199 - What We Can Learn From The Success of the NBA's COVID-19 Bubble
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 11 November 2020
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After the National Basketball Association shut down on March 11, the league was able to resume play and complete both its season and postseason without interruption from COVID-19 from the safety of "the bubble." Pete Meisel, the NBA's senior manager for player health and an alumnus of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about what went into the bubble, how they maintained the players' physical and mental health and safety, and what we can learn from the bubble's success.
KEYWORDS: athletes; pandemic response; testing methods
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 2 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.6 | I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, |
| 0:18.7 | and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:21.9 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence and experience to the public health news of the day |
| 0:27.3 | through informative interviews with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health |
| 0:32.7 | officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question |
| 0:40.7 | at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:43.1 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:48.9 | Today, I speak with Pete Maisal, the senior manager for player health at the National Basketball Association, and an alumnus of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:59.7 | Our topic is the bubble, how the NBA managed to complete its season and postseason without any interruption from the coronavirus, and what all the rest of us can learn from this success. |
| 1:12.4 | Let's listen. |
| 1:13.9 | Thank you so much for joining me to talk about the NBA season. |
| 1:17.7 | Could you just tell me a little bit about your role at the NBA? |
| 1:21.6 | Sure. |
| 1:22.2 | I work on all things, player health. |
| 1:25.1 | And so in normal times, it's typically our health policies, injury, |
| 1:29.7 | epidemiology, and really providing services to teams to make sure that the standard of care |
| 1:35.9 | across the league is met in accordance with our policies and programs. It's all kind of flipped |
| 1:42.3 | after coronavirus, which we'll get into. |
| 1:45.5 | Yeah. So your basic job is to help keep the players healthy. Is that fair to say? |
| 1:50.9 | Yes. And that became an immediate challenge with COVID. Do you remember when the league shut down? |
| 1:56.3 | Yeah, we shut down on March 11th, Faithful Wednesday. Tell me about that. What was that like? |
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