BONUS - Fixing Chronic Underinvestment in Public Health and Prevention: COVID-19's Unexpected Opportunities to Chart a Path to a Healthier Future
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2020
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The pandemic has revealed major deficits in public health infrastructure and a lack of prioritization of prevention efforts: only 3% of all health dollars are spent on prevention. Dr. Ellen J. MacKenzie, dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Dr. Shelley Hearne, director of the School's Center for Public Health Advocacy, talk with guest host Dr. Colleen Barry about how disinvestment in public health has left a system that is at times unable to respond effectively to today's crises. They discuss what's broken and what needs to be fixed – both to better respond to current challenges and to prepare for the future.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 2 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins |
| 0:11.6 | Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.6 | I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, |
| 0:18.8 | and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:21.9 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence and experience to the public health news of the day |
| 0:27.3 | through informative interviews with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public |
| 0:32.5 | health officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at |
| 0:39.8 | Public Health Question at jhh.edu. That's public health question at jh.edu for future podcast |
| 0:47.8 | episodes. Today, Dr. Colleen Berry, the chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management |
| 0:54.0 | at the Johns Hopkins |
| 0:55.3 | Bloomberg School of Public Health, talks with Dean Ellen McKenzie and Somer-Clagg Professor |
| 1:01.5 | Shelley Hearn, the director of the school's Center for Public Health Advocacy. |
| 1:06.8 | They discuss the challenge of underinvestment in public health and prevention in the United States |
| 1:11.6 | and what we can do now to modernize the U.S. public health system and chart a path to a healthier |
| 1:17.5 | future. Let's listen. |
| 1:19.8 | Ellen and Shelley, thank you both for joining me today on the podcast. |
| 1:24.4 | Ellen, in the fall of 2017, our school hosted a symposium on the lessons from the 1918 influenza pandemic that asked the question, when the next pandemic hits, will we be prepared? |
| 1:40.8 | The answer in 2017 from the assembled experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, was a resounding no. |
| 1:49.0 | Fast forward to 2020, and we see that those experts were right. |
| 1:54.0 | We are struggling now due in part to major deficits in our public health infrastructure. |
| 2:00.0 | From a public health perspective, what are the big things that we've gotten wrong in this |
| 2:05.4 | country? |
... |
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