Podcasts about Tropical medicine

'n Nuwe studie het bevind dat die ernstige Europese hittegolf van 23 Junie tot 2 Julie vanjaar na raming 2 300 sterftes in 12 stede veroorsaak het. Dit is volgens die studie deur Imperial College London en die London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Van die sterftes word sowat tweederdes toegeskryf aan aardverwarming, met 88 persent van die slagoffers ouer as 65. 'n Omgewingsepidemioloog, Pierre Masselot, het aan The Independent gesê die wêreld moet ophou om fossielbrandstowwe te verbrand:

Recorded on 10 July 2025 for ICMDA Webinars.Howard Lyons chairs a webinar with Prof Annelies Wilder-SmithThe COVID-19 pandemic taught us that global health is interconnected, and delayed action costs lives. Strong public health systems, early response, and equitable access to vaccines are critical. The rapid development of mRNA vaccines showed the power of well-funded, coordinated science.However, science must remain apolitical - when politicized, it erodes public trust and fuels misinformation. Clear communication, preparedness, and protecting vulnerable populations are essential. The pandemic revealed the fragility of health systems and the urgent need for resilience. As Scripture reminds us, pestilences are part of a broken world (Luke 21:11) - COVID-19 was not the first and will not be the last.Dr. Annelies Wilder-Smith has devoted her career to emerging infectious diseases, particularly those impacting low- and middle-income countries. Her path was shaped during two decades in Asia, where she was at the forefront of the SARS outbreak, and investigated the H5N1, dengue and Zika virus outbreaks. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she served as an external advisor to the World Health Organization, where she developed COVID-19 vaccine policies for the global use.Annelies is Honorary Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Past President of the International Society of Travel Medicine, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Travel Medicine. Her academic career resulted in 380 publications and many research grants. She leads the Lancet Commission on Dengue and was Principal Investigator of EU-funded research consortia.Her awards include the Myron Levine Vaccinology Prize and the CDC Honor Group Award. Annelies is also the author of Travel Medicine: Tales Behind the Science and Grasping Heaven, a biography of Dr. Tami Fisk. She lives in Switzerland with her husband, a professor of neurology; both their children are physicians in training.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To listen live to future ICMDA webinars visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://icmda.net/resources/webinars/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In the UK alone, around one in four adults are experiencing chronic pain. And nearly a quarter of the population live with some form of disability. Yet despite these numbers, pain and disability are still too often talked about in hushed tones, misunderstood, or entirely overlooked in public life. How do we talk about pain that doesn't go away? How do people live in bodies that society isn't built for? And how can we shift the narrative from individual burden to collective responsibility? Professor Tom Shakespeare helps us answer these questions in this episode of the We Society. His work challenges the assumptions we make about ability, autonomy, and what it means to live a fulfilling life.   As Professor of Disability Research in the medical faculty at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Tom is a leading sociologist, bioethicist and one of the UK's most influential voices in disability studies.   Join acclaimed journalist and Academy president Will Hutton, as he invites guests from the world of social science to explore the stories behind the news and hear their solutions to society's most pressing problems. Don't want to miss an episode? Follow the show on your favourite podcast platform and you can email us on wesociety@acss.org.uk and tell us who we should be speaking to.  The We Society podcast is brought to you by the Academy of Social Sciences in association with the Nuffield Foundation and the Leverhulme Trust.  Producer: Emily Uchida Finch Assistant Producer: Emily Gilbert A Whistledown Production 

