Welcome to Public Health On Call, a new podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Our focus is the novel coronavirus.

I'm Josh Sharfstein, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, and also a former secretary of Maryland's health department.

Our goal with this podcast is to bring evidence and experts to help you understand today's

news about the novel coronavirus and what it means for tomorrow.

If you have questions, you can email them to public health question at jhh.edu.

That's public health question at jh.h. That's public health question at jh.u.edu

for future podcast episodes.

Today, we are focusing on a grassroots effort here

in Baltimore to provide mental health support

to thousands of city residents during the coronavirus crisis.

The effort is called the Baltimore Neighbors Network.

I'm speaking to Councilman Zeke Cohen,

to Chantay Jackson of the Baltimore Community Mediation Center,

and to Amy Greensfelder of the organization Pro Bono Counseling.

Let's listen.

Councilman Cohen, thank you so much for joining me.

Tell me how the Baltimore neighbor's network got started.

Dr. Sharstein, it's an honor to be with you, and feel free to just call me Zeke.

So we got started out of a concern that in addition to the physical damage that we know the coronavirus is going to cause,

we also are facing an epidemic of isolation and loneliness.

And what I mean by that is that with the need for social distancing,

...