health 24.03.2026 23min

  Prevention is the most powerful public health tool we have and yet the hardest to fund. Dr. Hope Ferdowsian of Phoenix Zones Initiative explains how her organization is changing that: informing global health strategies, training cross-sector professionals, and advancing a justice-centered framework called Just One Health that targets root causes, not symptoms. She also shares a bold 10-year vision — where well-being replaces GDP, animals gain rights recognition, and prevention is the default....
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  The Cost of Putting Humans First 17.03.2026 26min

  Animal abuse is a predictor child abuse. Slaughterhouse locations correlate with violent crime. Over three-quarters of emerging infectious diseases trace back to how we treat animals and ecosystems. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, Dr. Hope Ferdowsian connects these patterns to a single root cause: systems built on hierarchies that reduce living beings to their financial worth. She challenges public health to stop treating symptoms, expand its moral circle beyond humans, ...
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  It Started With A Sheep Named Crystal 10.03.2026 28min

  Healing people requires healing animals and the systems we share. Dr. Hope Ferdowsian traces that conviction from a sheep named Crystal on an Oklahoma farm to sanctuary chimpanzees with PTSD, to asylum seekers she's evaluated across borders. The through-line isn't a coincidence — it's a career built on understanding humanity through animals, following suffering wherever it leads, and finding resilience on the other side. References for Our Discussion ◼️Phoenix Zones Website Guest ◼️Ho...