“To navigate proof, we must reach into a thicket of errors and biases. We must confront monsters and embrace uncertainty, balancing — and rebalancing —our beliefs. We must seek out every useful fragment of data, gather every relevant tool, searching wider and climbing further. Finding the good foundations among the bad. Dodging dogma and falsehoods. Questioning. Measuring. Triangulating. Convincing. Then perhaps, just perhaps, we'll reach the truth in time.”—Adam KucharskiMy conversation with Professor Kucharski on what constitutes certainty and proof in science (and other domains), with emphasis on many of the learnings from Covid. Given the politicization of science and A.I.'s deepfakes and power for blurring of truth, it's hard to think of a topic more important right now.Audio file (Ground Truths can also be downloaded on Apple Podcasts and Spotify)Eric Topol (00:06):Hello, it's Eric Topol from Ground Truths and I am really delighted to welcome Adam Kucharski, who is the author of a new book, Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty. He's a distinguished mathematician, by the way, the first mathematician we've had on Ground Truths and a person who I had the real privilege of getting to know a bit through the Covid pandemic. So welcome, Adam.Adam Kucharski (00:28):Thanks for having me.Eric Topol (00:30):Yeah, I mean, I think just to let everybody know, you're a Professor at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and also noteworthy you won the Adams Prize, which is one of the most impressive recognitions in the field of mathematics. This is the book, it's a winner, Proof and there's so much to talk about. So Adam, maybe what I'd start off is the quote in the book that captivates in the beginning, “life is full of situations that can reveal remarkably large gaps in our understanding of what is true and why it's true. This is a book about those gaps.” So what was the motivation when you undertook this very big endeavor?Adam Kucharski (01:17):I think a lot of it comes to the work I do at my day job where we have to deal with a lot of evidence under pressure, particularly if you work in outbreaks or emerging health concerns. And often it really pushes the limits, our methodology and how we converge on what's true subject to potential revision in the future. I think particularly having a background in math's, I think you kind of grow up with this idea that you can get to these concrete, almost immovable truths and then even just looking through the history, realizing that often isn't the case, that there's these kind of very human dynamics that play out around them. And it's something I think that everyone in science can reflect on that sometimes what convinces us doesn't convince other people, and particularly when you have that kind of urgency of time pressure, working out how to navigate that.Eric Topol (02:05):Yeah. Well, I mean I think these times of course have really gotten us to appreciate, particularly during Covid, the importance of understanding uncertainty. And I think one of the ways that we can dispel what people assume they know is the famous Monty Hall, which you get into a bit in the book. So I think everybody here is familiar with that show, Let's Make a Deal and maybe you can just take us through what happens with one of the doors are unveiled and how that changes the mathematics.Adam Kucharski (02:50):Yeah, sure. So I think it is a problem that's been around for a while and it's based on this game show. So you've got three doors that are closed. Behind two of the doors there is a goat and behind one of the doors is a luxury car. So obviously, you want to win the car. The host asks you to pick a door, so you point to one, maybe door number two, then the host who knows what's behind the doors opens another door to reveal a goat and then ask you, do you want to change your mind? Do you want to switch doors? And a lot of the, I think intuition people have, and certainly when I first came across this problem many years ago is well, you've got two doors left, right? You've picked one, there's another one, it's 50-50. And even some quite well-respected mathematicians.Adam Kucharski (03:27):People like Paul Erdős who was really published more papers than almost anyone else, that was their initial gut reaction. But if you work through all of the combinations, if you pick this door and then the host does this, and you switch or not switch and work through all of those options. You actually double your chances if you switch versus sticking with the door. So something that's counterintuitive, but I think one of the things that really struck me and even over the years trying to explain it is convincing myself of the answer, which was when I first came across it as a teenager, I did quite quickly is very different to convincing someone else. And even actually Paul Erdős, one of his colleagues showed him what I call proof by exhaustion. So go through every combination and that didn't really convince him. So then he started to simulate and said, well, let's do a computer simulation of the game a hundred thousand times. And again, switching was this optimal strategy, but Erdős wasn't really convinced because I accept that this is the case, but I'm not really satisfied with it. And I think that encapsulates for a lot of people, their experience of proof and evidence. It's a fact and you have to take it as given, but there's actually quite a big bridge often to really understanding why it's true and feeling convinced by it.Eric Topol (04:41):Yeah, I think it's a fabulous example because I think everyone would naturally assume it's 50-50 and it isn't. And I think that gets us to the topic at hand. What I love, there's many things I love about this book. One is that you don't just get into science and medicine, but you cut across all the domains, law, mathematics, AI. So it's a very comprehensive sweep of everything about proof and truth, and it couldn't come at a better time as we'll get into. Maybe just starting off with math, the term I love mathematical monsters. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?Adam Kucharski (05:25):Yeah, this was a fascinating situation that emerged in the late 19th century where a lot of math's, certainly in Europe had been derived from geometry because a lot of the ancient Greek influence on how we shaped things and then Newton and his work on rates of change and calculus, it was really the natural world that provided a lot of inspiration, these kind of tangible objects, tangible movements. And as mathematicians started to build out the theory around rates of change and how we tackle these kinds of situations, they sometimes took that intuition a bit too seriously. And there was some theorems that they said were intuitively obvious, some of these French mathematicians. And so, one for example is this idea of you how things change smoothly over time and how you do those calculations. But what happened was some mathematicians came along and showed that when you have things that can be infinitely small, that intuition didn't necessarily hold in the same way.Adam Kucharski (06:26):And they came up with these examples that broke a lot of these theorems and a lot of the establishments at the time called these things monsters. They called them these aberrations against common sense and this idea that if Newton had known about them, he never would've done all of his discovery because they're just nuisances and we just need to get rid of them. And there's this real tension at the core of mathematics in the late 1800s where some people just wanted to disregard this and say, look, it works for most of the time, that's good enough. And then others really weren't happy with this quite vague logic. They wanted to put it on much sturdier ground. And what was remarkable actually is if you trace this then into the 20th century, a lot of these monsters and these particularly in some cases functions which could almost move constantly, this constant motion rather than our intuitive concept of movement as something that's smooth, if you drop an apple, it accelerates at a very smooth rate, would become foundational in our understanding of things like probability, Einstein's work on atomic theory. A lot of these concepts where geometry breaks down would be really important in relativity. So actually, these things that we thought were monsters actually were all around us all the time, and science couldn't advance without them. So I think it's just this remarkable example of this tension within a field that supposedly concrete and the things that were going to be shunned actually turn out to be quite important.Eric Topol (07:53):It's great how you convey how nature isn't so neat and tidy and things like Brownian motion, understanding that, I mean, just so many things that I think fit into that general category. In the legal, we won't get into too much because that's not so much the audience of Ground Truths, but the classic things about innocent and until proven guilty and proof beyond reasonable doubt, I mean these are obviously really important parts of that overall sense of proof and truth. We're going to get into one thing I'm fascinated about related to that subsequently and then in science. So before we get into the different types of proof, obviously the pandemic is still fresh in our minds and we're an endemic with Covid now, and there are so many things we got wrong along the way of uncertainty and didn't convey that science isn't always evolving search for what is the truth. There's plenty no shortage of uncertainty at any moment. So can you recap some of the, you did so much work during the pandemic and obviously some of it's in the book. What were some of the major things that you took out of proof and truth from the pandemic?Adam Kucharski (09:14):I think it was almost this story of two hearts because on the one hand, science was the thing that got us where we are today. The reason that so much normality could resume and so much risk was reduced was development of vaccines and the understanding of treatments and the understanding of variants as they came to their characteristics. So it was kind of this amazing opportunity to see this happen faster than it ever happened in history. And I think ever in science, it certainly shifted a lot of my thinking about what's possible and even how we should think about these kinds of problems. But also on the other hand, I think where people might have been more familiar with seeing science progress a bit more slowly and reach consensus around some of these health issues, having that emerge very rapidly can present challenges even we found with some of the work we did on Alpha and then the Delta variants, and it was the early quantification of these.Adam Kucharski (10:08):So really the big question is, is this thing more transmissible? Because at the time countries were thinking about control measures, thinking about relaxing things, and you've got this just enormous social economic health decision-making based around essentially is it a lot more spreadable or is it not? And you only had these fragments of evidence. So I think for me, that was really an illustration of the sharp end. And I think what we ended up doing with some of those was rather than arguing over a precise number, something like Delta, instead we kind of looked at, well, what's the range that matters? So in the sense of arguing over whether it's 40% or 50% or 30% more transmissible is perhaps less important than being, it's substantially more transmissible and it's going to start going up. Is it going to go up extremely fast or just very fast?Adam Kucharski (10:59):That's still a very useful conclusion. I think what often created some of the more challenges, I think the things that on reflection people looking back pick up on are where there was probably overstated certainty. We saw that around some of the airborne spread, for example, stated as a fact by in some cases some organizations, I think in some situations as well, governments had a constraint and presented it as scientific. So the UK, for example, would say testing isn't useful. And what was happening at the time was there wasn't enough tests. So it was more a case of they can't test at that volume. But I think blowing between what the science was saying and what the decision-making, and I think also one thing we found in the UK was we made a lot of the epidemiological evidence available. I think that was really, I think something that was important.Adam Kucharski (11:51):I found it a lot easier to communicate if talking to the media to be able to say, look, this is the paper that's out, this is what it means, this is the evidence. I always found it quite uncomfortable having to communicate things where you knew there were reports behind the scenes, but you couldn't actually articulate. But I think what that did is it created this impression that particularly epidemiology was driving the decision-making a lot more than it perhaps was in reality because so much of that was being made public and a lot more of the evidence around education or economics was being done behind the scenes. I think that created this kind of asymmetry in public perception about how that was feeding in. And so, I think there was always that, and it happens, it is really hard as well as a scientist when you've got journalists asking you how to run the country to work out those steps of am I describing the evidence behind what we're seeing? Am I describing the evidence about different interventions or am I proposing to some extent my value system on what we do? And I think all of that in very intense times can be very easy to get blurred together in public communication. I think we saw a few examples of that where things were being the follow the science on policy type angle where actually once you get into what you're prioritizing within a society, quite rightly, you've got other things beyond just the epidemiology driving that.Eric Topol (13:09):Yeah, I mean that term that you just use follow the science is such an important term because it tells us about the dynamic aspect. It isn't just a snapshot, it's constantly being revised. But during the pandemic we had things like the six-foot rule that was never supported by data, but yet still today, if I walk around my hospital and there's still the footprints of the six-foot rule and not paying attention to the fact that this was airborne and took years before some of these things were accepted. The flatten the curve stuff with lockdowns, which I never was supportive of that, but perhaps at the worst point, the idea that hospitals would get overrun was an issue, but it got carried away with school shutdowns for prolonged periods and in some parts of the world, especially very stringent lockdowns. But anyway, we learned a lot.Eric Topol (14:10):But perhaps one of the greatest lessons is that people's expectations about science is that it's absolute and somehow you have this truth that's not there. I mean, it's getting revised. It's kind of on the job training, it's on this case on the pandemic revision. But very interesting. And that gets us to, I think the next topic, which I think is a fundamental part of the book distributed throughout the book, which is the different types of proof in biomedicine and of course across all these domains. And so, you take us through things like randomized trials, p-values, 95 percent confidence intervals, counterfactuals, causation and correlation, peer review, the works, which is great because a lot of people have misconceptions of these things. So for example, randomized trials, which is the temple of the randomized trials, they're not as great as a lot of people think, yes, they can help us establish cause and effect, but they're skewed because of the people who come into the trial. So they may not at all be a representative sample. What are your thoughts about over deference to randomized trials?Adam Kucharski (15:31):Yeah, I think that the story of how we rank evidence in medicines a fascinating one. I mean even just how long it took for people to think about these elements of randomization. Fundamentally, what we're trying to do when we have evidence here in medicine or science is prevent ourselves from confusing randomness for a signal. I mean, that's fundamentally, we don't want to mistake something, we think it's going on and it's not. And the challenge, particularly with any intervention is you only get to see one version of reality. You can't give someone a drug, follow them, rewind history, not give them the drug and then follow them again. So one of the things that essentially randomization allows us to do is, if you have two groups, one that's been randomized, one that hasn't on average, the difference in outcomes between those groups is going to be down to the treatment effect.Adam Kucharski (16:20):So it doesn't necessarily mean in reality that'd be the case, but on average that's the expectation that you'd have. And it's kind of interesting actually that the first modern randomized control trial (RCT) in medicine in 1947, this is for TB and streptomycin. The randomization element actually, it wasn't so much statistical as behavioral, that if you have people coming to hospital, you could to some extent just say, we'll just alternate. We're not going to randomize. We're just going to first patient we'll say is a control, second patient a treatment. But what they found in a lot of previous studies was doctors have bias. Maybe that patient looks a little bit ill or that one maybe is on borderline for eligibility. And often you got these quite striking imbalances when you allowed it for human judgment. So it was really about shielding against those behavioral elements. But I think there's a few situations, it's a really powerful tool for a lot of these questions, but as you mentioned, one is this issue of you have the population you study on and then perhaps in reality how that translates elsewhere.Adam Kucharski (17:17):And we see, I mean things like flu vaccines are a good example, which are very dependent on immunity and evolution and what goes on in different populations. Sometimes you've had a result on a vaccine in one place and then the effectiveness doesn't translate in the same way to somewhere else. I think the other really important thing to bear in mind is, as I said, it's the averaging that you're getting an average effect between two different groups. And I think we see certainly a lot of development around things like personalized medicine where actually you're much more interested in the outcome for the individual. And so, what a trial can give you evidence is on average across a group, this is the effect that I can expect this intervention to have. But we've now seen more of the emergence things like N=1 studies where you can actually over the same individual, particularly for chronic conditions, look at those kind of interventions.Adam Kucharski (18:05):And also there's just these extreme examples where you're ethically not going to run a trial, there's never been a trial of whether it's a good idea to have intensive care units in hospitals or there's a lot of these kind of historical treatments which are just so overwhelmingly effective that we're not going to run trial. So almost this hierarchy over time, you can see it getting shifted because actually you do have these situations where other forms of evidence can get you either closer to what you need or just more feasibly an answer where it's just not ethical or practical to do an RCT.Eric Topol (18:37):And that brings us to the natural experiments I just wrote about recently, the one with shingles, which there's two big natural experiments to suggest that shingles vaccine might reduce the risk of Alzheimer's, an added benefit beyond the shingles that was not anticipated. Your thoughts about natural experiments, because here you're getting a much different type of population assessment, again, not at the individual level, but not necessarily restricted by some potentially skewed enrollment criteria.Adam Kucharski (19:14):I think this is as emerged as a really valuable tool. It's kind of interesting, in the book you're talking to economists like Josh Angrist, that a lot of these ideas emerge in epidemiology, but I think were really then taken up by economists, particularly as they wanted to add more credibility to a lot of these policy questions. And ultimately, it comes down to this issue that for a lot of problems, we can't necessarily intervene and randomize, but there might be a situation that's done it to some extent for us, so the classic example is the Vietnam draft where it was kind of random birthdays with drawn out of lottery. And so, there's been a lot of studies subsequently about the effect of serving in the military on different subsequent lifetime outcomes because broadly those people have been randomized. It was for a different reason. But you've got that element of randomization driving that.Adam Kucharski (20:02):And so again, with some of the recent shingles data and other studies, you might have a situation for example, where there's been an intervention that's somewhat arbitrary in terms of time. It's a cutoff on a birth date, for example. And under certain assumptions you could think, well, actually there's no real reason for the person on this day and this day to be fundamentally different. I mean, perhaps there might be effects of cohorts if it's school years or this sort of thing. But generally, this isn't the same as having people who are very, very different ages and very different characteristics. It's just nature, or in this case, just a policy intervention for a different reason has given you that randomization, which allows you or pseudo randomization, which allows you to then look at something about the effect of an intervention that you wouldn't as reliably if you were just digging into the data of yes, no who's received a vaccine.Eric Topol (20:52):Yeah, no, I think it's really valuable. And now I think increasingly given priority, if you can find these natural experiments and they're not always so abundant to use to extrapolate from, but when they are, they're phenomenal. The causation correlation is so big. The issue there, I mean Judea Pearl's, the Book of Why, and you give so many great examples throughout the book in Proof. I wonder if you could comment that on that a bit more because this is where associations are confused somehow or other with a direct effect. And we unfortunately make these jumps all too frequently. Perhaps it's the most common problem that's occurring in the way we interpret medical research data.Adam Kucharski (21:52):Yeah, I think it's an issue that I think a lot of people get drilled into in their training just because a correlation between things doesn't mean that that thing causes this thing. But it really struck me as I talked to people, researching the book, in practice in research, there's actually a bit more to it in how it's played out. So first of all, if there's a correlation between things, it doesn't tell you much generally that's useful for intervention. If two things are correlated, it doesn't mean that changing that thing's going to have an effect on that thing. There might be something that's influencing both of them. If you have more ice cream sales, it will lead to more heat stroke cases. It doesn't mean that changing ice cream sales is going to have that effect, but it does allow you to make predictions potentially because if you can identify consistent patterns, you can say, okay, if this thing going up, I'm going to make a prediction that this thing's going up.Adam Kucharski (22:37):So one thing I found quite striking, actually talking to research in different fields is how many fields choose to focus on prediction because it kind of avoids having to deal with this cause and effect problem. And even in fields like psychology, it was kind of interesting that there's a lot of focus on predicting things like relationship outcomes, but actually for people, you don't want a prediction about your relationship. You want to know, well, how can I do something about it? You don't just want someone to sell you your relationship's going to go downhill. So there's almost part of the challenge is people just got stuck on prediction because it's an easier field of work, whereas actually some of those problems will involve intervention. I think the other thing that really stood out for me is in epidemiology and a lot of other fields, rightly, people are very cautious to not get that mixed up.Adam Kucharski (23:24):They don't want to mix up correlations or associations with causation, but you've kind of got this weird situation where a lot of papers go out of their way to not use causal language and say it's an association, it's just an association. It's just an association. You can't say anything about causality. And then the end of the paper, they'll say, well, we should think about introducing more of this thing or restricting this thing. So really the whole paper and its purpose is framed around a causal intervention, but it's extremely careful throughout the paper to not frame it as a causal claim. So I think we almost by skirting that too much, we actually avoid the problems that people sometimes care about. And I think a lot of the nice work that's been going on in causal inference is trying to get people to confront this more head on rather than say, okay, you can just stay in this prediction world and that's fine. And then just later maybe make a policy suggestion off the back of it.Eric Topol (24:20):Yeah, I think this is cause and effect is a very alluring concept to support proof as you so nicely go through in the book. But of course, one of the things that we use to help us is the biological mechanism. So here you have, let's say for example, you're trying to get a new drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the request is, well, we want two trials, randomized trials, independent. We want to have p-values that are significant, and we want to know the biological mechanism ideally with the dose response of the drug. But there are many drugs as you review that have no biological mechanism established. And even when the tobacco problems were mounting, the actual mechanism of how tobacco use caused cancer wasn't known. So how important is the biological mechanism, especially now that we're well into the AI world where explainability is demanded. And so, we don't know the mechanism, but we also don't know the mechanism and lots of things in medicine too, like anesthetics and even things as simple as aspirin, how it works and many others. So how do we deal with this quest for the biological mechanism?Adam Kucharski (25:42):I think that's a really good point. It shows almost a lot of the transition I think we're going through currently. I think particularly for things like smoking cancer where it's very hard to run a trial. You can't make people randomly take up smoking. Having those additional pieces of evidence, whether it's an analogy with a similar carcinogen, whether it's a biological mechanism, can help almost give you more supports for that argument that there's a cause and effect going on. But I think what I found quite striking, and I realized actually that it's something that had kind of bothered me a bit and I'd be interested to hear whether it bothers you, but with the emergence of AI, it's almost a bit of the loss of scientific satisfaction. I think you grow up with learning about how the world works and why this is doing what it's doing.Adam Kucharski (26:26):And I talked for example of some of the people involved with AlphaFold and some of the subsequent work in installing those predictions about structures. And they'd almost made peace with it, which I found interesting because I think they started off being a bit uncomfortable with like, yeah, you've got these remarkable AI models making these predictions, but we don't understand still biologically what's happening here. But I think they're just settled in saying, well, biology is really complex on some of these problems, and if we can have a tool that can give us this extremely valuable information, maybe that's okay. And it was just interesting that they'd really kind of gone through that kind process, which I think a lot of people are still grappling with and that almost that discomfort of using AI and what's going to convince you that that's a useful reliable prediction whether it's something like predicting protein folding or getting in a self-driving car. What's the evidence you need to convince you that's reliable?Eric Topol (27:26):Yeah, no, I'm so glad you brought that up because when Demis Hassabis and John Jumper won the Nobel Prize, the point I made was maybe there should be an asterisk with AI because they don't know how it works. I mean, they had all the rich data from the protein data bank, and they got the transformer model to do it for 200 million protein structure prediction, but they still to this day don't fully understand how the model really was working. So it reinforces what you're just saying. And of course, it cuts across so many types of AI. It's just that we tend to hold different standards in medicine not realizing that there's lots of lack of explainability for routine medical treatments today. Now one of the things that I found fascinating in your book, because there's different levels of proof, different types of proof, but solid logical systems.Eric Topol (28:26):And on page 60 of the book, especially pertinent to the US right now, there is a bit about Kurt Gödel and what he did there was he basically, there was a question about dictatorship in the US could it ever occur? And Gödel says, “oh, yes, I can prove it.” And he's using the constitution itself to prove it, which I found fascinating because of course we're seeing that emerge right now. Can you give us a little bit more about this, because this is fascinating about the Fifth Amendment, and I mean I never thought that the Constitution would allow for a dictatorship to emerge.Adam Kucharski (29:23):And this was a fascinating story, Kurt Gödel who is one of the greatest logical minds of the 20th century and did a lot of work, particularly in the early 20th century around system of rules, particularly things like mathematics and whether they can ever be really fully satisfying. So particularly in mathematics, he showed that there were this problem that is very hard to have a set of rules for something like arithmetic that was both complete and covered every situation, but also had no contradictions. And I think a lot of countries, if you go back, things like Napoleonic code and these attempts to almost write down every possible legal situation that could be imaginable, always just ascended into either they needed amendments or they had contradictions. I think Gödel's work really summed it up, and there's a story, this is in the late forties when he had his citizenship interview and Einstein and Oskar Morgenstern went along as witnesses for him.Adam Kucharski (30:17):And it's always told as kind of a lighthearted story as this logical mind, this academic just saying something silly in front of the judge. And actually, to my own admission, I've in the past given talks and mentioned it in this slightly kind of lighthearted way, but for the book I got talking to a few people who'd taken it more seriously. I realized actually he's this extremely logically focused mind at the time, and maybe there should have been something more to it. And people who have kind of dug more into possibilities was saying, well, what could he have spotted that bothered him? And a lot of his work that he did about consistency in mass was around particularly self-referential statements. So if I say this sentence is false, it's self-referential and if it is false, then it's true, but if it's true, then it's false and you get this kind of weird self-referential contradictions.Adam Kucharski (31:13):And so, one of the theories about Gödel was that in the Constitution, it wasn't that there was a kind of rule for someone can become a dictator, but rather people can use the mechanisms within the Constitution to make it easier to make further amendments. And he kind of downward cycle of amendment that he had seen happening in Europe and the run up to the war, and again, because this is never fully documented exactly what he thought, but it's one of the theories that it wouldn't just be outright that it would just be this cycle process of weakening and weakening and weakening and making it easier to add. And actually, when I wrote that, it was all the earlier bits of the book that I drafted, I did sort of debate whether including it I thought, is this actually just a bit in the weeds of American history? And here we are. Yeah, it's remarkable.Eric Topol (32:00):Yeah, yeah. No, I mean I found, it struck me when I was reading this because here back in 1947, there was somebody predicting that this could happen based on some, if you want to call it loopholes if you will, or the ability to change things, even though you would've thought otherwise that there wasn't any possible capability for that to happen. Now, one of the things I thought was a bit contradictory is two parts here. One is from Angus Deaton, he wrote, “Gold standard thinking is magical thinking.” And then the other is what you basically are concluding in many respects. “To navigate proof, we must reach into a thicket of errors and biases. We must confront monsters and embrace uncertainty, balancing — and rebalancing —our beliefs. We must seek out every useful fragment of data, gather every relevant tool, searching wider and climbing further. Finding the good foundations among the bad. Dodging dogma and falsehoods. Questioning. Measuring. Triangulating. Convincing. Then perhaps, just perhaps, we'll reach the truth in time.” So here you have on the one hand your search for the truth, proof, which I think that little paragraph says it all. In many respects, it sums up somewhat to the work that you review here and on the other you have this Nobel laureate saying, you don't have to go to extremes here. The enemy of good is perfect, perhaps. I mean, how do you reconcile this sense that you shouldn't go so far? Don't search for absolute perfection of proof.Adam Kucharski (33:58):Yeah, I think that encapsulates a lot of what the book is about, is that search for certainty and how far do you have to go. I think one of the things, there's a lot of interesting discussion, some fascinating papers around at what point do you use these studies? What are their flaws? But I think one of the things that does stand out is across fields, across science, medicine, even if you going to cover law, AI, having these kind of cookie cutter, this is the definitive way of doing it. And if you just follow this simple rule, if you do your p-value, you'll get there and you'll be fine. And I think that's where a lot of the danger is. And I think that's what we've seen over time. Certain science people chasing certain targets and all the behaviors that come around that or in certain situations disregarding valuable evidence because you've got this kind of gold standard and nothing else will do.Adam Kucharski (34:56):And I think particularly in a crisis, it's very dangerous to have that because you might have a low level of evidence that demands a certain action and you almost bias yourself towards inaction if you have these kind of very simple thresholds. So I think for me, across all of these stories and across the whole book, I mean William Gosset who did a lot of pioneering work on statistical experiments at Guinness in the early 20th century, he had this nice question he sort of framed is, how much do we lose? And if we're thinking about the problems, there's always more studies we can do, there's always more confidence we can have, but whether it's a patient we want to treat or crisis we need to deal with, we need to work out actually getting that level of proof that's really appropriate for where we are currently.Eric Topol (35:49):I think exceptionally important that there's this kind of spectrum or continuum in following science and search for truth and that distinction, I think really nails it. Now, one of the things that's unique in the book is you don't just go through all the different types of how you would get to proof, but you also talk about how the evidence is acted on. And for example, you quote, “they spent a lot of time misinforming themselves.” This is the whole idea of taking data and torturing it or using it, dredging it however way you want to support either conspiracy theories or alternative facts. Basically, manipulating sometimes even emasculating what evidence and data we have. And one of the sentences, or I guess this is from Sir Francis Bacon, “truth is a daughter of time”, but the added part is not authority. So here we have our president here that repeats things that are wrong, fabricated or wrong, and he keeps repeating to the point that people believe it's true. But on the other hand, you could say truth is a daughter of time because you like to not accept any truth immediately. You like to see it get replicated and further supported, backed up. So in that one sentence, truth is a daughter of time not authority, there's the whole ball of wax here. Can you take us through that? Because I just think that people don't understand that truth being tested over time, but also manipulated by its repetition. This is a part of the big problem that we live in right now.Adam Kucharski (37:51):And I think it's something that writing the book and actually just reflecting on it subsequently has made me think about a lot in just how people approach these kinds of problems. I think that there's an idea that conspiracy theorists are just lazy and have maybe just fallen for a random thing, but talking to people, you really think about these things a lot more in the field. And actually, the more I've ended up engaging with people who believe things that are just outright unevidenced around vaccines, around health issues, they often have this mountain of papers and data to hand and a lot of it, often they will be peer reviewed papers. It won't necessarily be supporting the point that they think it's supports.Adam Kucharski (38:35):But it's not something that you can just say everything you're saying is false, that there's actually often a lot of things that have been put together and it's just that leap to that conclusion. I think you also see a lot of scientific language borrowed. So I gave a talker early this year and it got posted on YouTube. It had conspiracy theories it, and there was a lot of conspiracy theory supporters who piled in the comments and one of the points they made is skepticism is good. It's the kind of law society, take no one's word for it, you need this. We are the ones that are kind of doing science and people who just assume that science is settled are in the wrong. And again, you also mentioned that repetition. There's this phenomenon, it's the illusory truth problem that if you repeatedly tell someone someone's something's false, it'll increase their belief in it even if it's something quite outrageous.Adam Kucharski (39:27):And that mimics that scientific repetition because people kind of say, okay, well if I've heard it again and again, it's almost like if you tweak these as mini experiments, I'm just accumulating evidence that this thing is true. So it made me think a lot about how you've got essentially a lot of mimicry of the scientific method, amount of data and how you present it and this kind of skepticism being good, but I think a lot of it comes down to as well as just looking at theological flaws, but also ability to be wrong in not actually seeking out things that confirm. I think all of us, it's something that I've certainly tried to do a lot working on emergencies, and one of the scientific advisory groups that I worked on almost it became a catchphrase whenever someone presented something, they finished by saying, tell me why I'm wrong.Adam Kucharski (40:14):And if you've got a variant that's more transmissible, I don't want to be right about that really. And it is something that is quite hard to do and I found it is particularly for something that's quite high pressure, trying to get a policymaker or someone to write even just non-publicly by themselves, write down what you think's going to happen or write down what would convince you that you are wrong about something. I think particularly on contentious issues where someone's got perhaps a lot of public persona wrapped up in something that's really hard to do, but I think it's those kind of elements that distinguish between getting sucked into a conspiracy theory and really seeking out evidence that supports it and trying to just get your theory stronger and stronger and actually seeking out things that might overturn your belief about the world. And it's often those things that we don't want overturned. I think those are the views that we all have politically or in other ways, and that's often where the problems lie.Eric Topol (41:11):Yeah, I think this is perhaps one of, if not the most essential part here is that to try to deal with the different views. We have biases as you emphasized throughout, but if you can use these different types of proof to have a sound discussion, conversation, refutation whereby you don't summarily dismiss another view which may be skewed and maybe spurious or just absolutely wrong, maybe fabricated whatever, but did you can engage and say, here's why these are my proof points, or this is why there's some extent of certainty you can have regarding this view of the data. I think this is so fundamental because unfortunately as we saw during the pandemic, the strident minority, which were the anti-science, anti-vaxxers, they were summarily dismissed as being kooks and adopting conspiracy theories without the right engagement and the right debates. And I think this might've helped along the way, no less the fact that a lot of scientists didn't really want to engage in the first place and adopt this methodical proof that you've advocated in the book so many different ways to support a hypothesis or an assertion. Now, we've covered a lot here, Adam. Have I missed some central parts of the book and the effort because it's really quite extraordinary. I know it's your third book, but it's certainly a standout and it certainly it's a standout not just for your books, but books on this topic.Adam Kucharski (43:13):Thanks. And it's much appreciated. It was not an easy book to write. I think at times, I kind of wondered if I should have taken on the topic and I think a core thing, your last point speaks to that. I think a core thing is that gap often between what convinces us and what convinces someone else. I think it's often very tempting as a scientist to say the evidence is clear or the science has proved this. But even on something like the vaccines, you do get the loud minority who perhaps think they're putting microchips in people and outlandish views, but you actually get a lot more people who might just have some skepticism of pharmaceutical companies or they might have, my wife was pregnant actually at the time during Covid and we waited up because there wasn't much data on pregnancy and the vaccine. And I think it's just finding what is convincing. Is it having more studies from other countries? Is it understanding more about the biology? Is it understanding how you evaluate some of those safety signals? And I think that's just really important to not just think what convinces us and it's going to be obvious to other people, but actually think where are they coming from? Because ultimately having proof isn't that good unless it leads to the action that can make lives better.Eric Topol (44:24):Yeah. Well, look, you've inculcated my mind with this book, Adam, called Proof. Anytime I think of the word proof, I'm going to be thinking about you. So thank you. Thanks for taking the time to have a conversation about your book, your work, and I know we're going to count on you for the astute mathematics and analysis of outbreaks in the future, which we will see unfortunately. We are seeing now, in fact already in this country with measles and whatnot. So thank you and we'll continue to follow your great work.**************************************Thanks for listening, watching or reading this Ground Truths podcast/post.If you found this interesting please share it!That makes the work involved in putting these together especially worthwhile.I'm also appreciative for your subscribing to Ground Truths. All content —its newsletters, analyses, and podcasts—is free, open-access. I'm fortunate to get help from my producer Jessica Nguyen and Sinjun Balabanoff for audio/video tech support to pull these podcasts together for Scripps Research.Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don't hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years.A bit of an update on SUPER AGERSMy book has been selected as a Next Big Idea Club winner for Season 26 by Adam Grant, Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink. This club has spotlighted the most groundbreaking nonfiction books for over a decade. As a winning title, my book will be shipped to thousands of thoughtful readers like you, featured alongside a reading guide, a "Book Bite," Next Big Idea Podcast episode as well as a live virtual Q&A with me in the club's vibrant online community. If you're interested in joining the club, here's a promo code SEASON26 for 20% off at the website. SUPER AGERS reached #3 for all books on Amazon this week. This was in part related to the segment on the book on the TODAY SHOW which you can see here. Also at Amazon there is a remarkable sale on the hardcover book for $10.l0 at the moment for up to 4 copies. Not sure how long it will last or what prompted it.The journalist Paul von Zielbauer has a Substack “Aging With Strength” and did an extensive interview with me on the biology of aging and how we can prevent the major age-related diseases. Here's the link. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

