\tJulie Rovner
\n\tKFF Health News<\/p>\n
\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\tJulie Rovner is chief Washington correspondent and host of KFF Health News\u2019 weekly health policy news podcast, \u201cWhat the Health?\u201d A noted expert on health policy issues, Julie is the author of the critically praised reference book \u201cHealth Care Politics and Policy A to Z,\u201d now in its third edition.\t\t<\/p>\n Public health, one of the more misunderstood concepts in the health world, is about the health of entire populations, rather than individuals. As a result, public health is closely tied to things like the environment, nutrition, and safety.<\/p>\n One commonality among many of President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s picks to manage federal health agencies is their distrust of the nation\u2019s public health system. With major concerns such as bird flu looming, that sentiment could translate into efforts to undermine those of public health workers.<\/p>\n To illuminate the importance and nuances of public health \u2014 and recognizing that public health is best explained at the local level \u2014 KFF Health News has partnered with Civic News Company to launch a project called Healthbeat<\/a>. <\/p>\n In this special episode of KFF Health News\u2019 \u201cWhat the Health?\u201d, chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner is joined by KFF Health News public health correspondent and Healthbeat national reporter Amy Maxmen, Healthbeat editor-in-chief Charlene Pacenti, and Healthbeat New York City reporter Eliza Fawcett.<\/p>\n \tAmy Maxmen \t\t\t \tCharlene Pacenti \t\t\t \tEliza Fawcett \t\t\t Among the takeaways from this week\u2019s episode:<\/p>\n The covid-19 pandemic revealed the need for a deeper understanding of public health \u2014 a data-driven field devoted to the health and well-being of populations. Some of the biggest public health issues of the moment include childhood vaccination rates, and long covid and post-traumatic stress disorder cases among health care workers.<\/p>\n Bird flu is top of mind for many in public health. While the virus has been around for decades, its transmissibility to cattle is new, and that concerning characteristic emerged in the United States. The outbreak was not contained when it was first observed in a handful of states, and now the question is whether the virus mutates to enable human-to-human transmission \u2014 a trait that could make bird flu the next pandemic.<\/p>\n Many in the public health community are wary of the possibility that Trump and his administration\u2019s officials could gut funding and policies that support the nation\u2019s health \u2014 and even non-health policies can hold consequences for health care. For instance, anti-immigration measures could drain the health workforce; many immigrants work as home health aides, nursing home staffers, and more.<\/p>\n Mentioned in this week\u2019s podcast:<\/p>\n KFF Health News\u2019 \u201cExclusive: Emails Reveal How Health Departments Struggle To Track Human Cases of Bird Flu<\/a>,\u201d by Amy Maxmen.<\/p>\n Healthbeat\u2019s \u201cGeorgia Facing Numerous Crises, but Board of Public Health Hasn\u2019t Met Since May<\/a>,\u201d by Rebecca Grapevine.<\/p>\n Healthbeat\u2019s \u201cNew Yorkers, Meet Your Local Epidemiologist<\/a>,\u201d by Charlene Pacenti.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tClick to open the Transcript\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tTranscript: Public Health and the Dairy Cow in the Room<\/strong>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n [<\/em>Editor\u2019s note:<\/em><\/strong> This transcript was generated using both transcription software and a human\u2019s light touch. It has been edited for style and clarity.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n Julie Rovner:<\/strong> Hello, and welcome back to \u201cWhat The Health?\u201d I\u2019m Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for KFF Health News, and I\u2019m joined by some of the best and smartest health reporters in Washington. We\u2019re taping this special holiday episode \u2014 more on that in a minute \u2014 on Wednesday, Nov. 20, at 2:30 p.m. As always, news happens fast and things might\u2019ve changed by the time you hear this. So, here we go.\u00a0<\/p>\n Today, I am thrilled to be joined here in our KFF studios by some of the staff of KFF Health News\u2019 newest project, Healthbeat<\/a>, which we\u2019ve created with another nonprofit, Civic News Company, to cover public health in America. Here with us today, our Healthbeat editor-in-chief, Charlene Pacenti.\u00a0<\/p>\n Charlene Pacenti:<\/strong> Hello.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> Amy Maxmen, KFF Health News public health correspondent and Healthbeat\u2019s national reporter.\u00a0<\/p>\n Amy Maxmen:<\/strong> Hi.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> And Eliza Fawcett, New York City reporter.\u00a0<\/p>\n Eliza Fawcett:<\/strong> Hi there.