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.

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This is Lindsay Smith Rogers.

Today, on this Patriot Day, a National Day of Service and Rem and remembrance, our topic is the World Trade Center Health Program, a national effort that pays for care for tens of thousands of first responders and community members injured in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11th. Dr. John Howard is director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's the agency that oversees this program.

He joins Dr. Sharfstein to talk about its origins, how eligibility works, and how people can

still register today. Please check out the link in the show notes to learn how to apply. Let's listen.

Dr. John Howard, thank you so much for joining Public Health on Call to talk about the CDC's

World Trade Center Health Program. And I want to start by asking you how this program got started.

Well, that's a great place to start because a lot of people aren't aware of that. I think most people are aware of 9-11 occurring in New York City at the

Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

And that terrorist attack form a lot of interests for folks in the Congress.

They were very concerned about the responders who came and helped, both rescue, cleanup, recovery,

reconstruction.

And we began to see very early on 2001 right away a thing called World Trade Center Center cough, where we had responders that were

basically exhibiting these chronic cough symptoms. When you look at the dust, all you have to do

is see some of those photos from September 11, 2001, and you see people breathing that kind of air, it's not surprising that

they would have a cough. And I think we became concerned about whether or not there was more

than just a cough there. And we're not talking about a small number of people who had exposures to dust and other potential hazards as part of the response.

Exactly. The estimates that we did early on in the early 2001, 2, and 3, upwards of 90,000 responders were involved at all three sites

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