There is a shift happening in the complex world of proof. Simulation and probabilistic approaches are increasingly accepted as ‘good enough' in areas traditionally dominated by exact proofs. Persuasion depends on the degree of certainty needed.Adam Kucharski is a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and also the author of three books, Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty, The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread--And Why They Stop, and The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling.Greg and Adam discuss the versatile concept of 'proof', examining how it applies differently across mathematics, law, medicine, and practical decision-making. Adam discusses the challenges of proving concepts under uncertainty, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the role of intuition versus formal modeling in various fields. They also explore the crossover of epidemiological principles into finance, marketing, cybersecurity, and online content dynamics, illustrating the universal relevance of contagion theories. The episode highlights how simulation and probabilistic approaches are increasingly accepted in areas traditionally dominated by exact proofs.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The gap between science and policy09:25: One of the challenges we had in COVID is this dimension of a problem where all directions had a lot of enormous downsides, and countries were having to make that under pressure. And even one of the things that I think I did not really appreciate at the time was, even later in the year, when a lot of these questions about the severity, a lot of these questions about transmission, had really been resolved because we had much better data. We still had a lot of this tension demanding, "Oh, we cannot be sure about something," or "You know, we need much, much higher evidence." And I think that is the gap between where kind of science lies and where policy lies.It's not the content, it's the contagion37:59: I think a lot of people think about the content, but obviously it is not just, "It is something goes viral." It is not just about the content. It is not about what you have written; it is about the network through which it is spreading. It is about the susceptibility of that network. It is about the medium you use. Do you have it that lingers somewhere? Is it just something you stick on the feed and it kind of vanishes? So, there is a direct analogy there with the different elements and how they trade off in ultimately what you see in terms of spread.What human networks can't teach us about machines46:35: One thing that is really interesting about computer systems is the variation in contacts you see in the network is enormous. You basically get some hubs that are just connected to a huge number of computers, and some are connected to very few at all. So that makes the transmission much burster.It is not like—so humans have some variation in their contacts—but most people have about 10 contacts a day, in terms of conversations or people they exchange words with. Some more, some less, but you do not have people generally have like 10,000 contacts in a day, whereas in computers you can have that. So it makes the potential for some things to actually persist at quite low levels for quite a long time because it will kind of hit this application and then simmer along, and then hit another one and simmer along.Show Links:Recommended Resources:EuclidGeorge E. P. BoxWilliam Sealy GossetP-valueRonald RossJonah PerettiDuncan J. WattsAmazon Web ServicesMonty HallGuest Profile:AdamKucharski.ioFaculty Profile at London School of Hygiene & Tropical MedicineSocial Profile on BlueSkyGuest Work:Amazon Author PageProof: The Art and Science of CertaintyThe Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread--And Why They StopThe Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of GamblingSubstack NewsletterGoogle Scholar PageTED Talks

