The Dose

Episodes

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  With the Midterms Ahead, What's at Stake for Health Care? (feat. Julie Rovner) 30.10.2026 25m

  "Everybody who gets health care has been caught in the maw of our dysfunctional system, and I think there's an increasing demand to change it." The midterm elections are next week, and surveys show Americans remain deeply concerned about several health care issues as they head to the polls. In California, voters will consider a tax on billionaires that could help fund Medicaid in the state. In Idaho, Nevada, Virginia, and Missouri, ballot measures will decide whether those states will strengthen or roll back reproductive rights. On this episode of The Dose podcast, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for KFF Health News and former health policy correspondent for NPR, about what's at stake on November 3. With frustrations around health care fueling stump speeches but delivering few practical solutions, it's worth taking a look at what's actually on people's minds. "I think we are on the cusp of another major debate — the first one since the passage of the Affordable Care Act."
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  She Was in the Operating Room When UnitedHealthcare Called (feat. Dr. Elisabeth Potter) 23.10.2026 25m

  Dr. Elisabeth Potter was in the middle of operating on a patient with breast cancer when a nurse delivered an urgent message: UnitedHealthcare was on the line. She stepped outside the OR and took the call. It was the insurer asking why the patient, who was on the operating table, needed to stay overnight. "It felt like they had invaded a very sacred space where the priorities should be really clear, patient first always, and they were bringing these administrative questions into the moment." On The Dose podcast, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Dr. Potter, a surgeon in Austin, Texas, about what years of fighting insurance companies, building her own surgery center, and walking the halls of Congress have taught her about how our health system actually works, and how we can change it. "Doctors should be able to spend more time being doctors," Potter says. "And patients should be able to spend less time fighting the system just to get well."
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  Food Is Medicine, Let's Treat It That Way (feat. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian) 16.10.2026 25m

  Eighty-five percent of all U.S. health care spending goes toward managing chronic diseases connected to poor diet and nutrition. Yet most doctors receive little to no meaningful training in nutrition. As a result, food and nutrition remain absent from doctor–patient conversations, with medications the default option for most ailments. On the new episode of The Dose podcast, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, about why that gap exists, what it will take to close it, and what's presently working. Increasingly, doctors are beginning to prescribe produce or meals medically tailored to a patient's condition, with the cost covered by the patient's health plan. And a growing number of states are currently testing or planning to test food-as-medicine programs through Medicaid. Meanwhile, a third of U.S. medical schools have committed to meaningful nutrition education for doctors, something that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. "Food is the single biggest challenge and opportunity, not just in health care, but also in our economy and the environment," says Dr. Mozaffarian. "And it's all fixable."
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  New York City's Health Commissioner Has a Plan to Protect Medicaid (feat. Dr. Alister Martin) 09.10.2026 24m

  The prospect of 900,000 New York City residents losing Medicaid coverage under H.R. 1, the tax and spending law passed by Republicans last year, amounts to "bureaucratic violence," says Dr. Alister Martin. In response, he's devised a plan that starts on the streets of Queens and builds out from there with strategically placed community health workers and people assisting with insurance enrollment. On the new episode of The Dose podcast, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Dr. Martin, an emergency physician, former White House Fellow, and now health commissioner for 8.5 million New Yorkers. They discuss what a city can do when the federal safety net is pulled out from under its residents. "Having people be at the center of our response is critically important, because that's what's going to make a difference. You can only move at the speed of trust in public health."
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  AI Has More to Offer Health Care (feat. Dr. Toyin Ajayi) 02.10.2026 27m

  Much of the AI used in health care today is tied up in helping the industry manage its revenue streams — think billing and coding assistance. But Dr. Toyin Ajayi knows there's more AI can do to help manage the health of patients. On the new episode of The Dose, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Dr. Ajayi, a board-certified family physician and CEO of the primary care provider Cityblock Health, about the ways she is using AI to make meaningful differences in the health of the most underserved patients. Dr. Ajayi's data-driven, outcomes-based care model has already demonstrated reductions in emergency room visits and higher patient engagement — as well as lower overall costs. Now, she's using AI to scale it. "Technology, if done right, is one of the very few deflationary forces we can apply to health care costs right now." Cityblock Health
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  Doctor Mike on Why Ceding the Internet Is a Public Health Threat 17.04.2026 30m