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> Hello, everyone, and thank you so much for being here. Charlene, I want to start with you. What exactly is Healthbeat, and why do we need it?\u00a0<\/p>\n Pacenti:<\/strong> Now more than ever, I would say. Healthbeat was created in the wake of covid when it became very apparent that people needed a deeper understanding of what public health is, the kind of invisible shield that keeps us all safe. And we also needed more news coverage that centers reliable, science-based information so that people could make good decisions about the health of their families, themselves, and the people around them. So we thought part of that coverage should be rooted in communities. It\u2019s been shown that no matter their politics or how they feel about the federal government, people do trust their local public health leaders. And we think that by elevating those voices on timely issues, we can start to win back people\u2019s trust, not only in journalism but in science.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> That sounds like a very uphill battle.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pacenti:<\/strong> Yes, as you mentioned, but we are part of Civic News Company, which you mentioned, whose model has been developed over the past 10 years covering schools with Chalkbeat. And so we\u2019re trying to leverage the success they\u2019ve had with the local plus national reporting. So for Healthbeat, we\u2019re partnering with KFF Health News, which has a long tradition of excellent health reporting, to handle national coverage. And then we\u2019ve opened two local bureaus to start. We\u2019re in New York and Atlanta with a third location to come next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> Cool. Amy, you\u2019re our public health expert at the table. How is public health different from what we think of as regular health care or medical care in general?\u00a0<\/p>\n Maxmen:<\/strong> I am excited to answer that question, because I\u2019m really into public health. So whereas you think about health care as what happens in a clinic. An individual is sick, and they\u2019re treated within a hospital system. Public health really focuses on preventing illness and improving health at a population level through population-level interventions. So for example, infectious disease outbreaks are often a big component of public health, and that\u2019s because they spread in communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n So even though a person is treated in a hospital \u2014 say if you have somebody who has measles, now the person\u2019s treated for measles in a hospital \u2014 but public health officers actually go into communities. They figure out how the virus is spreading. They might go to schools or to hospitals or to a shopping mall, wherever that person was. Similarly, if a person is shot, they go to an emergency room and they get health care in that emergency department. But public health is going to look at the surrounding issues. How does gun violence affect the whole neighborhood? What does it mean to grow up with stress? Does it mean you can exercise as much if the neighborhood\u2019s dangerous? So that\u2019s sort of why also a big component of public health is about collecting a lot of data and analyzing that data.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> I feel like people kind of misunderstand this a lot. They think of public health, they think of health care as something that\u2019s between a health practitioner and you, the patient, whereas public health is bigger than that, and you are not the focus of public health, right? It\u2019s everybody around you.\u00a0<\/p>\n Maxmen:<\/strong> Yeah, that\u2019s the public part. Yeah, and it\u2019s fun because it\u2019s out there in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> But why do people \u2014 I feel like people really misunderstand that, and I feel like that\u2019s the source of a lot of the frustration that people get with public health. It\u2019s like, Well, that might not be good for me.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n Maxmen:<\/strong> Yeah, that\u2019s the tricky thing because I think at its root, you have to believe in societal goods. You have to believe that having a cleaner neighborhood is good for everyone and not just because you have to take out your trash or not. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s the best comparison.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> Eliza, how\u2019d you get into public health?\u00a0<\/p>\n Fawcett:<\/strong> I started as a reporter at the Hartford Courant during the start of the covid pandemic. I became really interested in covering health and also mental health during that time. And I grew up in New York, and it\u2019s been really exciting to be the first New York reporter for Healthbeat, really getting into community health issues and understanding the sprawling New York City health department, which is one of the biggest in the country. And since I grew up in New York, it\u2019s been really exciting to be doing this work.