Today we're talking with health and nutrition expert Dr. Stuart Gillespie, author of a new book entitled Food Fight: from Plunder and Profit to People and Planet. Using decades of research and insight gathered from around the world, Dr. Gillespie wants to reimagine our global food system and plot a way forward to a sustainable, equitable, and healthy food future - one where our food system isn't making us sick. Certainly not the case now. Over the course of his career, Dr. Gillespie has worked with the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition in Geneva with UNICEF in India and with the International Food Policy Research Institute, known as IFPRI, where he's led initiatives tackling the double burden of malnutrition and agriculture and health research. He holds a PhD in human nutrition from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Interview Summary So, you've really had a global view of the agriculture system, and this is captured in your book. And to give some context to our listeners, in your book, you describe the history of the global food system, how it's evolved into this system, sort of warped, if you will, into a mechanism that creates harm and it destroys more than it produces. That's a pretty bold statement. That it destroys more than it produces, given how much the agriculture around the world does produce. Tell us a bit more if you would. Yes, that statement actually emerged from recent work by the Food Systems Economic Commission. And they costed out the damage or the downstream harms generated by the global food system at around $15 trillion per year, which is 12% of GDP. And that manifests in various ways. Health harms or chronic disease. It also manifests in terms of climate crisis and risks and environmental harms, but also. Poverty of food system workers at the front line, if you like. And it's largely because we have a system that's anachronistic. It's a system that was built in a different time, in a different century for a different purpose. It was really started to come together after the second World War. To mass produce cheap calories to prevent famine, but also through the Green Revolution, as that was picking up with the overproduction of staples to use that strategically through food aid to buffer the West to certain extent from the spread of communism. And over time and over the last 50 years of neoliberal policies we've got a situation where food is less and less viewed as a human right, or a basic need. It's seen as a commodity and the system has become increasingly financialized. And there's a lot of evidence captured by a handful of transnationals, different ones at different points in the system from production to consumption. But in each case, they wield huge amounts of power. And that manifests in various ways. We have, I think a system that's anachronistic The point about it, and the problem we have, is that it's a system revolves around maximizing profit and the most profitable foods and products of those, which are actually the least healthy for us as individuals. And it's not a system that's designed to nourish us. It's a system designed to maximize profit. And we don't have a system that really aims to produce whole foods for people. We have a system that produces raw ingredients for industrial formulations to end up as ultra processed foods. We have a system that produces cattle feed and, and biofuels, and some whole foods. But it, you know, that it's so skewed now, and we see the evidence all around us that it manifests in all sorts of different ways. One in three people on the planet in some way malnourished. We have around 12 million adult deaths a year due to diet related chronic disease. And I followed that from colonial times that, that evolution and the way it operates and the way it moves across the world. And what is especially frightening, I think, is the speed at which this so-called nutrition transition or dietary transition is happening in lower income or middle income countries. We saw this happening over in the US and we saw it happening in the UK where I am. And then in Latin America, and then more Southeast Asia, then South Asia. Now, very much so in Sub-Saharan Africa where there is no regulation really, apart from perhaps South Africa. So that's long answer to your intro question. Let's dive into a couple of things that you brought up. First, the Green Revolution. So that's a term that many of our listeners will know and they'll understand what the Green Revolution is, but not everybody. Would you explain what that was and how it's had these effects throughout the food systems around the world? Yes, I mean around the, let's see, about 1950s, Norman Borlag, who was a crop breeder and his colleagues in Mexico discovered through crop breeding trials, a high yielding dwarf variety. But over time and working with different partners, including well in India as well, with the Swaminathan Foundation. And Swaminathan, for example, managed to perfect these new strains. High yielding varieties that doubled yields for a given acreage of land in terms of staples. And over time, this started to work with rice, with wheat, maize and corn. Very dependent on fertilizers, very dependent on pesticides, herbicides, which we now realize had significant downstream effects in terms of environmental harms. But also, diminishing returns in as much as, you know, that went through its trajectory in terms of maximizing productivity. So, all the Malthusian predictions of population growth out running our ability to feed the planet were shown to not to be true. But it also generated inequity that the richest farmers got very rich, very quickly, the poorer farmers got slightly richer, but that there was this large gap. So, inequity was never really properly dealt with through the Green Revolution in its early days. And that overproduction and the various institutions that were set in place, the manner in which governments backed off any form of regulation for overproduction. They continued to subsidize over production with these very large subsidies upstream, meant that we are in the situation we are now with regard to different products are being used to deal with that excess over production. So, that idea of using petroleum-based inputs to create the foods in the first place. And the large production of single crops has a lot to do with that Green Revolution that goes way back to the 1950s. It's interesting to see what it's become today. It's sort of that original vision multiplied by a billion. And boy, it really does continue to have impacts. You know, it probably was the forerunner to genetically modified foods as well, which I'd like to ask you about in a little bit. But before I do that, you said that much of the world's food supply is governed by a pretty small number of players. So who are these players? If you look at the downstream retail side, you have Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Unilever. Collectively around 70% of retail is governed by those companies. If you look upstream in terms of agricultural and agribusiness, you have Cargill, ADM, Louis Dreyfus, and Bunge. These change to a certain extent. What doesn't change very much are the numbers involved that are very, very small and that the size of these corporations is so large that they have immense power. And, so those are the companies that we could talk about what that power looks like and why it's problematic. But the other side of it's here where I am in the UK, we have a similar thing playing out with regard to store bought. Food or products, supermarkets that control 80% as Tesco in the UK, Asta, Sainsbury's, and Morrisons just control. You have Walmart, you have others, and that gives them immense power to drive down the costs that they will pay to producers and also potentially increase the cost that they charge as prices of the products that are sold in these supermarkets. So that profit markup, profit margins are in increased in their favor. They can also move around their tax liabilities around the world because they're transnational. And that's just the economic market and financial side on top of that. And as you know, there's a whole raft of political ways in which they use this power to infiltrate policy, influence policy through what I've called in Chapter 13, the Dark Arts of Policy Interference. Your previous speaker, Murray Carpenter, talked about that with regard to Coca-Cola and that was a very, yeah, great example. But there are many others. In many ways these companies have been brilliant at adapting to the regulatory landscape, to the financial incentives, to the way the agriculture system has become warped. I mean, in some ways they've done the warping, but in a lot of ways, they're adapting to the conditions that allow warping to occur. And because they've invested so heavily, like in manufacturing plants to make high fructose corn syrup or to make biofuels or things like that. It'd be pretty hard for them to undo things, and that's why they lobby so strongly in favor of keeping the status quo. Let me ask you about the issue of power because you write about this in a very compelling way. And you talk about power imbalances in the food system. What does that look like in your mind, and why is it such a big part of the problem? Well, yes. And power manifests in different ways. It operates sometimes covertly, sometimes overtly. It manifests at different levels from, you know, grassroots level, right up to national and international in terms of international trade. But what I've described is the way markets are captured or hyper concentrated. That power that comes with these companies operating almost like a cartel, can be used to affect political or to dampen down, block governments from regulating them through what I call a five deadly Ds: dispute or dispute or doubt, distort, distract, disguise, and dodge. And you've written very well Kelly, with I think Kenneth Warner about the links between big food and big tobacco and the playbook and the realization on the part of Big Tobacco back in the '50s, I think, that they couldn't compete with the emerging evidence of the harms of smoking. They had to secure the science. And that involved effectively buying research or paying for researchers to generate a raft of study shown that smoking wasn't a big deal or problem. And also, public relations committees, et cetera, et cetera. And we see the same happening with big food. Conflicts of interest is a big deal. It needs to be avoided. It can't be managed. And I think a lot of people think it is just a question of disclosure. Disclosure is never enough of conflict of interest, almost never enough. We have, in the UK, we have nine regulatory bodies. Every one of them has been significantly infiltrated by big food, including the most recent one, which has just been designated to help develop a national food stretch in the UK. We've had a new government here and we thought things were changing, beginning to wonder now because big food is on that board or on that committee. And it shouldn't be, you know. It shouldn't be anywhere near the policy table anyway. That's so it's one side is conflict of interest. Distraction: I talk about corporate social responsibility initiatives and the way that they're designed to distract. On the one hand, if you think of a person on a left hand is doing these wonderful small-scale projects, which are high visibility and they're doing good. In and off themselves they're doing good. But they're small scale. Whereas the right hand is a core business, which is generating harm at a much larger scale. And the left hand is designed to distract you from the right hand. So that distraction, those sort of corporate CSR initiatives are a big part of the problem. And then 'Disguise' is, as you know, with the various trade associations and front groups, which acted almost like Trojan horses, in many ways. Because the big food companies are paying up as members of these committees, but they don't get on the program of these international conferences. But the front groups do and the front groups act on in their interests. So that's former disguise or camouflage. The World Business Council on Sustainable Development is in the last few years, has been very active in the space. And they have Philip Morris on there as members, McDonald's and Nestle, Coke, everybody, you know. And they deliberately actually say It's all fine. That we have an open door, which I, I just can't. I don't buy it. And there are others. So, you know, I think these can be really problematic. The other thing I should mention about power and as what we've learned more about, if you go even upstream from the big food companies, and you look at the hedge funds and the asset management firms like Vanguard, state Capital, BlackRock, and the way they've been buying up shares of big food companies and blocking any moves in annual general meetings to increase or improve the healthiness of portfolios. Because they're so powerful in terms of the number of shares they hold to maximize profit for pension funds. So, we started to see the pressure that is being put on big food upstream by the nature of the system, that being financialized, even beyond the companies themselves, you know? You were mentioning that these companies, either directly themselves or through their front organizations or the trade association block important things that might be done in agriculture. Can you think of an example of that? Yes, well actually I did, with some colleagues here in the UK, the Food Foundation, an investigation into corporate lobbying during the previous conservative government. And basically, in the five years after the pandemic, we logged around 1,400 meetings between government ministers and big food. Then we looked at the public interest NGOs and the number of meetings they had over that same period, and it was 35, so it was a 40-fold difference. Oh goodness. Which I was actually surprised because I thought they didn't have to do much because the Tory government was never going to really regulate them anyway. And you look in the register, there is meant to be transparency. There are rules about disclosure of what these lobbying meetings were meant to be for, with whom, for what purpose, what outcome. That's just simply not followed. You get these crazy things being written into the those logs like, 'oh, we had a meeting to discuss business, and that's it.' And we know that at least what happened in the UK, which I'm more familiar with. We had a situation where constantly any small piecemeal attempt to regulate, for example, having a watershed at 9:00 PM so that kids could not see junk food advertised on their screens before 9:00 PM. That simple regulation was delayed, delayed. So, delay is actually another D you know. It is part of it. And that's an example of that. That's a really good example. And you've reminded me of an example where Marian Nestle and I wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times, many years ago, on an effort by the WHO, the World Health Organization to establish a quite reasonable guideline for how much added sugar people should have in their diet. And the sugar industry stepped in in the biggest way possible. And there was a congressional caucus on sugar or something like that in our US Congress and the sugar industry and the other players in the food industry started interacting with them. They put big pressure on the highest levels of the US government to pressure the WHO away from this really quite moderate reasonable sugar standard. And the US ultimately threatened the World Health Organization with taking away its funding just on one thing - sugar. Now, thankfully the WHO didn't back down and ultimately came out with some pretty good guidelines on sugar that have been even stronger over the years. But it was pretty disgraceful. That's in the book that, that story is in the book. I think it was 2004 with the strategy on diet, physical activity. And Tommy Thompson was a health secretary and there were all sorts of shenanigans and stories around that. Yes, that is a very powerful example. It was a crazy power play and disgraceful how our government acted and how the companies acted and all the sort of deceitful ways they did things. And of course, that's happened a million times. And you gave the example of all the discussions in the UK between the food industry and the government people. So, let's get on to something more positive. What can be done? You can see these massive corporate influences, revolving doors in government, a lot of things that would argue for keeping the status quo. So how in the world do you turn things around? Yeah, good question. I really believe, I've talked about a lot of people. I've looked a lot of the evidence. I really believe that we need a systemic sort of structural change and understanding that's not going to happen overnight. But ultimately, I think there's a role for a government, citizens civil society, media, academics, food industry, obviously. And again, it's different between the UK and US and elsewhere in terms of the ability and the potential for change. But governments have to step in and govern. They have to set the guardrails and the parameters. And I talk in the book about four key INs. So, the first one is institutions in which, for example, there's a power to procure healthy food for schools, for hospitals, clinics that is being underutilized. And there's some great stories of individuals. One woman from Kenya who did this on her own and managed to get the government to back it and to scale it up, which is an incredible story. That's institutions. The second IN is incentives, and that's whereby sugar taxes, or even potentially junk food taxes as they have in Columbia now. And reforming the upstream subsidies on production is basically downregulating the harmful side, if you like, of the food system, but also using the potential tax dividend from that side to upregulate benefits via subsidies for low-income families. Rebalancing the system. That's the incentive side. The other side is information, and that involves labeling, maybe following the examples from Latin America with regard to black octagons in Chile and Mexico and Brazil. And dietary guidelines not being conflicted, in terms of conflicts of interest. And actually, that's the fourth IN: interests. So ridding government advisory bodies, guideline committees, of conflicts of interests. Cleaning up lobbying. Great examples in a way that can be done are from Canada and Ireland that we found. That's government. Citizens, and civil society, they can be involved in various ways exposing, opposing malpractice if you like, or harmful action on the part of industry or whoever else, or the non-action on the part of the government. Informing, advocating, building social movements. Lots I think can be learned through activist group in other domains or in other disciplines like HIV, climate. I think we need to make those connections much more. Media. I mean, the other thought is that the media have great, I mean in this country at least, you know, politicians tend to follow the media, or they're frightened of the media. And if the media turned and started doing deep dive stories of corporate shenanigans and you know, stuff that is under the radar, that would make a difference, I think. And then ultimately, I think then our industry starts to respond to different signals or should do or would do. So that in innovation is not just purely technological aimed at maximizing profit. It may be actually social. We need social innovation as well. There's a handful of things. But ultimately, I actually don't think the food system is broken because it is doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason. I think we need to change the system, and I'll say that will take time. It needs a real transformation. One, one last thing to say about that word transformation. Where in meetings I've been in over the last 10 years, so many people invoke food system transformation when they're not really talking about it. They're just talking about tweaking the margins or small, piecemeal ad hoc changes or interventions when we need to kind of press all the buttons or pull all the levers to get the kind of change that we need. And again, as I say, it was going to take some time, but we have to start moving that direction. Do you think there's reason to be hopeful and are there success stories you can point to, to make us feel a little bit better? Yeah, and I like that word, hope. I've just been reading a lot of essays from, actually, Rebecca Solnit has been writing a lot about hope as a warrior emotion. Radical hope, which it's different to optimism. Optimism went, oh, you know, things probably will be okay, but hope you make it. It's like a springboard for action. So I, yes, I'm hopeful and I think there are plenty of examples. Actually, a lot of examples from Latin America of things changing, and I think that's because they've been hit so fast, so hard. And I write in the book about what's happened in the US and UK it's happened over a period of, I don't know, 50, 60 years. But what's happened and is happening in Latin America has happened in just like 15 years. You know, it's so rapid that they've had to respond fast or get their act together quickly. And that's an interesting breed of activist scholars. You know, I think there's an interesting group, and again, if we connect across national boundaries across the world, we can learn a lot from that. There are great success stories coming out Chile from the past that we've seen what's happening in Mexico. Mexico was in a terrible situation after Vicente Fox came in, in the early 2000s when he brought all his Coca-Cola pals in, you know, the classic revolving door. And Mexico's obesity and diabetes went off to scale very quickly. But they're the first country with the sugar tax in 2014. And you see the pressure that was used to build the momentum behind that. Chile, Guido Girardi and the Black Octagon labels with other interventions. Rarely is it just one thing. It has to be a comprehensive across the board as far as possible. So, in Brazil, I think we will see things happening more in, in Thailand and Southeast Asia. We see things beginning to happen in India, South Africa. The obesity in Ghana, for example, changed so rapidly. There are some good people working in Ghana. So, you know, I think a good part of this is actually documenting those kind of stories as, and when they happen and publicizing them, you know. The way you portrayed the concept of hope, I think is a really good one. And when I asked you for some examples of success, what I was expecting you, you might say, well, there was this program and this part of a one country in Africa where they did something. But you're talking about entire countries making changes like Chile and Brazil and Mexico. That makes me very hopeful about the future when you get governments casting aside the influence of industry. At least long enough to enact some of these things that are definitely not in the best interest of industry, these traditional food companies. And that's all, I think, a very positive sign about big scale change. And hopefully what happens in these countries will become contagious in other countries will adopt them and then, you know, eventually they'll find their way to countries like yours and mine. Yes, I agree. That's how I see it. I used to do a lot of work on single, small interventions and do their work do they not work in this small environment. The problem we have is large scale, so we have to be large scale as well. BIO Dr. Stuart Gillespie has been fighting to transform our broken food system for the past 40 years. Stuart is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Nutrition, Diets and Health at theInternational Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). He has been at the helm of the IFPRI's Regional Network on AIDs, Livelihoods and Food Security, has led the flagship Agriculture for Nutrition and Health research program, was director of the Transform Nutrition program, and founded the Stories of Change initiative, amongst a host of other interventions into public food policy. His work – the ‘food fight' he has been waging – has driven change across all frontiers, from the grassroots (mothers in markets, village revolutionaries) to the political (corporate behemoths, governance). He holds a PhD in Human Nutrition from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 