  When people receive a medical diagnosis or experience a new symptom, the first thing many of us do is reach for our phone. If a doctor isn't available to provide an answer, someone else is. On The Dose podcast, host Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Dr. Mike Varshavski, a primary care physician with more than 30 million social media followers, about what it takes to fight health misinformation at scale, what health institutions still get wrong about social media, and why entertainment and education aren't opposites. Doctor Mike, as he's known, didn't set out to become a popular online figure. He says he was driven to act as he watched misinformation fill a space that medicine was too cautious to engage with. "We trust you to cut people open, to prescribe all these medicines that have potential side effects — but we don't trust you to make a video on the subject you're an expert on," he says, describing the double standard physicians face online. Show Notes: The Checkup with Doctor Mike
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  In "Deep Care," the Family Is the Sun Midwives Orbit Around (feat. Dr. Kaytura Felix) 10.04.2026 28m

  Dr. Kaytura Felix didn't set out to document the Black maternal health crisis. She set out to find the people who are already doing something about it. On this episode of The Dose podcast, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Felix, founder of the Black Birthing Futures project, about what she discovered: a constellation of Black community midwives providing "deep care" — clinical, emotional, social, and spiritual support centered on care of the birthing family. "The family is the sun and all the providers are orbiting them," says Felix. But keeping the family at the center isn't easy. Felix shares what stands between deep care and the families who need it most.
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  Fighting Medical Debt? There's an App for That (feat. Jared Walker) 03.04.2026 31m

  Four in 10 Americans have medical debt. Most don't know there's a federal law that could eliminate it. On this episode of The Dose podcast, host Joel Bervell talks with Jared Walker about his nonprofit, Dollar For, which has helped Americans erase more than $100 million in medical debt by connecting them to the charity care programs that hospitals are legally required to offer but rarely publicize. "These hospitals are great. They're saving people's lives every single day," says Walker. "The problem is that they're also ruining people's financial lives." With Medicaid cuts on the horizon and health care costs continuing to rise, Walker explains how Dollar For's free screening tool works, why some states are doing a better job of protecting patients than others, and what it will take to make hospitals do what the law already requires.
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  The Missing Ingredient in Health Care AI? Community Voices 27.03.2026 34m

  Seventy billion dollars is flowing into health care AI, but the people building it and the patients who need it most are rarely in the same room. On this episode, host Dr. Joel Bervell talks with pediatrician, researcher, and tech optimist Dr. Ivor Horn about what responsible AI innovation in health care requires. Drawing on her work building open-access datasets and equity frameworks for machine learning, Horn says that rigorous research, community partnership, and critical thinking are not obstacles to the work of building powerful tools — they are the work. "If you build for the most vulnerable patients," Horn says, "you will build a better product for everyone."
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  Lupita Nyong'o Is Done Accepting Fibroids as Normal 20.03.2026 28m

  Uterine fibroids may affect up to 80 percent of women in their lifetime, but they remain under-researched, underfunded, and routinely dismissed. Lupita Nyong'o is working to change that. "I could not believe that women were partially or wholly losing their reproductive organs because of this noncancerous tumor situation." On this episode, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Academy Award–winning actor and activist Lupita Nyong'o about her own diagnosis, and her decision to share an MRI of her body while launching the Make Fibroids Count campaign with the Foundation for Women's Health. "I realized without research we can't get any further," Nyong'o says. "We need to understand more in order to be able to equip the doctors who can then equip the patients." Show Notes: Lupita Nyong'o Make Fibroids Count (through the Foundation for Women's Health) The White Dress Project The Fibroid Foundation
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  Reimagining Birth, Restoring Trust (feat. Elaine Welteroth) 14.11.2025 27m

  A new movement in the United States is taking shape in maternal care, one that seeks to restore trust, center women, and protect lives. On this episode of The Dose podcast, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with author and advocate Elaine Welteroth about her own struggle finding patient-centered care during pregnancy and how the organization she founded, birthFUND, is funding midwifery care, supporting new mothers, and reimagining what safe, empowering birth can look like in America.
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  A Doula Network That's Saving Lives (feat. Omare Jimmerson) 07.11.2025 24m

  Across Oklahoma, a community-powered doula network is reshaping what equitable maternal care looks like. On this episode of The Dose, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Omare Jimmerson of the Oklahoma Birth Equity Initiative about how culturally rooted doulas, smart policies, and practical supports—from rides to diapers—are helping hundreds of families thrive each year.
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  A New Approach to Youth Mental Health (feat. Dr. Kevin Simon) 31.10.2025 27m

