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, producer of Public Health On Call, and today we start a series of podcasts that we're calling

Vaccines 101, the basics of vaccines and vaccination from the molecular level to global policy

and everything in between. We start with the biology. Dr. Arturo Casa Deval is the chair of the

Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins

Bloomberg School of Public Health. He speaks to Dr. Josh Sharfstein about what vaccines are and how they work.

They also discuss new developments in vaccine science. Let's listen. Arturo Casa Deval,

thank you so much for joining me today in Public Health on call to talk about vaccines.

How are you doing?

I'm doing fine.

Thank you, Judge, for having me.

Given this topic, I wonder if you could introduce yourself again to our listeners.

You've been on a few times, but I don't know that people necessarily appreciate your role in your training.

I'm professor and chair, the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology.

I am an infectious disease physician.

I have a PhD in physical chemistry that helps me think about vaccines.

But I think for the purposes of this podcast, I should say that I've been working on vaccines for 30 years.

Great. Now, at the highest level, how would you describe a vaccine?

At the highest possible level, Josh, I would say that they are humanity's greatest invention.

...