769 - A Conversation With A Coast Guard Flight Surgeon

Public Health On Call

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

News, Health & Fitness, Medicine

4.6 • 644 Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2024

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

About this episode:

The U.S. Coast Guard is charged with safeguarding Americans through missions including maritime law enforcement, antiterrorism operations, and search and rescue. Members of the Coast Guard carry out these missions at sea and in the air in all sorts of extreme conditions requiring specialized medical care to ensure their health and safety. In this episode, we hear from a flight surgeon who talks about his work caring for military aviators, as well as some of the most challenging moments of his career, including Hurricane Katrina and being the medical director for the Coast Guard Academy during COVID.

Guest:

Dr. Esan Simon is the medical director for the Coast Guard Academy. Previously, he was a flight surgeon for the Coast Guard since 2004.

Host:

Dr. Josh Sharfstein is vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a faculty member in health policy, a pediatrician, and former secretary of Maryland's Health Department.

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0:00.0	Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
0:05.9	where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.
0:16.3	If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhh.edu.
0:23.8	That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.
0:30.8	This is Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of Public Health On Call.
0:34.4	A few months ago, we heard from one of our regular listeners, Dr. Isan Simon, who told
0:39.1	us he worked as a flight surgeon for the U.S. Coast Guard. We had some questions, starting
0:43.9	with understanding what flight surgeons actually do, and he had answers in this conversation
0:49.1	with Dr. Josh Sharstein. Let's listen. Captain Is, Simon, thank you so much for joining me today in
0:56.1	Public Health On Call to talk about the role of physicians and public health physicians in the Coast Guard.
1:02.7	And I thought I would start by asking you to introduce the Coast Guard to our listeners. I think
1:09.7	we all have the image of the Coast Guard
1:11.3	rescuing a ship or a fisherman who the mast broke or something and they send out the Coast Guard.
1:19.7	But tell us about what the Coast Guard does. I've been affiliated with the Coast Guard as a physician
1:24.1	since 2004, so almost basically 20 years now. And when you talk about the Coast Guard,
1:30.4	the Coast Guard's been around since August 4th, 1790. So it has a rich, rich history of service to the
1:37.2	country, service to the people of the United States, as well as around the world. There's 11 statutory
1:42.3	missions that the Coast Guard executes on a daily basis.
1:45.9	And some of these, you alluded to search and rescue. That's a big one. A lot of people might be
1:50.6	familiar with that component of the Coast Guard. But if, for example, as you mentioned, if somebody's
1:56.2	on a fishing vessel and they're stranded out to sea, and there's not too many people that can
2:00.6	go and rescue a
	...

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