  AI therapy for children with anxiety, mental health training for staff at nonprofits that work with young people, and an "art pharmacy" that prescribes free museum tickets to kids — these are just some of the things Dr. Kevin Simon and his team are doing to help meet the mental health care needs of Boston's children. Simon, the city's first chief behavioral health officer, talks to host Dr. Joel Bervell on the new episode of The Dose, which centers on America's youth mental health crisis and the innovative things states and cities are doing for struggling children.
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  Fixing How We Pay for Care (feat. Dr. Mai Pham) 24.10.2025 31m

  "The proportion of energy and resources that goes into getting paid instead of taking care of patients is out of whack." That's Dr. Mai Pham's assessment of how we pay for health care in the United States — where all too often the imperative is volume over value, and billing over better care. In the latest episode of The Dose podcast, host Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Dr. Pham about how we can do better and deliver on the promise of equitable, person-centered care.
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  Obesity Medicine in the Age of GLP-1s (feat. Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford) 17.10.2025 28m

  Medical care for people with obesity is changing rapidly. Body mass index, or BMI, was once considered the gold standard for diagnosis but has proven to be less accurate than once thought. Meanwhile, the advent of GLP-1 drugs has provided patients with treatment options that were unimaginable just a decade ago. Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine physician, joins host Dr. Joel Bervell on a new episode of The Dose podcast to talk about the state of obesity care in the United States. Together, they explore why insurers are hesitant to cover medications like Ozempic, how BMI fails to catch real health risks, and what the future of obesity treatment looks like for patients and public health.
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  In an Era of Misinformation, Does Science Stand a Chance? (feat. Dr. Francis Collins) 10.10.2025 36m

  "If people stop trusting science, they stop trusting each other. That has huge implications for everything, not just medicine." Science, and medical science in particular, is under attack in today's world. Many of our nation's leaders are choosing politics over facts, and prioritizing profit over public health. Online, misinformation about vaccines and medications is spreading at an alarming rate. On a new episode of The Dose, host Dr. Joel Bervell discusses some of the biggest challenges facing modern medical science with Dr. Francis Collins, who served as director of the National Institutes of Health under three different presidents. They talk about how to assess the trustworthiness of an information source, why every person deserves access to their DNA sequence, what happens when politics meets science, and more. 
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  The Dose Returns on October 10th 07.10.2025 4m

  Look forward to a new season of The Dose, featuring your host Dr. Joel Bervell, launching this Friday. 
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  In Rural America, a Weak Signal Can Mean Worse Health 23.05.2025 28m

  What happens when your zip code threatens your health? Broadband access is often framed as a tech issue, but in some rural communities it's a matter of health equity. Broadband internet is so limited in some areas that patients can't use remote monitoring devices, hospitals can't support telehealth, and electronic health records slow down care instead of streamlining it. On this week's episode of The Dose, journalist Sarah Jane Tribble joins host Joel Bervell to explain how internet dead zones are deepening chronic illness in rural communities. Drawing from her reporting for KFF Health News, Tribble shares the stories of people managing diabetes and kidney failure without reliable digital tools, and hospitals lacking the internet speeds needed to monitor high-risk patients.
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  In the Age of AI, Health Innovation Requires Human Stories 16.05.2025 23m

  Data is the engine of health innovation, but too often it can't tell the full story. On this week's episode of The Dose, Dr. Sema Sgaier joins host Joel Bervell to talk about the future of equitable health care: how we collect data, who's included, and what it means for clinical trials, mental health, and the role of AI. Tune in to hear Dr. Sgaier explain why solving health care's toughest challenges starts with understanding the human side of health — and how inclusive data can lead to smarter policies, safer treatments, and better care.
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  "Data Silence" Holds High Stakes for People's Health 09.05.2025 26m

  We're in a pivotal moment for health care equity and public health. Systems for tracking data on maternal mortality and chronic disease are being dismantled, with consequences that could last generations. On this week's episode of The Dose, Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith joins host Joel Bervell to talk about who's represented in the health data we collect, and who isn't, and why it's so important for "people to feel safe in sharing" their data and "to have trust that it's protected." Dr. Nunez-Smith also explains how her experience as a parent of a child with a rare disease frames how she approaches her work in health equity.