The area of land affected by wildfires has increased annually at a more rapid pace than the actual number of wildfires. With climate change comes an increase in seasonal conditions that support wildfires, such as warmer springs and longer dry seasons. Wildfires have any immediately tangible consequences. Smoke may warrant school closures and warnings to stay indoors for many vulnerable populations, such as individuals with respiratory conditions. Expecting wildfire frequency to continue increasing, it’s important to understand their potential health impacts, and how studying those impacts is fundamentally different from other areas in public health research.
Eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating, are very common and some of the most complicated psychiatric disorders to address. It is estimated that almost 1 in 10 Americans will experience an eating disorder at some point in their lifetime. Girls and women are more likely to experience an eating disorder as are people of color, but people of all genders and races can be affected. There is evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problem of eating disorders. In this episode of Epi Counts, hosts Bryan James and Ghassan Hamra speak with Ariel Beccia, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School about the epidemiology of eating disorders and how the COVID pandemic may have impacted the burden, particularly in younger persons.
The SER 2023 conference in Portland, Oregon was the site of the first ever live recording of the Epidemiology Counts podcast with an audience! Host Bryan James was joined by the hosts of the SERious Epi podcast, Matt Fox and Hailey Banack to lead a fun discussion on busting epidemiology myths in front of a room of raucous epidemiologists. Six awesome guests joined the panel to bust a myth of their choosing, which ranged from scientific, to historical, to personal: Kerry Keyes, Peter Tennant, Lindsey Russo, Ari Nandi, Marcia Pescador-Jiminez, and Lisa Bodnar. The energy in the room was high for this one, folks! If you are an SER member who is interested in helping out with the Epidemiology Counts podcast, please contact Bryan James at: bryan_james@rush.edu
The recent train derailment in East Palestine (apologies for host Bryan James’ mispronunciation in the Intro), Ohio raised major concerns over the release of harmful chemicals such as vinyl chloride into the environment. The town was evacuated for 5 days until authorities deemed that it was safe to return, though many lingering questions remained as to the safety of the air and water after such a disaster. This train derailment raised questions as to how experts assess the risk to exposed persons after a major disaster—both quickly assessing the immediate threat to residents, as well as observing long term health effects like increased risk for cancer. In this episode of Epi Counts, hosts Bryan James and Ghassan Hamra talk to Keeve Nachman from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, an expert in risk assessment, about how these decisions are made, and whether we really can ever get a yes or no answer to “is it safe now?” after a major disaster.
In this episode of Epi Counts, host Bryan James talks to Maria Glymour, the incoming chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health, about their shared area of research: the epidemiology of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. In this conversation, they discuss the latest on how scientists are attempting to define Alzheimer’s disease biologically as a distinct concept from the dementia syndrome, as well as the controversies surrounding such a definition. They cover what the evidence says about what we can do to prevent dementia, and what aspects of Alzheimer’s and dementia make these conditions particularly difficult to study. Finally, they address the cautious excitement regarding the recent FDA approval of two new Alzheimer’s drugs that appear to target the underlying disease after decades of failed trials, and the societal, ethical, and financial implications that arise from the introduction of these therapies. Show notes: Alzheimer’s Association Facts & Figures report https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/facts-figures
Occupational Epidemiology is one of the oldest and most salient areas in Epidemiology. People need to work, so understanding the aspects of the work environment that contribute to health is vital to public health. Exposures are often not confined to the workplace, meaning knowledge generated has wider importance. For example, occupational cohort studies of the health effects of asbestos and diesel exhaust have led to determinations of carcinogenicity by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The knowledge generated about asbestos ultimately lead to banning its use broadly. In this episode, we discuss the field’s history and where it stands with Dr. Ellen Eisen, professor at UC Berkeley, who has spent her career advancing our understanding of the impacts of workplace exposures.
Population Health Sciences and Epidemiology are thought about as different from one another by some, and largely overlapping by others. Depending on who you talk to, either view might spark an argument. In this crossover episode, I get the chance to chat with Aresha Martinez-Cardoso, Darrell Hudson, and Michael Esposito, hosts of the IAPHS podcast. We may or may not actually answer the question: what’s the difference between these two fields anyway?
