416 - Will President Biden's Infrastructure Bill Address the Historical Legacy of Racist Transportation Policies?
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2022
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For decades, infrastructure policies harmed communities of color. New highways displaced residents through eminent domain, public transit systems were left in disrepair, and urban construction projects often catered to wealthier families. Andrea McDaniels, Director of Communications for the Bloomberg American Health Initiative, talks with Professor Keshia Pollack Porter of the Bloomberg School about how President Biden's $1 trillion infrastructure plan has the potential to rectify many of these inequities, some of the challenges of the federal law, and how infrastructure is intrinsically tied to health and well-being.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 5 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former |
| 0:19.1 | health commissioner here in Baltimore, Maryland. |
| 0:21.7 | Our goal with this podcast is to bring scientific evidence and experience to shed light on critical |
| 0:27.5 | health issues. If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health |
| 0:33.0 | question at jhhhu.edu. That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:41.7 | Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith Rogers, producer of public health on call. Today, guest host Andrea |
| 0:48.2 | McDaniels talks with Professor Keisha Pollock Porter of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School |
| 0:53.1 | of Public Health about Biden's |
| 0:55.2 | infrastructure plan and its potential impacts on generations of biased policies that underpins |
| 1:01.3 | systemic racism. Let's listen. I'm Andrea McDaniels, Director of Communications with the |
| 1:07.9 | Bloomberg American Health Initiative. Today I'm here of Keisha M. Pollock |
| 1:12.0 | Porter, who holds many hats at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. She's a core faculty |
| 1:17.4 | member of the initiative, a Bloomberg centennial professor, and vice dean for faculty. She is also |
| 1:24.8 | a leader in advancing equitable health policies. |
| 1:28.3 | We're going to talk to her today about President Biden's $1 trillion plan to rebuild America's infrastructure, |
| 1:36.3 | and if it will repair the impact of generations of biased policies that hurt black and disadvantaged communities. Welcome, Keisha. Thank you so much, |
| 1:46.5 | Andrea. Happy to be here. So I thought we start by laying out the historical background for people. |
| 1:52.2 | How have past infrastructure policies impact the disadvantaged in minority communities? |
| 1:58.3 | Yeah. So I think we can look back to as early as in 1950s and think about how planners of our |
| 2:06.2 | interstate highway systems routed some highways in this country directly and sometimes purposefully |
| 2:14.4 | through black and brown communities. |
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