Welcome to Season 4 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former Commissioner of Health in Baltimore City.

Our goal is to bring

scientific evidence and experience to current topics in public health through engaging 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, I speak to Dr. Mamie Parker, an ecologist, activist, and the first blackhead of fisheries

for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

We speak about getting back in touch with nature during the pandemic.

Let's listen.

Dr. Mamie Parker, thank you so much for joining me on Public Health On Call today.

Thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity,

and I'm just so grateful for the work that you've done

to really get the word out and make a difference.

Well, we were on this panel together,

and you were talking about how the pandemic should really open our eyes

to the relationship that we have to nature around us.

And I just thought, what a message.

Tell our audience a little bit about yourself.

Sure.

So I was born in Southern Arkansas.

...