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.

This is Lindsay Smith Rogers.

Ahead of World Malaria Day tomorrow, we bring you an extended episode of Malaria Minute, a podcast from

the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute. In this episode, guest host Thomas Locke takes us to Capitol

Hill, where we meet malaria scientists who have joined an advocacy group to lobby members of Congress

to fund critical interventions against malaria.

We hear from them about their work and what scientific messages they bring to D.C. to impart on policymakers who play a major role in efforts to combat this preventable and deadly disease.

Learn more about the Malaria Institute's work at the link in the show notes.

Let's listen.

It's Tuesday the 12th of March, and we've brought the podcast to Capitol Hill, the political heart of U.S. decision-making.

It's pretty early in the morning, not even 9 a.m., but there's a real buzz and excitement about the place.

That's because malaria champions, US citizens passionate about ending

the disease, are about to lobby their members of Congress to fund interventions against malaria.

They've been brought together by United to beat malaria, a global grassroots campaign of the

United Nations Foundation. This is their annual leadership summit.

Malaria is just horrible. There's not enough funding. And the only way that we can get that

funding is spreading awareness for it. You know, the people on Capitol Hill are people too,

so we just got to give them our stories. It's important that we continue to fund malaria relief

around the world because it's preventable and treatable and it's a disease that

...