Trans health is a growing area in public health. This is largely due to the growing number of individuals who feel comfortable expressing gender identities that do not confirm to binary male and female categories. The 2015 summary of the US transgender survey reported around 27,000 respondents, over 4 times as many as the previous 2008-2009 survey. Respondents also reported greater acceptance among family, friends, and colleagues, with over 50% of respondents describing them as ‘supportive.’ More notable in the survey was the volume of hardships experienced by transgender community members. Nearly any adverse health outcome or condition is experienced in greater proportion in the transgender community. It is also notable that people of color in the trans community tend have a greater proportion of adverse experiences compared to their white counterparts. On this episode, we are joined by Dr. Will Beckham, an assistant scientist in the department of health, behaviour, and society here at JHBSPH, to discuss the evolution of research on trans health, where it is, and where it’s going.
Did you know trillions of microorganisms such as bacteria, virus, and fungi are living inside of your body right now? The microbiome can be described as the community of microbes that reside in a particular part the human body. The past two decades has seen an exponential increase in the number of publications related to the microbiome and how it affects human health. There is growing evidence that the microbiome, in all its complexity, can impact health and disease. Some of the diseases that have been linked to the microbiome may be surprising! On this episode, we welcome Noel Mueller, associate professor of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, to give us a primer on the microbiome and how it relates to our health.
The most recent stage of the COVID-19 pandemic has been defined by the surge of the Omicron variant, a version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is highly contagious yet seemingly not as likely to result in severe infection. Cases are now declining in most parts of the country—but yet the rate of infection is still as high as it has ever been pre-Omicron [editor’s note: host erroneously left out “pre-Omicron” in Intro to podcast]. So what is next? Is the risk now low enough to relax mask mandates and resume some sense of “normalcy”? Or should we expect more variants to emerge that will cause another surge? Is COVID-19 now endemic, and if so, what does that really mean? In this episode, hosts Bryan James and Ghassan Hamra discuss what we have learned from the Omicron surge and the transition to endemicity with Justin Lessler from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and Cecile Viboud from the Fogarty International Center at the NIH.
Social media is a major part of many people’s day to day lives, including children. Social media can connect young people to other people, groups, imagery, and ideas in a way that was never imaginable two decades ago. This can be exciting but also potentially harmful to vulnerable youth with developing minds. In October of 2021, a former facebook data scientist testified to congress that their internal research showed potential harms the social media platform can inflict on youth mental health, including increasing depression, suicidal thoughts and encouraging eating disorders, especially among girls. However, there are certainly potential benefits to social media for many young people, including encouraging engagement with family and friends more easily. In this episode of Epidemiology Counts, hosts Ghassan Hamra and Bryan James discuss the impact of social media on youth mental health with Kira Riehm, postdoctoral fellow at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. Relevant links discussed in this Episode: https://www.healthychildren.org/English/family-life/Media/Pages/How-to-Make-a-Family-Media-Use-Plan.aspx https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/138/5/e20162592/60321/Media-Use-in-School-Aged-Children-and-Adolescents
In the second episode on how the built environment of our cities and towns affects our health, we discuss how living near green spaces and natural environments can provide health benefits. The feeling of serenity while immersed in nature and vegetation is a near universal human experience; modern researchers are collecting evidence that it may be protective against health outcomes such as adverse mental health, cardiovascular disease, and mortality. Green spaces can decrease stress, promote physical and social activity, and mitigate air pollution and noise. We discuss how researchers are taking advantage of modern technology and databases to measure greenness using satellite imagery and large land-use databases linked to study participants’ addresses. This episode was a treat for host Bryan James, as he got to interview an expert he knows well: his brother! Peter James is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, as well as the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Also, we officially welcome Ghassan Hamra as the co-host of Epidemiology Counts!