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> Charlene, what kinds of stories is Healthbeat pursuing?\u00a0<\/p>\n Pacenti:<\/strong> Well, as you can imagine, public health is very broad, and we\u2019re just getting started. We just officially launched Aug. 30, so we\u2019ve just had the last of our reporters come aboard for right now. So we\u2019re trying to narrow it down a little bit, and we\u2019re kind of focusing on three key buckets for our coverage. One is infectious diseases, which Amy\u2019s doing such a great job on bird flu right now, but also we\u2019re looking at that locally, too. What are the flu numbers right now? We\u2019re going into flu season. What are the covid numbers? How\u2019s RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] ramping up? And those sorts of things, and the community\u2019s preparedness to deal with outbreaks.\u00a0<\/p>\n Accountability is another really big thing that we\u2019re focused on. What many people may not realize is that public health funding, even at the local level, comes from Washington. It\u2019s coming from CDC [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]. It\u2019s coming from HHS [the Department of Health and Human Services]. And so we\u2019re looking at how those dollars flow down to the local communities and how they are spent, and also just officials who are in charge of public health policy. In Georgia already, we\u2019ve seen some pretty good impact in our reporting just by showing up, frankly. Our first Atlanta reporter, Rebecca Grapevine, she got on the job the first week and realized that the Board of Public Health in Georgia had not held a public meeting in five months. So we wrote about that<\/a>, and the story got a lot of attention. And by golly, in November they had a meeting<\/a>. So that was really great.\u00a0<\/p>\n And then the third thing is really community. We really want to center our coverage on the people on the ground who are working on public health from many aspects. It can be social workers. It can be your local epidemiologist at the health department. It can be volunteers at a house of worship who has a ministry trying to help with homelessness or maternal mortality or any of those things. We\u2019re really trying to be a platform and a voice for those people. At Civic News Company, we call people like that civic catalysts. They\u2019re out there doing the work, and we really want to shine a light on them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> So Amy, obviously we\u2019re going to talk about bird flu separately in a few minutes. What are the other public health, big national public health stories that you\u2019re watching right now?\u00a0<\/p>\n Maxmen:<\/strong> I think we\u2019ll keep an eye on vaccination rates. You can expect those to unfortunately drop. And I\u2019m not talking about just the covid vaccine but childhood vaccination rates. It\u2019s important to keep in mind the majority of adults, around 70%, still say that childhood vaccines are really important. But remember, going back to what\u2019s public health, the power of vaccines is in herd immunity effect. So children are being protected with, say, a measles vaccine, but we want to have high rates above 90% of vaccinations so that teachers who are immunocompromised, children who are immunocompromised, infants too young to be vaccinated, so that they\u2019re all protected, too. And what we\u2019re going to see, if we see RFK [Robert F. Kennedy] Jr. as the head of HHS, there\u2019s some rumors floating that Joseph Ladapo might have a role in the administration as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> He\u2019s the Florida surgeon general who we\u2019ve talked about a lot on the podcast, who himself is kind of vaccine agnostic, if you will.\u00a0<\/p>\n Maxmen:<\/strong> Yeah. Exactly. And so we\u2019re seeing a lot of signs that we\u2019re going to hear a lot of terms like \u201cchoice\u201d and \u201cconsent\u201d when it comes to vaccines. And those sound like great words, but what it ultimately means is that we\u2019ll see a loosening of mandates around having children be vaccinated before they go to public school, and that combined with misinformation. So we\u2019ll probably see lower vaccine rates among children. So that\u2019s something to watch because it means more outbreaks. Outbreaks are costly to contain in money and in lives lost. So that\u2019s definitely one story.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s certainly others besides even the bird flu, which I\u2019ll talk about. I write a lot about occupational health, so there\u2019s lots of health care workers who lost their lives in covid, but also I\u2019ve covered how many are facing long covid and PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] because they weren\u2019t very well protected when they were at work during the pandemic, during the peak of the pandemic. I\u2019ve written about how farmworkers and construction workers and landscapers have had heat-related illness and injuries. There was a law that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been working on, but it will almost certainly stall under a Trump administration. So we\u2019re not going to have national regulations on heat. So those are some of the other things I\u2019ll be thinking about.