1036 - Geopolitics and Humanitarian Health in Iran, Cuba, and Ukraine
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2026
⏱️ 17 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
About this episode:
Humanitarian crises don't exist in a vacuum—they are shaped by geopolitical actions like blockades, sanctions, and armed conflicts between countries. In this episode: Stanford University scholar Ruth Gibson details how geopolitical decisions impact civilians on the ground and how this framing applies to current situations in Iran, Cuba, and Ukraine.
Guest:
Ruth Gibson, PhD, is a scholar at Stanford University where she holds appointments in at the Center for Innovation and Global Health and the Center for International Security and Cooperation.
Host:
Dr. Josh Sharfstein is distinguished professor of the practice in Health Policy and Management, a pediatrician, and former secretary of Maryland's Health Department.
Show links and related content:
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U.S. to Blockade Ships Entering or Exiting Iranian Ports—U.S. Central Command
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Block Food and Medicine?—Geopolitics and Humanity Dispatch
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Cuban doctors endure burnout, blackouts as once-vaunted healthcare declines—Reuters
-
Willing Accomplices: Gazprom & Rosneft's Role in the Transport and Indoctrination of Ukraine's Children—Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab
-
Caring for Children in War-Torn Ukraine—Public Health On Call (November 2025)
-
Starvation in Gaza—Public Health On Call (July 2025)
Transcript information:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:23.8 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | Hey listeners, it's Lindsay Smith-Rogers. Today, linking humanitarian health crises to their geopolitical causes. Dr. Ruth Gibson holds |
| 0:41.2 | appointments at the Center for Innovation in Global Health and the Center for International |
| 0:45.6 | Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. She joins Dr. Josh Sharfstein to explain how |
| 0:52.0 | she seeks to do the messy work of understanding who and what is |
| 0:57.0 | responsible for a catastrophe to increase the chances of stopping the harm and preventing the next |
| 1:03.2 | crisis. Let's listen. Dr. Ruth Gibson, thank you so much for joining me today on public health |
| 1:09.2 | on call to talk about humanitarian health around the world with a unique perspective that you bring on international affairs. But before we get into all that, tell me a little bit and tell our audience a little bit about yourself. |
| 1:21.4 | Well, first and foremost, Josh, it's an absolute pleasure to be with you. I'm a scholar at Stanford University. I'm appointed between the |
| 1:30.3 | Center for Innovation and Global Health and the Center for International Security and Cooperation. |
| 1:35.4 | And the nature of my research is in geopolitical coercion and what that means for humanitarian health |
| 1:43.9 | around the world. |
| 1:44.9 | So I focus on crisis and specifically what blockades do to civilian health, |
| 1:52.9 | sanction regimes and armed conflict and how that all comes together in various crisis points |
| 1:58.1 | around the world to try to understand what it's going to mean for civilians on the ground. |
| 2:02.9 | That is a fascinating and difficult topic. |
| 2:05.9 | How did you come to that work? |
| 2:08.8 | I spent a decade of my life on the ground doing humanitarian work before I went back to academia. |
| 2:16.1 | I was in Africa for about four years in Madagascar |
... |
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