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

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu.

That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer, Public Health On Call.

Last fall, we partnered with the Stoop Storyt storytelling series to present an evening of stories about the personal impacts of public health.

We're releasing some of those recorded stories as a series, and today, in part three,

we hear from Ashley Esposito, a litter picker with B. Moore Trash Pickers, who talks about

the stories that trash can tell

about the health of a community. We also hear from Dr. Stephen Thomas, director of the Maryland

Center for Health Equity at the University of Maryland School Public Health and College Park,

and founder of the Barbershop Project, who talks about the power of barbershops as places

of health education.

Let's listen.

Our next storyteller is Ashley Esposito, who is a wife, mom, and geriatric millennial,

living in southwest of Baltimore.

She is a neurodivergent software developer who enjoys quality time picking up litter,

which we're going to hear about, and hyping up bumblebees that visit her garden.

Please welcome Ashley.

Okay, so I'm originally from Arizona, which means I grew up being very in tune with nature and

like personal responsibility.

Like I grew up in a really rural area.

...