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> What are the big stories in New York, Eliza?\u00a0<\/p>\n Fawcett:<\/strong> Well, a lot of them are the same as what Amy mentioned, and we\u2019re trying to see how the big changes coming down the pike with the second Trump administration will impact us locally. Obviously that is in big part about funding and whether CDC funding stays the same, is reduced, etc. Same for NIH [the National Institutes of Health] and other federal agencies that deal with health issues. The way that local health departments work, even really big ones like New York City, is that they do get a lot of money from the federal government, obviously. And so any small changes could have a really big impact on work on the ground, whether that\u2019s making sure that kids can get vaccines. The Vaccines for Children Program is responsible for making sure that many, many, many children in the United States get vaccinated.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> I\u2019m, of course, so old that I covered the Vaccines for Children Program when it began in the 1990s. But yes, that is how most kids get vaccinated now, is through the federal government\u2019s Vaccines for Children Program. One thing that obviously we are looking towards, the possibility with Republicans back in control of the Congress and the White House, is health care budget cuts. I assume New York is assuming that there will be less money in a Trump administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fawcett:<\/strong> Yeah, I think it\u2019s a real concern for public health leadership in the city, and it\u2019s been interesting to see what the response has been from city and state officials after the election. They\u2019ve kind of made this point of saying that New Yorkers will be protected, whether that\u2019s reproductive rights or vaccinations. And there\u2019s this feeling of kind of pulling up the drawbridge, that New York has a pretty robust public health infrastructure. And so whatever happens on the federal level, we\u2019ll be OK. But obviously things are a lot more complicated and intertwined than that. The city does get a lot of its funding from, or the New York City public health department does get a lot of its funding from the city and from the state but also from the federal government. And so if there are major changes there, that could have a big impact on the kinds of community-led programs that do good public health work in the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n And even on vaccinations, that\u2019s an interesting question, too. Because while the CDC provides recommendations, they don\u2019t actually provide mandates. That\u2019s a states issue. If the CDC starts changing its messaging around vaccinations, particularly if RFK Jr. is running HHS, which is a big concern, that can still have a trickle-down impact on what New Yorkers think about getting vaccinated in general, which has already been a big concern for folks. So I think it\u2019s been interesting to see this dynamic starting to play out in the city, where on the one hand, there\u2019s this strong progressive leadership that is vowing to keep up the good fight. But we\u2019ll see the extent to which they can really protect themselves from any large changes that are going to happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> Let\u2019s talk about bird flu, because it\u2019s sort of the elephant or the dairy cow in the room. We\u2019ve been watching all year, and I guess health authorities have been watching with some alarm as we\u2019re seeing bird flu spreading in dairy cattle herds and then occasionally to people, to dairy workers, and now to some people who are apparently not dairy workers. What is your feeling about where we are with bird flu? And what has the Biden administration done about it? And what do you anticipate that the incoming Trump administration might do differently?\u00a0<\/p>\n Maxmen:<\/strong> Yeah, so I think the past, looking back on the past year with bird flu \u2014 the huge disappointment, appalling if you talk to researchers, sort of frustrating if you talk to public health officials \u2014 is we failed to contain it when the bird flu outbreak was confined to just a handful of states. That would be when it was smaller. It\u2019s like putting out a fire when it\u2019s small versus once there\u2019s a huge forest fire. It\u2019s harder to put out. So now it\u2019s in at least 15 states, and the number might be higher because a lot of farms, maybe the majority of farms, haven\u2019t tested at different periods during the year. There\u2019s 52 cases among people in the U.S., mainly among farmworkers. But yeah, as you just mentioned from the case in California, there\u2019s a few cases that have been mysterious, people who have no contact, no known contact with farm animals.