Welcome to Season 2 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins

Bloomberg School of Public Health.

I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement,

and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department.

Our goal is to bring scientific evidence and experience to the public health news of the day

through informative interviews with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health

officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at

Public Health Question at jhhhu.edu. That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future

podcast episodes. Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Dr. Jennifer Gerber, who recently earned her PhD in International Health

at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. They talk about the importance of the flu vaccine

this fall, given the need to keep people from getting sick and filling hospital beds that may be

necessary to hold for people with COVID-19.

Let's listen.

Jennifer Gerber, thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me, Stephanie.

So today we're going to talk about the flu vaccine, which is not something we've been thinking

about lately.

We've been talking a lot more about a vaccine for COVID.

Well, why should we start thinking about this?

We're expecting to have an increase in COVID cases this fall and winter at the same time

that influenza occurs annually. And so it's important that we increase the proportion of the

population that's vaccinated against influenza as it means to protect ourselves in our communities, but also to help

...