In this episode of the Leadership Insights I Wish I Had Known at the Start series, Julia speaks with Falak Madhani, a health systems leader working in Pakistan, where she leads research and programmes focused on primary care, mental health, and suicide prevention in low-resource settings. Falak shares two hard-earned insights she wishes she'd known earlier. The first: stepping back as a leader too soon, even with the best intentions, can leave your team without the support and skill set only you can offer. Her second insight explores the complexity of leading with a deep sense of social justice. Falak speaks about the emotional cost of navigating injustice, whether it's systemic inequality, condescension in global health settings, or being overlooked despite expertise. She explains how leaders must balance their moral clarity with strategic patience choosing which fights to pick, and when. Listen to this episode to explore what it means to lead when you're tired, tested, and deeply committed to change. About the Guest: Falak Madhani is a health systems leader who works on the development and evaluation of healthcare approaches geared towards equity and social justice. Falak is passionate about enabling – through working closely with communities, patients, and healthcare providers – the creation of home-grown solutions that can make holistic primary care equitably available in low-resource settings. Falak's research portfolio is focused on primary care, mental healthcare and suicide prevention in Northern Pakistan. She holds an MSc Public Health in Developing Countries (now called the Public Health for Development program) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a liberal arts degree from Bennington College, in Vermont, USA. Falak is also trained in humanistic integrative therapy. As a part of the AKU Brain and Mind Institute, Falak leads the establishment of a Living Labs framework in Northern Pakistan for brain and mind research and programme development. She is concurrently Head of Research at Aga Khan Health Service, Pakistan.

In episode 13 of this season we are joined by the Food Foundation's Rebecca Tobi, and Plant-Based Health Professionals UK's founder, Dr Shireen Kassam to discuss the latest Food Foundation report 'Meat Facts'.  Rebecca is a Registered Nutritionist (RNutr), has a masters in Nutrition for Global Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and is the Food Foundation's Senior Business and Investor Engagement manager.Rebecca's in-depth knowledge of the report, combined with Shireen's expertise on the health implications of eating red, processed, and other meats, ensure this is a really rich discussion. The UK may continue to ignore the health warnings that are associated with meat consumption but hopefully anyone who is listening to this episode will take action to curb their own consumption for individual and planetary health.Find the full report  here: https://foodfoundation.org.uk/publication/meat-factsThe latest UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey:https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-diet-and-nutrition-survey-2019-to-2023/national-diet-and-nutrition-survey-2019-to-2023-reportThe excellent Food Foundation Podcast, Pod Bites: https://foodfoundation.org.uk/podcasts

In the third and final episode of our miniseries on infectious disease diagnostics, Jonathan sits down with global diagnostics leader Rosanna Peeling, Professor and Chair of Diagnostics Research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Together, they explore the life-saving role of diagnostics in global health, from battling STDs to confronting COVID-19, and examine how equitable access, social innovation, and regulatory reform can transform disease control and pandemic preparedness.   Timestamps: 00:00 – Introduction 06:09 – Rosanna's interest in microbiology 08:12 – The IDC's work 10:52 – Funding for diagnostics 13:30 – Diagnostic testing in low-resource settings 18:21 – Chlamydia research 24:19 – Regulatory approval challenges 29:35 – Social innovation 34:08 – Clinician adaptation 37:10 – Current diagnostic innovations 40:30 – Rosana's three wishes for healthcare

Why can mosquitoes harbor viruses without being affected while others cannot? Lee Haines, associate research professor in Medical Entomology at the University of Notre Dame, explores this. Lee Haines is a researcher with a PhD in Tropical Medicine and an MSc in Parasite Biochemistry and Microbiology, who specializes in diseases transmitted by arthropods. Her work […]

We see fever every day in the ICU but what's the best approach to diagnosis and when do we need to go on a Zebra hunt? In this episode, we're joined by Dr. Luis Tatem, a physician triple-boarded in Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases, and Critical Care — plus certified in Tropical Medicine from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. We explore the diagnostic and therapeutic approach to fever in the ICU, including practical pearls for evaluating fevers in patients returning from global travel. We then walk through high-yield case vignettes that illustrate diseases like malaria, dengue, typhoid, leptospirosis, and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two of the nation's most preeminent pediatricians, Dr. Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor, and Dr. Sapna Singh, Chief Medical Officer of Texas Children's Hospital, join host Dr. Vin Gupta for an expansive conversation on tackling health misinformation, the real meaning of the MAHA agenda, and the ongoing measles epidemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Aebhric O'Kelly talks with Professor Enrico Brunetti about his extensive experience with ultrasound in infectious diseases and tropical medicine. He shares insights into the evolution of ultrasound technology, its applications in clinical practice, and the importance of education in this field. The discussion also covers the short course he developed at the University of Pavia, the challenges faced in tropical medicine, and advice for new medics interested in ultrasound.TakeawaysUltrasound has been a clinical tool since the 1980s.There are continuous advancements in ultrasound applications.Training is crucial for effective ultrasound use.The short course aims to broaden understanding of ultrasound in tropical medicine.Postgraduate certification is available for online courses.Ultrasound can diagnose and treat various tropical diseases.Networking and collaboration are key in medical education.Challenges in tropical medicine require innovative solutions.Patience is essential for mastering ultrasound skills.The global movement for ultrasound in emergency medicine is growing.Chapters00:00 Introduction to Professor Enrico Brunetti05:02 The Evolution of Ultrasound in Clinical Practice10:04 Ultrasound Applications in Infectious Diseases15:03 The Short Course in Ultrasound and Tropical Medicine from Pavia19:48 Postgraduate Certification and Online Learning24:52 Challenges and Opportunities in Tropical Medicine29:49 Advice for New Medics in Ultrasound Practice

At this year's annual World Health Assembly, World Health Organisation member countries have voted in favour of a global pandemic agreement. The US were not present at the assembly, as President Donald Trump intends to withdraw from WHO membership.To walk us through the treaty, its impact and if it'll make a difference, we're joined by Clinical Assistant Professor Daniela Manno, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.Also in this episode:-Antidepressant withdrawal symptoms more common among long-term users -Millions of revolutionary bricks to be produced from recycled waste after achieving industry certification - interview with co-founder, Dr Sam Chapman from Herriot-Watt University-Rare hazel dormice given clean bill of health before wild release Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Peter Hotez, Co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, joins "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s new directive to require placebo testing for new vaccines.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this final episode of our mini-series on research capacity strengthening, we explore how pursuing a PhD, using the PACTS programme (Patient-centred Sickle Cell Disease Management in sub-Saharan Africa), as a real-world example—can enhance, rather than compete with, clinical practice.Our guests reflect on what it means to balance research with clinical care, teaching, community outreach, and academic responsibilities, and share honest insights about the challenges and opportunities that come with embedding a PhD within a larger programme. From learning by doing to mentoring the next generation, this episode looks at how research can be a powerful tool for real-world impact in health systems.In this episode:Dr. Mmamulatelo Siame Mumba - PhD Student, SBA lead, Project coordinator, ZambiaDr. Mmamulatelo Siame Mumba is a paediatrician and implementation researcher based in Zambia. She is undertaking a PhD with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and leads the Standards-Based Audit teams across PACTS sites while coordinating research activities on the ground.Dr. Hezekiah Isa Albarka - Lecturer at University of Abuja, NigeriaDr. Hezekiah Isa Albarka is a senior lecturer at the University of Abuja and a haematologist with a long-standing interest in sickle cell disease. He is currently pursuing a PhD through the PACTS project, building on years of experience in clinical care and academic teaching.Dr. Eunice Agyeman Ahmed - PhD Student Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Ghana Dr. Eunice Agyeman Ahmed is a haematologist at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Ghana and a PhD student at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Her research supports adolescents with sickle cell disease transitioning into adult care, alongside her wider advocacy and training work across Ghana and Africa. Patient-Centered Sickle Cell Disease Management in Sub-Saharan AfricaPatient-centred sickle cell disease management in sub-Saharan Africa (PACTS) | LSTMWant to hear more podcasts like this?Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about current research and debates within global health.The podcast cuts across disciplines, including health systems strengthening, gender and intersectionality, tropical diseases (NTDs, TB, Malaria), maternal and child healthcare (antenatal and postnatal care), mental health and wellbeing, vector-borne diseases, climate change and co-production approaches. If you would like your project or programme to feature in an episode or miniseries, get in touch with the producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, the SCL Agency.