\u00a0<\/p>\n These unknowns are actually kind of what\u2019s as staggering as also the growth of the epidemic. We\u2019ve sort of lost track of what\u2019s going on. So what this means is, I\u2019ve talked to so many experts at this point, and nobody thinks we\u2019re going to eliminate this on dairy farms. And to be clear, bird flu has been around for 30 years. But the bird flu in cattle spreading among mammals, that\u2019s new and that\u2019s in the U.S. So what does this mean? This means best-case scenario, millions if not billions of dollars in losses for the dairy and poultry industry. It means farmworkers are going to continue to get the bird flu, which is not comfortable. And then it also means we just have this kind of ominous constant threat that maybe the virus will evolve in a way where it spreads between people easily. And that\u2019s when you could get a pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> That\u2019s been the big fear about a pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n Maxmen:<\/strong> That\u2019s the fear.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> I mean but that was a fear even before the covid-19 pandemic. What everybody was afraid of was a bird flu pandemic, was an avian flu that mutated to pass from person to person.\u00a0<\/p>\n Maxmen:<\/strong> Exactly. It\u2019s been on the \u2014 because humans don\u2019t have a lot of experience with the bird flu. It\u2019s novel. We may or may not have some partial immunity to it, so it could be very bad. So there\u2019s a chance it will never mutate in a way that has it spread easily between people. But if it does, it could be horrible like on the scale of what we saw during covid. And so that\u2019s why everyone I talked to, I guess the big question is: Why are we taking a gamble on this? But that\u2019s what we\u2019ve done this past year essentially \u2014 intentional, not intentional. I could get into \u2014 I\u2019ve reported a lot on why this is, but that\u2019s where we\u2019re at.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> Some of this, I know, comes back to the whole trust issue, which is that the CDC couldn\u2019t get onto some of the dairy farms to test, because the dairy farmers didn\u2019t trust the government. What has the Biden administration been able to accomplish in terms of dealing with the bird flu?\u00a0<\/p>\n Maxmen:<\/strong> Well, yeah, so on a local level, this is really left to local public health departments a lot of the time. So that\u2019s really who\u2019s doing the work here. Sometimes it\u2019s state health departments, but on the ground we\u2019re talking about veterinarians, farmers, and local health officials. I actually FOIA-ed [through the Freedom of Information Act] a lot of health departments and some agriculture departments to learn what\u2019s even happening. The system of surveillance is a voluntary system, so when there\u2019s mistrust or also just fears, right, so farmers would be afraid of, if they say they have the bird flu, of losing their entire milk market, which is a big one because then they lose the whole farm. So there\u2019s a lot of concerns about their own privacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n So basically a lot of the cooperation has kind of fallen apart with that. What could the CDC do? I think there\u2019s a lot of disappointment for the CDC and the USDA [Department of Agriculture] from the experts that I speak with, because although, yes, they can\u2019t just storm onto farms, they haven\u2019t actually been using the bully pulpit to say: This is what\u2019s going wrong. We\u2019re really concerned. This is how we can do it better. This is how we can get around some of these problems like farmers being afraid of losing their milk market or farmworkers being afraid of losing their job.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n They haven\u2019t really been very open about the problems, and they also haven\u2019t acted with urgency. So the response on the high level has seemed slow and uncoordinated. They\u2019ll announce that they will be doing outreach to farmworkers, but then there will be months passed with no outreach. They\u2019ll say that they\u2019re going to be working on having other groups be able to test for the bird flu virus, but we still don\u2019t see any group besides the CDC having that ability. So there\u2019s a lot of people who are aggravated with the response under the Biden administration, and some of it\u2019s not just because of leadership. There\u2019s internal issues within the U.S. We have a voluntary system in a lot of ways, so for better or worse, this might be the way it is.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> And what would you expect from an incoming Trump administration even? We obviously don\u2019t know a lot about what to expect from an incoming Trump administration, but based on their handling of covid, what would you expect?