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 in our election series, a look at where the presidential candidates stand on protecting the public's health and how each might impact the work of the CDC, the FDA, the EPA, and other federal agencies.

Stephanie Desmond talks to Dr. Georges Benjamin, longtime executive director of the American Public Health Association about what federal agencies charged

with keeping people safe in emergencies and every day could look like after the 2024 election.

Let's listen.

George Benjamin, thanks so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me.

So we're doing an election series, and today I wanted to talk to you about what this election

could mean for the public's health. And I was hoping we could talk about how the different

candidates would approach different issues facing our federal agencies, such as the NIH, the EPA,

FTC, and CDC. And I'm wondering how you see all of this.

Well, you know, what I do is I kind of think about the broad issues about what a particular

administration brings to the table. So I think about who they will appoint in various jobs.

So personnel is policy. Very much so. I think about what their perspective is on funding,

you know, what their funding priorities is. You know, your budget is your priority document.

And I think about how they think about problem solving. How do they approach problems? Do they

use their ideology, we all use what we believe to drive things,

but do they use ideology in an overwhelming way and ignore the evidence and science around things

...