People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy is calling for zones where SUVs are banned following the publication of research which indicates that people are more likely to die if they are hit by an SUV when compared to a standard car. The analysis was carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Imperial College London. The study found that children are 82 per cent more likely to die if they are struck by an SUV. Pedestrians and cyclists are 44 per cent more likely to die if hit by an SUV than if they were stuck by a traditional car. Anluan Dunne from Tralee is a cyclist and environmentalist.

Welcome to the Plant-Based Canada Podcast. In this episode we are joined by Dr. Rikin Patel to discuss the vital role of sleep in overall health, how it impacts children and families, and practical lifestyle strategies to improve sleep quality.Dr. Rikin Patel is a consultant pediatrician and lifestyle medicine physician. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto. He completed his pediatric residency at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and prior to medical school he completed a Masters in Health Policy Planning and Finance from the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Currently, Dr. Patel works for the Scarborough Health Network and is the founder of Reset Pediatric Lifestyle Medicine clinic, a virtual clinic aimed at empowering families to make the best lifestyle choices for their health. He is a member of the Medical Advisory Board for the Centre for Nutrition Studies.  He is passionate about promoting a culture of wellness and resilience within physician and trainee communities through medical improv, meditation and plant-based nutrition.  He is a certified yoga instructor and teaches Shaolin Kung Fu at the Waterloo Kung Fu Academy with over 35 years of experience.Resources:Book: ‘Forest Bathing' by Dr. Qing Li https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/forest-bathing-how-trees-can-help-you-find-health-and-happiness/9780525559856.html Effects of sleep duration on child neurocognitive development (Lancet Child Adolesc Health, 2022): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35914537/ Sleep Calculator: https://sleepopolis.com/calculators/Dementia Canada: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/dementia.html Dr. Rikin Patel's Socials:Website: https://www.resetpediatrics.com/IG: dr.rikinpatel and resetpediatricsFacebook: thekungfudocTikTok: the.kungfudocYoutube: TheKungFuDocPlant-Based Canada's Socials:Instagram  (@plantbasedcanadaorg)Facebook (Plant-Based Canada, https://m.facebook.com/plantbasedcanadaorg/)Website  (https://www.plantbasedcanada.org/)X / Twitter @PBC_orgBonus PromotionCheck out University of Guelph's online Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate. Each 4-week course will guide you through essential plant-based topics including nutritional benefits, disease prevention, and environmental impacts. You can also customize your learning with unique courses such as Plant-Based Diets for Athletes and Implementing a Plant-Based Diet at Home. As the first university-level plant-based certificate in Canada, you'll explore current research, learn from leading industry experts, and join a community of like-minded people. Use our exclusive discount code PBC2025 to save 10% on all Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate courses. uoguel.ph/pbn.Thank you for tuning in! Make sure to subscribe to the Plant-Based Canada Podcast so you get notified when new episodes are published. This episode was hosted by Stephanie Nishi RD, PhD.Support the show

Alvin and German conduct a powerful conversation with public health leader and community advocate Dr. Paula Madison Ryner '92. With over 30 years of experience in the public health sector, Paula has devoted her career to advancing health equity, empowering communities, and championing the well-being of underserved populations. She holds a Doctorate in Health Leadership from Seton Hall University and a dual Master's in Public Health from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. A highly decorated leader, Paula was recognized as one of the Most Powerful Women in New Jersey for four consecutive years (2018–2021) by NJ Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg. In 2024, she was honored with the United States President's Leadership Award from the UNESCO Center for Peace for her transformative contributions to development, peace, and leadership in communities of African descent. Since graduating from Colgate, Paula has been a dynamic force for change, service, and leadership. She is the Immediate Past President of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc. (Bergen/Passaic chapter), where she led the chapter to be named a national model for four consecutive years. Her community involvement continues through leadership roles including Vice President of the Board of Bergen Volunteers, Vice President and Programs Chair of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. (Bergen County Chapter), and appointed positions on several local government advisory boards. In addition to her nonprofit leadership, Dr. Madison Ryner is the co-founder of Ryner and Associates, an organizational consulting firm, and is preparing to launch P.Mad Consulting Group, along with a new podcast supporting African American caregivers of loved ones with dementia. At Colgate, Paula was a Night Flight radio host on WRCU, a member of the Sojourners, and earned her Bachelor's degree in Sociology and Anthropology/African American Studies.

Dr. Michael Muehlenbein is a prominent figure in anthropology and biology, currently serving as a professor at Baylor University. His academic journey has been marked by a deep commitment to understanding human evolution, behavior, and health through an interdisciplinary lens. Michael earned an MsPH in both Tropical Medicine and Biostatistics from Tulane University, and an MPhil and PhD in Biological Anthropology from Yale University. His research interests are diverse, encompassing topics such as the evolutionary basis of disease susceptibility, reproductive strategies, and the interplay between environmental factors and human physiology. At Baylor, he has contributed significantly to both teaching and research, mentoring students while also publishing extensively in peer reviewed journals. His work often integrates insights from evolutionary theory with practical applications in public health and medicine, making him a key contributor to discussions on how our evolutionary past shapes contemporary health challenges. Michael is also the Co PI on the NSF-funded project, “Shared markers of identity on inflammation and stress.” ------------------------------ Find the papers discussed in this episode: Muehlenbein MP, Gassen J, Nowak TJ, Henderson AD, Weaver SP, Baker EJ. (2023). Waco COVID Survey: A Community-Based SARS-CoV-2 Serological Surveillance Study in Central Texas. J Community Health, 48(1):104-112. doi: 10.1007/s10900-022-01143-y. Muehlenbein M, Gassen J, Nowak T, Henderson A, Morris B, Weaver S, Baker E. (2023). Age-Dependent Relationships Between Disease Risk and Testosterone Levels: Relevance to COVID-19 Disease. Am J Mens Health. doi: 10.1177/15579883221130195. ------------------------------ Contact Dr. Michael Muehlenbein: Michael_Muehlenbein@baylor.edu ------------------------------ Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation/, Website: humbio.org, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Chris Lynn, Co-Host, Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu, E-mail: cdlynn@ua.edu, Twitter: @Chris_Ly Courtney Manthey, Guest-Co-Host, HBA Junior Fellow , Website: holylaetoli.com/ E-mail: cpierce4@uccs.edu, Twitter: @HolyLaetoli Anahi Ruderman, SoS Co-Producer, HBA Junior Fellow, E-mail: aniruderman@gmail.com, Twitter: @ani_ruderman

In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak, months after it originated in China, a global pandemic. It soon infected millions of Americans in all 50 states, upending daily life and revealing deep fissures and paranoia in society. Historian John Barry is an authority on the 1918 influenza pandemic and a scholar at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. In this episode, he reflects on the most important lessons learned from Covid-19 and how we can best prepare for the next pandemic. Recommended reading: The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John Barry

What happens when you bring together world-class researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors to spark innovation? Host James Zanewicz, JD, LLM, RTTP, is joined by key opinion leader Kimberly Gramm, PhD, MBA, Chief Innovation and Entrepreneurship Officer at Tulane University, and keynote speaker Greg Buchert, MD, MPH, a Tulane alum and CEO of Makani Science. Together, they dive into the 2025 Tulane University Research, Innovation, and Creativity Summit (TRICS), an event designed to connect researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors in shaping the future of innovation - happening April 8-10 at the Historic Civic Theater in New Orleans. In this episode, you'll discover: What makes TRICS a must-attend event for researchers, startups, and industry leaders. The impact of innovation awards that spotlight groundbreaking discoveries and societal impact. The role of investors and industry leaders in accelerating Tulane's most promising ideas. Join us for a deep dive into how TRICS is driving research, technology, and entrepreneurship forward! Links: Learn more about TRICS and save the date for April 8-10, 2025. Connect with Greg Buchert, MD, MPH, and check out Makani Science. Connect with Kimberly Gramm, PhD, MBA, and check out the Tulane University Innovation Institute and their Open MIC Night. Connect with James Zanewicz, JD, LLM, RTTP and learn about Tulane Medicine Business Development and the School of Medicine, as well as the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Learn more about the Tulane Vice President for Research and Office of the Provost. Check out our episode: Top Ways to Build Your Biotech Network as an Introvert. Check out Acamaya – a New Orleans restaurant. Check out BIO on the BAYOU and make plans to attend October 28 & 29, 2025. Learn more about BIO from the BAYOU - the podcast. Bio from the Bayou is a podcast that explores biotech innovation, business development, and healthcare outcomes in New Orleans & The Gulf South, connecting biotech companies, investors, and key opinion leaders to advance medicine, technology, and startup opportunities in the region.

This week, Aebhric O'Kelly talks with Dr Daniel Grace, who shares his journey into expedition medicine, discussing his unconventional path from general practice to working in the outdoors. He emphasises the importance of academic frameworks in expedition medicine, the human factors influencing pre-hospital care, and his experiences with mountain rescue and tropical medicine initiatives. Dr Grace also reflects on memorable expeditions and offers advice for aspiring expedition medics.TakeawaysDr Grace has been a GP since 2017, seeking unconventional medical paths.His interest in expedition medicine was sparked by a wilderness medicine course.There is a lack of a recognised framework for expedition medicine in the UK.Human factors play a crucial role in the success of pre-hospital care.Mountain rescue provides an opportunity to develop technical skills in a local setting.Training for mountain rescue includes various medical competencies and practical exams.Tropical medicine knowledge is beneficial for expedition work and telemedicine roles.The Virtual Doctors charity connects UK doctors with clinicians in Zambia for telemedical advice.Dr Grace's favourite expedition was working in the Yukon during extreme winter conditions.He advises new medics to always say yes to opportunities, as they can lead to unexpected paths.Chapters00:00 Introduction to Expedition Medicine and Dr Daniel Grace02:13 The Journey into Expedition Medicine05:50 The Need for Academic Framework in Expedition Medicine10:02 Human Factors in Pre-Hospital Care12:10 Experiences in Mountain Rescue18:02 Training and Development in Mountain Rescue21:00 Tropical Medicine and Telemedicine Initiatives27:04 Memorable Expeditions and Future Aspirations30:02 Advice for Aspiring Expedition Medics

During the victory celebrations of World War One, a rising star is found dead in her bed after a suspected overdose.22-year-old Billie Carlton's death caused shockwaves across the nation, adding fuel to a growing moral panic about sex, scandal and drugs.Anthony and Maddy are joined by Virginia Berridge, Professor of History and Health Policy at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, to explore the path to drug criminalisation in postwar London following the death of Billie Carlton. Together, they uncover the extraordinary history of drugs in Soho - London's most notorious neighbourhood in the 1920s.Historic Soho has been brought to life in the new BBC show Dope Girls, which tells the story of Soho when female gangs ran the nightclubs after the First World War. You can watch it on BBC iPlayer now. All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Send us a textPeople have always doubted science. In the 17th century, Galileo was sentenced to house arrest by the Catholic Church for reporting his observations that the sun is at the center of the solar system and that the other planets, including Earth, orbit it. In 1925, the U.S. state of Tennessee banned the teaching of evolution and when a high school teacher named John Scopes agreed to challenge the law, the Scopes “monkey” trial resulted. People did not like to think that they descended from monkeys – although that's not quite what the science of evolution shows.Now, the United States and much of the world seems to have regressed into another period when science is denied. This time, much of it centers around vaccines, although there is animosity toward many other public health measures. Climate science is likewise still under attack, decades after the scientific expert community settled the question of whether people's activities are changing the planet's climate.One of the scientists fighting back is Dr. Peter Hotez. Long a champion of fighting neglected tropical diseases such as Chagas disease and leishmaniasis, Hotez has evolved into an advocate for vaccination in general and for inexpensive, freely available vaccines in particular.He wrote a book, Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism, that explains the disproven notion that vaccination might cause autism – using his own daughter's case history as an illustration. His latest book, The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science, looks at the history of attacks on science, the political and commercial motives of many of the attacks, and the often fatal results.The attacks have gotten very personal for Hotez, and they've worsened under the new Trump Administration in the United States. Now Hotez, who is Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, has become one of the most recognizable public faces in the fight to defend science. In this episode of One World, One Health, Hotez describes how he never expected to be cast as a “cartoon villain” when what he mostly wanted to do was help underprivileged people escape disease.SS