Sports is life. Fans have a deep devotion to their preferred teams from their alma maters or home towns. Fans spend shocking amounts of time discussing things like player stats and predictions of final game scores. The players are expected to be at the top of their game at all times. Regardless of the sport, players demand a lot from their bodies. The safety of players is paramount, and findings ways to minimize injury risk is key. Epidemiologists can be key players in helping identify ways to minimize risk of injury. Understanding what aspects of training are more relevant to injury risk, including specific activities and intensity, can help players avoid short term injuries. And in the long term, there are concerns for many players of lifetime consequences as a result of their sport, notably Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in football and football, or Soccer as we call it in the USA). We talk with Drs. Christina Mack and Mackenzie Herzog of IQVIA about how epidemiologists can work with players and teams to minimize sports injury.
Our health is very much shaped by the structure of the spaces around us, what we often refer to as our built environment. The concept of the built environment was developed for fields of urban planning and architecture, and includes any aspects of our spaces that influence human activity, from density of homes and buildings, access to transportation options and community spaces, and the streets and sidewalks, or the lack thereof. The built environment is also highly relevant to public health. The structure of spaces around us will impact whether or not we elect to commute by automobile, public transit, or walking or riding a bicycle; it can impact selection of the foods we eat, proximity to health services, and, thereby, has greater impacts on equity, by driving housing prices and access to resources. Hosts Bryan James and Ghassan Hamra chat with Steve Mooney, assistant professor at University of Washington – Seattle about how our built environment shapes our transportation and pedestrian decisions.
Health in America is closely tied to where we live. Higher rates of preventable health conditions are concentrated in high-poverty neighborhoods that are more likely to be home to a higher proportion of Americans of color. Despite modern anti-discrimination laws that make people legally free to move wherever they like, the reality is that our cities and communities remain largely racially segregated. This segregation is not a result of chance, but rather the direct result of business practices and government housing policy that date back to almost a century ago. One notorious example is redlining, in which services such as home loans or insurance were denied to Black and Brown Americans by characterizing the communities that the lived in as “too risky”. In this episode of Epidemiology Counts, we discuss the legacy of racial segregation and practices such as redlining that have shaped our communities, and the lasting effect of segregation on health disparities in America. Host Bryan James and Ghassan Hamra, assistant professor in Epidemiology and Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, talk to Dr. Sharrelle Barber a social epidemiologist at the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Heath and leader of the new Ubuntu Center on Racism, Global Movements and Population Health Equity.
The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines that are highly effective against infection and severe disease in late 2020 appeared to be the silver bullet that would end the pandemic and bring life back to the way it was in pre-pandemic times. But the emergence of the highly infectious Delta variant of the virus, coupled with large portions of the eligible public remaining unvaccinated, has dampened much of this initial hope and led to what is being called the Fourth Wave of the pandemic. The surge in infections and hospitalizations in this latest wave is primarily in the unvaccinated; however, many vaccinated persons are experiencing “breakthrough infections” in which the virus evades the protection afforded by the vaccine. How can we interpret what these breakthrough infections mean regarding the effectiveness of the vaccine and the need for continuation of masking and other behaviors? In this episode, we aim to provide tools to prepare you to interpret the many reports on breakthrough infections encountered on the news and other media. Host Bryan James talks to Justin Lessler, now a professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health, and Lucy D’Agostino McGowan, assistant professor of statistics at Wake Forest University, about breakthrough COVID-19 infections and the Delta variant. They also talk about unvaccinated kids returning to school amongst all of this and the potential for booster shots.
What happens in pregnancy and the early stages of infancy can have a profound impact on child and adolescent development, and may even affect the health of individuals as adults. A growing understanding of which events may be most harmful for a growing fetus or newborn can lead to improvements in the health of babies, but it can also create quite a bit of fear and anxiety in expecting mothers and new parents. How do new parents sift through the many “dos and don’ts” that are thrown at them during pregnancy? What does the evidence base actually support? In previous podcast episodes, we discussed infertility (how to get pregnant) and maternal mortality (how to keep mothers safe during delivery); on this episode we focus on the health of the fetus and newborn baby. Bryan James and Hailey Banack chat with Robert Platt from McGill University about the latest in perinatal epidemiology, and why it is so hard to find answers to these questions using observational studies!
