929 - How To Spot Unregulated Pharmacies and Falsified Medications
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.8 • 620 Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
About this episode:
Trying to save money on antibiotics, GLP-1 antagonists, or other medications using online pharmacies can pose serious health risks. These sites are flush with substandard and falsified drugs, which can cause adverse side effects, leave serious conditions untreated, and, in some instances, lead to death. In this episode: Dr. Henry Michtalik shares how providers and patients can spot unregulated suppliers and report counterfeit drugs.
Guest:
Dr. Henry Michtalik, MHS, MPH, is a hospitalist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an assistant professor at both the School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is a co-principal investigator with the School of Public Health’s BESAFE initiative.
Host:
Lindsay Smith Rogers, MA, is the producer of the Public Health On Call podcast, an editor for Expert Insights, and the director of content strategy for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Show links and related content:
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Fake Drugs, Real Danger—Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health Magazine
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Verify Before You Buy—National Association of Boards of Pharmacy
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Report a Counterfeit Drug—U.S. Food and Drug Administration
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Sue Telecat from the Bloomberg American Health Initiative. |
| 0:08.0 | Are you in your organization working to reduce overdoses, end violence, improve food systems, |
| 0:14.0 | protect the environment, or support adolescents in the United States? |
| 0:17.0 | If so, you may be eligible for a full scholarship to earn an MPH or DRPH degree at the Johns Hopkins |
| 0:23.7 | Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:25.9 | The Bloomberg Fellowship through the Bloomberg American Health Initiative can help you |
| 0:29.6 | transform your career, support your organization, and make a significant impact on your community. |
| 0:35.5 | Find out more at Americanhealth.j.j.u.edu backslash fellowship. |
| 0:44.3 | 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. |
| 1:01.0 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to Public Health Question at jh.hue. |
| 1:07.0 | That's Public Health Question at jh.u. |
| 1:11.6 | That's public health question at jh.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 1:15.6 | It's Lindsay Smith-Roggers. |
| 1:17.3 | Today, fake drugs from online pharmacies. |
| 1:20.9 | Dr. Henry Mitchellick, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins, |
| 1:24.5 | who studies patient safety, works with Be Safe, which stands for |
| 1:28.8 | behavioral and educational strategies for avoiding falsified medicine exposure. The initiative is a |
| 1:35.4 | partnership between the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Pfizer and aims to |
| 1:40.0 | better understand the market of falsified and substandard drugs and how providers can better counsel |
| 1:45.5 | their patients to avoid them. Let's listen. Dr. Henry Mitzelich, thank you so much for joining us |
| 1:51.1 | on Public Health On Call. Would you tell us a bit about you and your work? Sure, Lindsay, thanks for |
| 1:55.6 | having me. So I'm a hospice at Johns Hopkins Medicine, and I work with the BeSafe group, which is working to help educate individuals about falsified and counterfeit medications and strategies to help avoid that. |
... |
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