228 - Health Commissioner Dr. Monica Bharel on Massachusetts' Unique Approach to COVID-19 Vaccine Rollouts
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2021
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
States are rolling out COVID-19 vaccines to "high risk groups" but there's a lot of nuance in how "high risk" is defined. Dr. Monica Bharel, health commissioner of Massachusetts, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about the state's unique approach, which includes prioritizing communities impacted by institutional racism and those with disproportionately high numbers of COVID infections. Dr. Bharel also talks about what the state is doing to go beyond just making the vaccine available to support high uptake of vaccination among people who can benefit the most.
KEYWORDS: health equity; racial disparity; health communication
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 3, a Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:12.3 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:19.6 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence |
| 0:22.4 | and experience to the public health news of the day through informative interviews with scientists, |
| 0:27.8 | community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas |
| 0:34.4 | or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question |
| 0:38.8 | at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:41.1 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:47.2 | Today I speak with Dr. Monica Borrell, the health commissioner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. |
| 0:52.7 | Our topic is the COVID vaccine and the unique approach that Massachusetts is taking to making |
| 0:58.4 | the vaccine available. |
| 1:00.9 | Let's listen. |
| 1:02.4 | Dr. Burrell, thank you so much for joining me. |
| 1:05.4 | And I want to jump right to the COVID vaccine. |
| 1:10.6 | How did you receive the news that we have safe and effective COVID |
| 1:14.1 | vaccines here in the United States? You know, first of all, thanks so much for having me here |
| 1:18.5 | to chat with you. And when I heard about the COVID-19 vaccine, it was the first glimmer |
| 1:26.3 | of real hope that I felt in a long time. |
| 1:29.3 | You know, all of us in public health have been at this since February, nonstop 24-7, |
| 1:34.3 | addressing the pandemic of our lifetime. |
| 1:36.7 | And I must say that the daily news about people getting sick and dying is devastating. |
| 1:44.7 | And we all work with data and we have this 35,000 foot view. |
... |
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