Can a positive outlook on life actually have a direct effect on our health? Optimism appears to be linked to better health and the ability to cope with and bounce back from disease and surgery, while pessimistic people are more likely to develop hypertension, heart disease and die prematurely than their optimistic peers. So what is behind these relationships? Can we really just will good health into existence by just thinking about it? Or are optimistic persons more likely to engage in healthy behaviors? Or could a skeptic (those pessimists!) argue that healthier people can just afford to be more optimistic, or that socioeconomic status or some other life condition allows certain people to be healthier and more optimistic? In this episode we dive deep into the link between optimism and health as host Bryan James chats with Eric Kim, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia and Research Scholar at the Michael Smith Foundation for Health, and Bill Chopik , assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University.
By nearly any metric, Black and brown Americans are disproportionately policed, arrested, convicted, and incarcerated compared to white Americans. One in 3 Black boys born in America in 2001 can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. Furthermore, Black Americans are more likely to be physically injured and killed at the hands of the police—a reality that manifested in the dramatic response to the killing of George Floyd and other high profile cases, leading to Black Lives Matter protests around the nation and the world. Racialized policing is rooted in our country’s history and legacy of systemic racism, and has substantial negative effects on the health and well being of communities of color. Living under constant threat of surveillance takes a toll on mental and physical health and can lead to and exacerbate racial health disparities. In this episode, Bryan James is joined by John Pamplin, a Provost’s postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Urban Science & Progress at New York University, as well as the Center for Opioid Epidemiology and Policy at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, as well as Roland Thorpe, professor in the department of health, behavior, and society at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. They discuss the historical and structural causes of racialized policing, its effect on health, the “myths” used to justify it, and end with some ideas on what we can do about it.
In honor of the Society for Epidemiologic Research 2020 Meeting, the hosts of four epidemiology podcasts came together to record the first ever “crossover event” to talk about their experiences recording our shows and what podcasting can bring to the table for the field of epidemiology. Join the hosts of Epidemiology Counts (Bryan James), SERiousEPi (Matt Fox, Hailey Banack), Casual Inference (Lucy D’Agostino McGowan), and Shiny Epi People (Lisa Bodnar) as they engage in a fun and informative (we hope!) conversation of the burgeoning field of epidemiology podcasting, emceed by Geetika Kalloo. The audio podcast will be released on some of our pod feeds, and the video recording will be available to watch on the SER website.
COVID-19 is surging as the United States heads into winter, with 100,000 new cases reported in a single day for the first time on the day of this podcast recording. The presence of this virus is a constant in our lives and our communities, and more and more of us have been tested for the coronavirus or are considering it. But how do you know when to get tested, which test to get, and how to interpret the results? With so much discussion of false negatives and false positives and the correct timing of testing, even the savviest of us can find it very confusing. And with the holidays approaching, some of us want to know if testing can be used to see family safely. Our infectious disease experts, Justin Lessler and Michael Mina, are back to provide their expertise on COVID-19 testing on this latest episode.
Maternal mortality is a key indicator of population health. While the leading causes of maternal death vary from place to place, most of these deaths are preventable; accordingly, most wealthy countries have reported steady declines in mortality rates over time. However, recent reports from the US suggest that maternal mortality is on the rise, prompting an abundance of concern (and media coverage) about the quality of maternal healthcare in the US. What’s behind these numbers? Is the US really in crisis? More generally, how do we make pregnancy and childbirth safer for women? In this episode, host Bryan James is joined by Nichole Austin, postdoctoral fellow at McGill University, along with Dr. KS Joseph, Professor in the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and the School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia and the Children’s and Women’s Hospital and Health Centre of British Columbia. Note: We apologize for the sound quality of this episode which is lower than our usual standards due to technical problems during the recording.
Hurricane and fire seasons are affecting communities across the US and globally. Over 5 million acres have burned in the Western US. Smoke from these fires reached all the way to New York and Washington DC. Natural disasters are made worse by climate change, but climate change is more than just disasters. Climate change can affect our health in a range of different ways. In this episode, host Bryan James is joined by Anna Pollack to understand how climate change affects health, along with epidemiologist and climate change expert, Dr. Brooke Anderson, Associate Professor at Colorado State University.
