Public Health Featured on Public Radio (and podcasts) for the American Public Health Association conference, Atlanta, November 2017

Stories that examine efforts to protect, promote or analyze health in specific populations – from whole countries down to neighborhoods. Topics include whether communities have access to healthy foods, or have an excessive burden of pollution, smoking rates or other health problems – and these stories explore the causes and potential solutions. (This definition cribbed from the Association for Health Care Journalists, and topic headings cribbed from the APHA)

Alcohol, Tobacco & other drugs

• Dentists Work To Ease Patients’ Pain With Fewer Opioids – NPR story about dentists reassessing their prescribing habits
• Too Many Pills – Reveal’s investigation into the opioid crisis
• Without medical support, DIY detox often fails – WHYY story on the difficulties of detoxing on your own

Community Health

• Oakland Center Finds Sickle Cell Treatment Success – This NPR story looks at a success story from an Oakland, California, center dedicated to treatment of sickle cell disease
• Place and Privilege – Capital Public Radio’s “The View From Here” explores the history, politics and economics of housing affordability in California’s capital
• Rx for the Bx – WNYC’s special series on health and healthcare in the Bronx, New York State’s least healthy county (see The Revolutionaries Who Rescued a Hospital and New York Debates Whether Housing Counts as Healthcare)

Epidemiology/Outbreaks

• Audio Time Capsule: The discovery of Legionnaires’ disease – WHYY’s health show, The Pulse, tells the story of the mysterious 1976 outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease
• Faces of Elephantiasis: In Nigeria, Patients Remain After the Disease is Gone – Philip Graitcer, formerly an epidemiologist with the CDC, lived in Africa in the 1980s. He returned in 2013 as a journalist and came face to face with a disease he had only read about in textbooks.
• Flu-dunnit? – WNYC tracks contagious respiratory diseases in an attempt to answer the age old question: who was to blame for the office outbreak?
• How To Stop An Outbreak – WNYC’s dissection of what happened during the 2015 Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in the Bronx
• The Making of the Disease Detectives, Or The Case of the Nutty Dish – Story about the disease detectives – the nation’s medical eyes and ears on the lookout for disease outbreaks and bioterror attacks. They’re the Epidemic Intelligence Service officers at the CDC

Food and Nutrition

• Hidden Hunger – Capital Public Radio’s “The View From Here” features first-person stories of people coping with food insecurity in one of the country’s richest agricultural regions

Maternal & Child Health

• Can Family Secrets Make You Sick? – NPR series based on the Adverse Childhood Experiences test
• Focus on Infants During Childbirth Leaves U.S. Mothers In Danger – A story from a collaboration between ProPublica and NPR on maternal mortality in the U.S.
• A Sheriff and a Doctor Team Up to Map Childhood Trauma – A story from the NPR series, What Shapes Health? exploring social and environmental factors that affect health throughout life

Stories recommended by reporters Elana Gordon (WHYY), Philip Graitcer (independent), Mary Harris (WNYC), Erin McGregor (independent), Catherine Saint Louis (New York Times), Laura Starecheski (Reveal), Belén Torres-Gil (Capital Public Radio), Jillian Weinberger (VOX), Elly Yu (WABE) and more.

Please email me at aaronczyk at wnyc dot org with your suggestions, additions or questions.