\u00a0<\/p>\n Maxmen:<\/strong> Exactly. So based on their handling of covid, one is, I can say: Time-wise, OK, what\u2019s on our side? The plus is as outbreaks continue, people often get better at figuring out what to do. So on the plus side, maybe farmers will start to have a little bit more trust that they\u2019re not going to have huge losses and that therefore they\u2019ll be a little bit more open. Maybe vets will get a better handle on how to control this. So that\u2019s the plus side. The downside is also pretty huge. So during covid, the CDC basically stopped holding press briefings. So right now, at least there are press briefings. Here, I was critical of the CDC, but I might completely lose all contact with them under a Trump administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another one that\u2019s quite big is there\u2019s a study that showed that we\u2019re missing a lot of cases among farmworkers, and I expect us to have more bird flu cases among people and miss more of them. And that\u2019s bad because it\u2019s bad for the people who have the bird flu, but also it means we might miss the moment if this starts to spread between people. If a person spreads it to their kids or other family members, we might miss those moments. And the reason why we\u2019ll miss them \u2014 this happened during covid \u2014 is when there\u2019s huge threats of deportations and when there\u2019s just a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric. I did a lot of reporting in the Central Valley around meatpacking plant workers and farmworkers.\u00a0<\/p>\n When there\u2019s a lot of threats like this, people are maybe \u2026 There\u2019s a lot of people in that community who are immigrants, and maybe some are undocumented. You also have people on temporary work visas whose visa is tied to their employers. Maybe they have family members who aren\u2019t legally here, so they don\u2019t want to risk even the threat of deportation by going to a clinic when they\u2019re sick. They don\u2019t want to complain if work conditions are really unsafe. If they\u2019re given, say, no protection wall taking care of sick cattle, there\u2019s no incentive to complain about the employer if you think you might actually be deported. So stigma tends to drive infectious diseases underground, and that\u2019s sort of what we can expect.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> And obviously immigration is one of those issues that we don\u2019t cover generally as a health issue, but in New York, it is a health issue, right?\u00a0<\/p>\n Fawcett:<\/strong> Yeah, absolutely. I think that\u2019s another thing that we\u2019ll be looking at closely as this Trump administration gets going. Obviously, there are a lot of concerns among migrant communities in the city about mass deportations, which Trump has vowed to fulfill. And New York has a really large and fairly effective system for taking care of people regardless of immigration status or insurance, particularly through the municipal hospital system, NYC Health and Hospitals. And leadership there has said that migrants\u2019 access to health care will be protected, but there is a lot that remains to be seen about how those communities will be impacted.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> And Amy, which is the bigger threat out in the rest of the nation, the idea of people who could potentially spread misinformation about public health at the national level or the threat of not having enough money?\u00a0<\/p>\n Maxmen:<\/strong> Oh, I don\u2019t like binaries. Having misinformation at a very high level is pretty terrifying. It\u2019s pretty terrifying. And I think also, I always keep in mind big-picture stuff. As a reporter, if you\u2019re constantly combating every new little piece of misinformation, it\u2019s a bit exhausting. It\u2019s great to fact-check what people say, the big picture. Speaking about RFK Jr., he\u2019s endorsed a lot of conspiracy theories. And there\u2019s studies showing that if you believe in multiple conspiracy theories, there\u2019s a good chance you\u2019re going to believe in another one. So to have a conspiratorial mindset at a high level of government or even in very influential positions, that\u2019s pretty scary. Yeah.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fawcett:<\/strong> I think the other aspect to this conversation as well is just that, broadly speaking, the public health system is kind of beleaguered right now coming out of covid. A lot of the federal money that was there to support this work has dried up, and there are budget holes that need to be filled now, and people are burnt out. So I think that\u2019s another aspect here. Will folks be ready to have any fight that needs to happen under another Trump administration?