Sleep is essential for wellbeing and overall health. We spend up to a third of our lives asleep and the general state of “sleep health” is an important question throughout our lifespan. The CDC has estimated that 1 in 3 American Adults do not achieve the recommendation of at least 7 hours of sleep each night for adults aged 18–60 years. Inadequate sleep has been associated with an increased risk of developing chronic conditions such as cancer, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and dementia. Bryan James and Rachael Stolzenberg-Solomon host a discussion with Neil Caporaso, a Senior Investigator in the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch, in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute about the epidemiology and science of sleep and health.
Cell phones outnumber people globally and they have become an important conduit through which we interact with our world, both personally and professionally. Day or night, it’s rare that our cell phone is not by our side, and yet it’s likely that you’ve been told to do precisely the opposite, due to concerns that cell phones might increase your risk of developing cancer. These concerns are partly grounded in the decisions of health authorities, including the classification of the electromagnetic fields emitted by cell phones as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Whether cell phones put our health at risk is an epidemiologic question that has been hotly debated for well over a decade. In this episode, host Bryan James is joined by Arijit Nandi and special guest Dr. David Savitz, a Professor of Epidemiology at Brown University, to distill this evidence and discuss some of the most recent recommendations regarding the health effects of cell phone use.
Our infectious disease epidemiology experts, Justin Lessler from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Michael Mina from the Harvard School of Public Heath, are back for a special Q&A episode of the podcast! Host Bryan James relays a compilation of your fantastic questions to the experts leading to a very insightful conversation on how to navigate the “new normal” of life during the time of COVID-19 as the lockdowns end and the US begins to reopen. We address questions related to the safety of daycare and school reopening, summer camps, swimming pools, travel, and other activities. We also address the latest on what is known on asymptomatic spread and other trends, and finally: where are we at with that vaccine?
Drs. Justin Lessler from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Michael Mina from the Harvard School of Public Heath are back for a fourth episode to discuss the coronavirus pandemic with host Bryan James. Between our first podcast in early February 2020 and this recording, the pandemic has grown from 11 cases of COVID-19 in the US to over 1.3 million known cases and 84 thousand deaths in the US. After 2 months of shelter-in-place lockdown measures throughout most of the country, many states and cities are beginning to reopen their economies, raising concerns of a second wave of the pandemic. This discussion focuses on how to reopen the country safely; the significance of both virology and serology testing for surveillance; and some helpful advice on how to keep yourself and your family safe during the pandemic.
Depression and anxiety disorders remain among the most common and destabilizing health conditions worldwide. As the COVID-19 epidemic progresses, mental health has emerged as a principal concern, given the increase in social isolation, trauma exposure, and grief and bereavement, among other exposures. Today, Bryan James hosts a discussion with we talk with Katheleen Merikangas, Senior Investigator and Chief of the Genetic Epidemiology Research Branch in the Intramural Research Program at the National Institution on Mental Health, and Kerry Keyes Associate Professor from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, for a discussion of depression and anxiety – what these concepts mean, how and when they are clinically useful, and how we anticipate that COVID-19 will change the landscape of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30929042 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18768940 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31242010 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30540352
The coronavirus outbreak is now a global pandemic and the US is ground zero for the COVID-19 crisis. Drs. Justin Lessler from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Michael Mina from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Heath are back to discuss the latest developments with host Bryan James. They address whether social distancing is helping to “flatten the curve” and why we have turned to more drastic measures such as work-from-home orders and school closings to really drop “the hammer” on the spread of the virus, as well as where we are at with a testing and masks. How long do the experts think we need to continue these mitigation measures, and do we have a plan for what to do when they end to prevent a second peak?
Infertility is increasingly common, and it is likely you know someone who has experienced infertility or may have experienced this yourself. Given that this is a very stressful time for couples and that treatments can be very expensive, couples often try everything they can to improve their fertility. There is a lot of advice out there for what you should and should not be doing to improve fertility. But what does the actual science say? What are the things proven to help couples get pregnant? What should be avoided? What about supplements? At what point should you see a doctor? What usually happens at the initial infertility treatment workup? In this episode, host Bryan James is joined by two experts to provide both the epidemiological and clinical perspectives on this topic—Drs. Enrique Schisterman and Jessica Zolton from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