It's a powerful biological response that has preserved our species for millennia. But now it may be keeping us from pursuing strategies that would improve the environment, the economy, even our own health. So is it time to dial down our disgust reflex?  You can help fix things — as Stephen Dubner does in this 2021 episode — by chowing down on some delicious insects. SOURCES:Paul Rozin, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.Val Curtis, late disgustologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.Sandro Ambuehl, economist at the University of Zurich.Emily Kimmins, R&D lead for the sensory and consumer-science team for Kraft Heinz.Iliana Sermeno, former chef at The Black Ant. RESOURCES:“Stink Bugs Could Add Cilantro Flavor to Red Wine,” by Alex Berezow (Live Science, 2017).“Edible insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security,” by the F.A.O. (United Nations, 2013).“I Hate to Break it to You, but You Already Eat Bugs,” by Kyle Hill (Scientific American, 2013).“Five Banned Foods and One That Maybe Should Be,” by Leah Binkovitz (Smithsonian Magazine, 2012).“Effects of Different Types of Antismoking Ads on Reducing Disparities in Smoking Cessation Among Socioeconomic Subgroups,” by Sarah J. Durkin, Lois Biener, and Melanie A. Wakefield (American Journal of Public Health, 2009).“Flesh Trade,” by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt (The New York Times, 2006).“Feeding Poultry Litter to Beef Cattle,” by Jay Daniel and K.C. Olson (University of Missouri, 2005). EXTRAS:"Why Does Everyone Hate Rats?" by Freakonomics Radio (2025).

In this International Women's Day episode, we chat to Professor Gene Feder OBE, Professor of Primary Care at the Centre for Academic Primary Care, Bristol Medical School, about the Healthcare Responding to Violence and Abuse (HERA) programme. For the past five years, HERA has been co-developing and testing women-centered and culturally-appropriate domestic violence and abuse (DVA) healthcare interventions in low-and middle-income countries – Brazil, Nepal, occupied Palestinian territories and Sri Lanka – with an aim to improve the rates of identification and reporting of DVA, and create more effective healthcare responses. Professor Feder talks about the co-development of care models specific to each country, the outcomes and surprising findings of the study to date – and what working on HERA means to him as a health researcher.---- The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Global Health Research Group was co-led by the University of Bristol and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. The Group reported their findings and published a PolicyBristol report in 2024 Read more about HERA on the University of Bristol Centre for Academic Primary Care webpage and the University of Bristol News page. Professor Feder is Director of VISION, a UK Prevention Research Partnership focused on violence prevention.

In this episode of the BMJ's Medicine and Science podcast, editor-in-chief Kamran Abbasi discusses the urgent need to tackle disinformation in health, especially in the context of the US, with Heidi Larson and Martin McKee from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.    We also hear from Jane Ballentyne, professor of anaesthesia and pain medicine at the University of Washington, about new guidelines that strongly recommend against the use of spinal injections for chronic pain - and why that recommendation might be hard for some patients and doctors to hear.   Finally, we revisit the progress made in addressing racism in UK medical schools over the past five years with Gareth Iacobucci, The BMJ's assistant news editor.   Running order 01:44 Defining Misinformation and Disinformation 04:08 Vaccines and Misinformation 05:38 Strategies to Combat Disinformation 10:04 Denialism and Its Implications 16:21 BMJ Rapid Recommendations on Spinal Injections 26:27 Racism in Medical Schools: An Update   Reading list Spinal interventions for chronic back pain Racism in medical schools: are things improving?

Dr. Dawn Wesson, Associate Professor at Tulane University's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, joins John to explore how climate change is expanding the range of vector-borne diseases. With decades of experience studying mosquito-borne viruses like West Nile and Zika, Dawn explains how rising temperatures and human movement are accelerating the northward expansion of tropical diseases. She also discusses innovative control strategies, including biological methods and emerging technologies that could help reduce disease transmission in a warming world.

The Louisiana Department of Health has ended all vaccine events and instructed staff not to encourage immunizations. We break down what the consequences of that could be with Susan Hassig, Associate Professor in the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine

The fires in Los Angeles of January 2025 were devastating. They were also made about 35% more likely due to climate change.This is true all over the world; a recent study authored by Research Fellow Pierre Masselot at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that rising temperatures could kill an extra 2.3 million people in Europe by the end of the century. Sylvia Leyva Martinez, principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie and host of Interchange Recharged, talks to Pierre at the start of the show about the study, and the implications of a rapidly heating environment for US energy. Those implications were made clear in January – and it emphasised the need for increased climate resilience: it's a dynamic process rather than a static outcome and involves both mitigation (reducing emissions) and adaptation (adjusting to the impacts already in motion). In short, communities and economies need more robust frameworks to deal with climate change. Nuin-Tara Key is Executive Director of Programs at California Forward. California Forward builds strategies for businesses and governments in the region to improve climate resilience.How do they do it? How can climate resilience be strengthened in uncertain economic and political times? How can we balance mitigation with adaptation? Sylvia and Nuin-Tara talk it through.Join the conversation with us - we're on most social platforms at @interchangeshow. We'd love to get your feedback.If you haven't heard it already, check out our sister podcast Energy Gang. We had Kate Gordon, CEO at California Forward, on a special episode recorded at New York Climate Week, which explored many of the themes we talked about today and plenty more.'See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Women in prison are resorting to self-harm because of “astonishing gaps” in basic services including strict time limits when contacting their children, according to a new report from His Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons for England and Wales released today. The report's author Sandra Fieldhouse joins Anita Rani, as does the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Shabana Mahmood. Singer and stand-up comedian Hajar J Woodland joins Anita to discuss her show, First Love, coming to Soho Theatre in London. After being raised in a household where singing wasn't encouraged, her show explores the boundaries we put up around ourselves and what it means to finally find love and your voice. New research has quantified for the first time how many young people have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by GPs in England. Academics at the University of York studied a decade's worth of NHS records and discovered a 50-fold increase in this particular diagnosis between 2011 and 2021. However each general practice will only see one or two such patients each year. Anita speaks to Professor of Health Policy Tim Doran.The French have been told to wear the same T-shirt for five days before washing it, and sports clothing three times. It's part of advice from the government's Ecological Transition Agency, which is trying to get people to do less laundry to save water. So how often should we really be washing our clothes? Anita is joined by Professor Sally Bloomfield from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to tell us more. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Emma Pearce

Send us a textMeasles is an extremely infectious virus that can both kill and cripple children. Luckily, there are highly effective vaccines to prevent the disease. The World Health Organization recommends that 95 percent of the population be fully vaccinated against measles because it's so contagious. This helps to ensure that vulnerable children and infants who cannot be vaccinated are protected.Yet vaccination rates are falling globally. The result? A 20 percent increase in measles cases between 2022 and 2023,  according to WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That adds up to more than 10 million cases. More than 107,000 people died from measles in 2023, mostly children. The problem is worse in some communities, especially where connections to the outside world are limited. One example: the Charedi community in London. Often referred to as ultra-Orthodox Jews, the Charedi often run their own schools and daycare centers and can fall outside the usual public health health system. Vaccination rates have fallen below 70 percent in some of these communities, according to UK health officials.It can be tricky to encourage people in isolated communities to get themselves and their children vaccinated. Sometimes it's simply a matter of logistics, and sometimes it's a matter of overcoming distrust, misinformation, and disinformation.Dr. Ben Kasstan-Dabush has been studying this problem while at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. One solution he found: Make use of people from within the community to communicate. “I worked with clinical and community partners to produce a short clinic clip that can be screened in primary care waiting rooms,” he says. “It features the voice of a Charedi Jewish healthcare professional and mum.” Another success: coloring pages for kids that feature vaccination in a positive light and that use common Jewish names. Common-sense solutions include extending clinic hours so parents can attend outside working hours and religious holidays. Now a lecturer of global health policy at the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Kasstan-Dabush is continuing to study how people respond to public health outreach attempts around vaccination. Listen as he chats with One World, One Health about some of the reasons kids might not get vaccinated on time and ways to make it easier.

Trump rilancia sui palestinesi fuori da Gaza e considera DeepSeek “un campanello d’allarme”. Intanto oggi inauguriamo “Il mondo di Trump”, progetto in collaborazione con Il Sole 24 Ore e Radiocor che scandaglia vari aspetti della politica del nuovo presidente americano, con un primo appuntamento dedicato a multinazionali e fisco. Con noi oggi Alessandro Galimberti de Il Sole 24 Ore. Il maltempo si abbatte su Liguria e Toscana. Nel 2099 il cambiamento climatico potrebbe far aumentare le morti per caldo in Europa: lo indicano le stime di una ricerca pubblicata sulla rivista Nature Medicine e condotta dalla London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Sentiamo Serena Giacomin, climatologa e meteorologa, direttrice scientifica di Italian Climate Network. Migranti: mentre la nave Cassiopea attracca in Albania, i dati di gennaio mostrano un aumento di sbarchi dalla Libia rispetto all’anno scorso. Ne parliamo con Federica Saini Fasanotti, ricercatrice associata ISPI.

The renowned expert on vaccine confidence, Dr. Heidi Larson, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, explains why there has been a precipitous escalation in the past four years, especially among 18-24 year-olds, of vaccine skepticism and resistance. During Covid-19, “everybody got vaccinated,” everyone was exposed to the “digital swarm,” the “wildfire” on social media of mis- and dis-information regarding vaccines. Antivaccine groups amalgamated and rose in power. Public health officials were hesitant to compete on social media. Young parents were unhappy with public health sources of information and looked elsewhere. RFK Jr., his Children's Health Defense, and the affiliated Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), have had “massive, massive influence” as amplifiers of doubt and fear of vaccines. What to do? There is an urgent need to engage young leaders, increase public health communications budgets and change their practices and outlook, mobilize local communities, and create new communications partnerships. It requires a “huge effort.” 

In this episode of the PFC Podcast, Dennis speaks with Dr. Ryan Maves, an infectious disease physician, about dengue fever, a significant tropical disease. They discuss the epidemiology, clinical presentation, management, and prevention strategies for dengue, emphasizing the importance of recognizing warning signs and providing supportive care. Dr. Maves shares insights from his extensive experience in tropical medicine, particularly during his time in the Navy and in Peru, where he conducted research on dengue and other vector-borne diseases. The conversation highlights the increasing relevance of dengue in both civilian and military contexts, especially in light of climate change and urbanization. Takeaways Dengue fever is part of the flavivirus family, which includes Zika and chikungunya. The disease is primarily transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which thrives in urban areas. Dengue can cause severe morbidity, particularly in non-endemic populations. Management of dengue is largely supportive, with a focus on fluid resuscitation. Warning signs of severe dengue include persistent vomiting, abdominal pain, and altered mental status. Preventive measures include using insect repellent and controlling standing water. Dengue is endemic in many tropical regions, including parts of Latin America and Southeast Asia. Vaccines for dengue exist but are not widely available for adults. Dengue can present with a wide spectrum of symptoms, making diagnosis challenging. Public health strategies are crucial in controlling dengue outbreaks. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Tropical Medicine and Dengue Fever 03:12 Understanding Dengue Fever: Background and Epidemiology 06:03 Clinical Presentation and Diagnosis of Dengue Fever 08:56 Management and Treatment of Dengue Fever 11:54 Warning Signs and Severe Dengue 15:13 Preventive Measures and Public Health Strategies 18:01 Final Thoughts on Dengue and Tropical Medicine Thank you to Delta Development Team for in part, sponsoring this podcast. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠deltadevteam.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For more content go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.prolongedfieldcare.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠ Consider supporting us: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/ProlongedFieldCareCollective⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.lobocoffeeco.com/product-page/prolonged-field-care

It's Day 6 of the Majority Report Best Ofs of 2024! Today you'll hear from Dr. Peter J. Hotez, Dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, to discuss his recent book The Deadly Rise of Anti-science: A Scientist's Warning. Follow Dr. Hotez on Twitter here: https://x.com/PeterHotez Check out Dr. Hotez's book here: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/33293/deadly-rise-anti-science Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Join Sam on the Nation Magazine Cruise! 7 days in December 2024!!: https://nationcruise.com/mr/ Check out StrikeAid here!; https://strikeaid.com/ Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! http://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: http://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 20% off your purchase! Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech @BradKAlsop Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder - https://majorityreportradio.com/

Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health in the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Dr Diarmuid Quinlan, GP in Glanmire, Medical Director Irish College of GPs.