\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> Charlene, one of the things you said at the beginning is that one of the efforts here is to help rebuild trust in public health. Public health has been, I think, of everything, of all of the parts of American society where the public has lost trust, public health is way up towards the top. And also it\u2019s way up towards the top in terms of the misinformation that\u2019s been spread. So how do you combat those two things? It\u2019s something that we talk about all the time on the podcast, and I don\u2019t know how to fix it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pacenti:<\/strong> It\u2019s really tough. I think that one way that we really look at it is elevating local voices. To your point about immigrants and immigration status as a social determinant of health, we had a report<\/a> just yesterday that came out in Georgia that laid out all the things that Amy and Eliza were just talking about in Georgia as well \u2014 the stigma, the not asking for help, because you fear about getting involved with the authorities in some negative way. But there are a lot of community organizations that are a safe space that do work to provide culturally sensitive care and speak the language and offer the help to people so that they\u2019re not threatened. So I think by highlighting those resources, that\u2019s one thing that we can do.\u00a0<\/p>\n And another one is just highlighting people who know what they\u2019re talking about, scientific experts in the community, particularly local ones. One really exciting thing that we\u2019re doing in New York is we\u2019re kind of combining two of those concepts through a partnership with Your Local Epidemiologist<\/a>. This is a newsletter that is run by Katelyn Jetelina, who back in 2020 started an email. She was teaching at the University of Texas. She\u2019s an epidemiologist, and she was just writing an email to her students and her family and friends to explain the science behind what was going on with covid. And it has snowballed, and four years later, it\u2019s really huge. So we have partnered with her to bring that concept to Healthbeat readers in New York. So every week we have our own epidemiologist. Her name is Marisa Donnelly, and she does an email newsletter every week that kind of breaks down what we call the community health forecast. And it\u2019s all kinds of really great, science-driven information with nice little charts that just lays it all out for you.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> It\u2019s like the weather forecast, but for health?\u00a0<\/p>\n Pacenti:<\/strong> Exactly, exactly. So I think that\u2019s one way. Just lay it out for people. Give them the rationale behind it, the science behind it, and I think that work like that over time, hopefully, will help regain some trust.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> Well, I want to thank the panel. This has been really inspiring. I\u2019m hoping that we can come back to you periodically to see how public health in general and Healthbeat in specific are doing. So thanks for joining us.\u00a0<\/p>\n OK, that is this week\u2019s show. As always, if you enjoy the podcast, you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We\u2019d appreciate it if you left us a review. That helps other people find us, too. Special thanks this week to our producer, Taylor Cook, our editor, Emmarie Huetteman, and KFF Health News enterprise editor Kelly Johnson. As always, you can email us your comments or questions. We\u2019re at whatthehealth, all one word, at KFF.org, or you can still find me at X, @jrovner<\/a>, and increasingly at Bluesky, @julierovner.bsky.social<\/a>. Do you hang around on social media any place, Amy?\u00a0<\/p>\n Maxmen:<\/strong> You know I\u2019ve just started. I\u2019ve joined the Bluesky trend. I just sort of came over there. It\u2019s kind of one of those moments where there\u2019s a lot of journalists and health people and researchers, so yeah, I\u2019ve\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> Do you have a handle?\u00a0<\/p>\n Maxmen:<\/strong> My handle is amymaxmen.bsky.social<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> Excellent. Charlene?\u00a0<\/p>\n Pacenti:<\/strong> I\u2019m most active on LinkedIn<\/a>, where all the health people are.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> There you go. Eliza?\u00a0<\/p>\n Fawcett:<\/strong> I am also on Bluesky newly, under my name, elizafawcett<\/a>, and still kind of lurking on Twitter<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rovner:<\/strong> There you go. We\u2019ll be back in your feed next week. Until then, have a very happy holiday weekend and be healthy.\u00a0<\/p>\n \tLonnie Ro \tTaylor Cook \tEmmarie Huetteman To hear all our podcasts,\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n And subscribe to KFF Health News\u2019 \u201cWhat the Health?\u201d on\u00a0Spotify<\/a>,\u00a0Apple Podcasts<\/a>,\u00a0Pocket Casts<\/a>, or wherever you listen to podcasts.<\/em><\/p>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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