Dr. Satesh Bidaisee is a Professor of Public Health and Preventative Medicine and Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies at St. George's University in Grenada. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Center for Global Health at Old Dominion University and a Visiting Professor at Chitkara University in India and at Kasetsart University in Thailand. Many aspects of human health are linked with conditions in our environment. Satesh's research aims to identify and understand environmental factors that can impact human health, both positively and negatively. One of Satesh's passions outside of science is aviation. He has been fascinated by aircraft since childhood, and for the past decade, Satesh has enjoyed flying throughout the Caribbean region as a private pilot. Satesh received his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Degree (D.V.M.) from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, a Master's of Science (M.S.) degree in Public Health from St. George's University, and a Doctor of Education Degree (Ed.D.) from the University of Sheffield. Prior to joining the faculty at St. George's University, Satesh held positions at the University of Trinidad and Tobago as well as the Ministry of Health in Trinidad and Tobago. Satesh is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health, the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the International Society on Infectious Diseases, and the Society of Biology. He is also board certified by the United States National Board of Public Health Examiners. In our interview, Satesh shared his experiences in life and science.

Globally, postpartum haemorrhage is responsible for a quarter of maternal deaths after childbirth. Tears of the perineum, which are common in vaginal births, are a major contributor to this excessive blood loss, and a variety of techniques are used to try to prevent them. The effects of these interventions are reviewed in a new Cochrane Review published in October 2024 and two of the authors, Tilly Fox and Kerry Dwan from The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK, talk about the findings in this podcast.

Globally, postpartum haemorrhage is responsible for a quarter of maternal deaths after childbirth. Tears of the perineum, which are common in vaginal births, are a major contributor to this excessive blood loss, and a variety of techniques are used to try to prevent them. The effects of these interventions are reviewed in a new Cochrane Review published in October 2024 and two of the authors, Tilly Fox and Kerry Dwan from The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK, talk about the findings in this podcast.

About Hamilton Bennett:Hamilton Bennett is a seasoned public health professional with over 15 years of experience, currently serving as the Senior Director of Vaccine Access and Partnerships at Moderna. She played a pivotal role in leading the mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine development program, contributing significantly to one of the earliest and most effective vaccines against the pandemic. With a strong dedication to equitable vaccine development and distribution, Hamilton collaborates closely with governments and stakeholders to build resilient health systems capable of responding swiftly to pandemics and vaccine-preventable diseases.Hamilton is passionate about fostering innovation through Moderna's "mRNA Access Program," which enables academic researchers to use Moderna's platform to improve emergency disease responsiveness. Her educational background includes graduate degrees in Environmental Health and Microbiology from the University of Washington, along with a certificate in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Hamilton's commitment to cutting-edge research and global health equity continues to drive her efforts in transforming the vaccine landscape.Things You'll Learn:Moderna's innovative mRNA technology has the potential to revolutionize the vaccine landscape.The importance of equitable vaccine development and distribution to ensure all communities have access to life-saving vaccines.Collaboration with governments and stakeholders is crucial for building resilient health systems capable of responding to pandemics and vaccine-preventable diseases.Moderna's mRNA Access Program enables academic researchers to use their platform, fostering innovation and improving emergency disease responsiveness.The necessity of strategizing for both current healthcare needs and future challenges, emphasizing the importance of collaboration, cutting-edge research, and global health equity.Resources:Connect with and follow Hamilton Bennett on LinkedIn.Follow Moderna on LinkedIn and visit their website. 

Dr. Jerry Brown, TIME Person of the Year, joins Mike Shanley to discuss Dr. Brown's work during the Ebola crisis, COVID-19 response and lessons learned for global pandemic preparedness, becoming TIME Person of the Year, and the role of international aid donors and implementing partners. Co-host: Care Africa Medical Foundation (CAMF) focuses on building clinics in rural Liberia, starting with their hometown of Buchanan in Grand Bassa County, where they have organized free health fairs to provide essential health resources. In addition to their nonprofit efforts, Henry and Gormah run successful businesses that cater to the aging population and assist the homeless in Colorado, creating over 60 local jobs. CAMF plans to open its first medical center in Grand Bassa County in the spring of 2025, addressing urgent healthcare needs. However, the lack of reliable electricity poses a significant challenge to operating medical equipment. As a registered 501(C)(3) organization, CAMF aims to make a lasting impact on healthcare in Africa and inspire others with its dedication to health and community service. https://www.linkedin.com/in/care-africa-medical-foundation-536206336/ https://www.camedfoundation.org/about/ Biography Jerry Fahnloe Brown was born on October 18, 1968. Dr. Brown has worked in several capacities as physician. He worked as Escort Doctor for MERCI on boats repatriating Sierra Leonean Refugees back to Sierra Leone. He then worked as the County Health Officer for Grand Bassa County and Medical Director for the Buchanan Government Hospital from 2006 to 2008 after working as a Volunteer Physician at the ELWA Hospital and General Practitioner from 2004 to 2006. In March 2014 he was employed as Medical Director and General Surgeon at the ELWA Hospital a position he held until February 2018 when he was appointed by the President of Liberia to serve as the Chief Medical Officer of the John F. Kennedy Medical Center, the premier teaching and referral hospital. During those years at ELWA, he worked tirelessly performing varieties of surgeries in this low resource setting. He became Clinical Supervisor and Clinician at the ELWA II Ebola Treatment Unit from July 2014 to June 2015. Under his leadership and guidance this unit produced the highest number of Ebola survivors changing the survival rate from ten percent to seventy percent of Ebola Patients at his Center. From October 2014 to December 2016, he served as Principal Investigator on two research projects with the Clinical Research Management on convalescent plasma and the sequelae of Ebola in survivors. In 2018, he was appointed by the President of Liberia as the Chief Executive Officer of the John F. Kennedy Medical Center, the premier referral hospital in Liberia, a position held until January 30, 2024, due to the political transition of power. While at JFKMC, he established the only active functional Intensive Care Unit in country with support from partners such as Project Cure International and NOCAL. Under his leadership JFKMC, obtained accreditation for training specialists in the areas of pediatrics, internal medicine, general surgery, ophthalmology and psychiatric. He also established the only histopathology unit; a state of the art executive private ward; a dialysis center among others. On May 23, 2019, he was elected Civilian Representative and Advisor to APORA. He also serves as Acting Faculty Head, Department of Surgery, A. M. Dogliotti College of Medicine for two years, and is currently a Part-Time Faculty member, in the Department of Surgery, Liberia College of Physician and Surgeon. In March 2020, he was appointed by the president of Liberia to serve as the Head of the National Case Management Pillar of COVID-19. He coordinated the management of COVID-19 patients across the country and the care of patients with COVID-19 vaccine related complications. He supervised the drafting of Liberia COVID-19 Clinical Guidelines. Dr. Brown has received many honors to include, Time Person of the Year in 2014; among Time 100 Most Influential Persons, 2014; Civil Servant of the Year, 2014, Republic of Liberia; President of Liberia Highest Honor, Star of Africa in 2015; Golden Key Awards, 2018; He has spoken as several places to include Keynote Speaker, PICC 2016, 8th World Congress on Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care, Toronto Canada, June 2016; keynote Speaker, Case Western University, Ohio, October 2015; Keynote Speaker, Risky Business Conference, London, UK, May 2017; Speaker, American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, (ASTMH) 64TH Annual Meeting, ASTMH Ebola 360 symposium, October 2015; Pepperdine University, Dean Honorary Speaker—Leadership June 2017.    Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Aid Market Podcast. Learn more about working with USAID by visiting our homepage: Konektid International and AidKonekt. To connect with our team, message the host Mike Shanley on LinkedIn  

In the UK, around a third of British children have tooth decay. Just among the under-fives, it's a quarter - a figure that rises significantly in the most deprived areas.Tooth decay can cause speech development issues, embarrassment for children and in 2023, 15 million school days were missed due to tooth pain or treatment. There's a financial cost too – in 2023 in England alone tooth extractions under a general anaesthetic cost the NHS £41 million.And it's totally preventable. So, how can we stop teeth rotting in the first place? One way initiative announced by the new Labour government is to expand supervised toothbrushing sessions to more children. We find out how these work with Oral Health Team Lead Helen Bullingham who supports nurseries and schools in East Sussex to deliver these programmes.But what about the evidence to support this intervention? Zoe Marshman, Professor of Dental Public Health at University of Sheffield, explains her findings and dental hygienist and researcher at King's College London Dr Claire McCarthy describes what parents should be doing, in an ideal world, at home. And finally, what role does sugar play and how can we get consumption down? Dr Nina Rogers from the Population Health Innovation Lab at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine explains her findings into the impact of the Sugar Drinks Industry Levy introduced in 2018.Presenter: James Gallagher Producers: Hannah Robins Content Editor: Holly SquireInside Health is a BBC Wales & West production for Radio 4, produced in partnership with The Open University.

In this episode, Uzair talks to Mishal S. Khan about the ways in which doctors are incentivized to over-prescribe medications to patients in Pakistan. This is something many of us have known about anecdotally, but now we have research to tell us about how widespread this problem could be. Mishal S. Khan is a Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK and Visiting Faculty at Aga Khan University, Pakistan. Guest's profile link - https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/people/khan.mishal-s More details about the study - https://www.patientsnotprofits.org Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 2:00 Key findings 6:50 Does ethics training help? 11:30 Local v. international companies 14:40 Methodology 18:10 Pressure by patients 21:00 Policy recommendations 24:50 What can individuals do? 28:39 Reading recommendations Reading recommendations: - Why we sleep by Matthew Walker - Poems by Faiz

This week, Aebhric O'Kelly talks with Katie Beck, director of the Diploma of Tropical Nursing at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who shares her extensive experiences in global health and expedition medicine. She discusses the challenges nurses face in low-resource settings, the importance of cultural competence, and the evolving role of nurses in global health. Katie emphasises the significance of the Diploma of Tropical Nursing in preparing healthcare professionals for work in diverse environments and highlights the need for advocacy and innovation in nursing education. Takeaways • Katie Beck has a diverse background in nursing and global health. • Expedition medicine offers unique challenges and experiences. • Cultural competence is crucial in healthcare delivery. • Nurses are vital in global health, delivering 80% of care. • The Diploma of Tropical Nursing prepares nurses for low-resource settings. • The PDTN fosters a global network of healthcare professionals. • Innovative approaches in nursing education are essential for future challenges. • Partnerships in healthcare education enhance mutual benefits. • Critical thinking is essential, but doubt should not impede action. • The future of nursing includes advocacy and leadership in global health. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Katie Beck and Her Work 02:50 Experiences in Expedition Medicine 06:00 Challenges in Austere Nursing 11:02 Cultural Competence in Healthcare 15:05 The Role of Nurses in Global Health 19:15 The Diploma of Tropical Nursing (DTN) 23:00 Future of the DTN and Global Health 33:53 Advice for New Medics and Nurses

Mark Petticrew, Professor of Public Health with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

S. Jay Olshansky received his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Chicago in 1984. He is currently a Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Research Associate at the Center on Aging at the University of Chicago and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Chief Scientist at Lapetus Solutions, Inc. The focus of his research to date has been on estimates of the upper limits to human longevity, exploring the health and public policy implications associated with individual and population aging, forecasts of the size, survival, and age structure of the population, pursuit of the scientific means to slow aging in people (The Longevity Dividend), and global implications of the re-emergence of infectious and parasitic diseases. We're going to talk about his recent paper titled, “Implausibility of radical life extension in humans in the twenty-first century,” which was recently recognized in the WSJ and NY Times.https://www.seniorcareauthority.com/resources/boomers-today/

Episode 37 - Howard Carter, CEO of Incognito, became a UK insect bite expert after contracting malaria and dengue. He advises on mosquito-borne diseases and oversees testing at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Disclaimer: Please note that all information and content on the UK Health Radio Network, all its radio broadcasts and podcasts are provided by the authors, producers, presenters and companies themselves and is only intended as additional information to your general knowledge. As a service to our listeners/readers our programs/content are for general information and entertainment only.  The UK Health Radio Network does not recommend, endorse, or object to the views, products or topics expressed or discussed by show hosts or their guests, authors and interviewees.  We suggest you always consult with your own professional – personal, medical, financial or legal advisor. So please do not delay or disregard any professional – personal, medical, financial or legal advice received due to something you have heard or read on the UK Health Radio Network.

Thomas is joined by global wellbeing and wellbeing economics expert, program facilitator, and researcher, Julia Kim. They discuss how Bhutan's holistic approach to economics, deeply rooted in spiritual and cultural values, prioritizes individual and collective happiness and wellbeing over profit and expansion of capital. Julia explains the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) in Bhutan, contrasting it with the more conventional measure of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and how this system is more regenerative than extractive, less driven by overconsumption, and leads to better outcomes for people and the environment. At a time of personal and collective trauma, burnout, and loss of hope, strengthening our capacity for inner wellbeing and authentic leadership is critical for enabling and inspiring wider organizational and systemic transformations.    ✨ Sign up for updates by visiting our website: