Public Health On Call Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Methadone is a highly effective treatment for substance use disorder but strict regulations like daily clinic visits have led to its nickname, “liquid handcuffs.” Dr. Yngvild Olsen, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services administration, talks with Lindsay Smith Rogers about new federal regulations that expand access to this life saving medication.  They talk about how the COVID era showed that changes can make methadone much easier to prescribe and access, and how these updates are part of a critical cultural shift towards making substance use treatment more reasonable, equitable, and compassionate.
Resources for this episode:
https://www.samhsa.gov/medications-substance-use-disorders/statutes-regulations-guidelines/methadone-guidance
https://findtreatment.gov/

World Malaria Day is April 25. Today, guest host Thomas Locke takes us to Capitol Hill where we meet malaria scientists who have joined an advocacy group to lobby members of Congress to fund critical interventions against malaria. They talk about their work and what scientific messages they bring to DC to impart on policy makers who play a major role in efforts to combat this preventable and deadly disease. This special episode is an extended version of Malaria Minute, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute.
Learn more:
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/malaria-research-institute
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/events/2024/world-malaria-day-symposium
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/malaria-research-institute-1

Humans are transforming, degrading, and altering Earth’s natural life support systems so profoundly that our actions have created an existential crisis. For Earth Day, Sam Myers, founding director of the Planetary Health Alliance and director of the brand new Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about the concept of planetary health, an interdisciplinary approach to understanding how the state of the earth affects the health of us all.
Learn more:
http://Planetaryhealthalliance.org
https://planetaryhealth.jhu.edu/

The presence of infectious diseases can be picked up through wastewater surveillance but how can this data be useful in predicting future outbreaks? Dr. Dylan George, director of the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics at the CDC, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about how the Center’s forecast for the 2023-2024 respiratory virus season performed and the role of wastewater surveillance as part of a multifaceted approach to aggregating data.
Resources from this episode:
https://johnshopkinssph.libsyn.com/699-an-update-on-the-cdcs-new-center-for-forecasting-and-outbreak-analytics
https://magazine.jhsph.edu/2020/cloudy-chance-covid
https://www.theinvisibleshieldseries.com/

There’s a lot of research around Type 2 diabetes that has informed patient care when it comes to diagnosis, treatment, and lifestyle management. But much less is known about Type 1, long mislabeled “childhood diabetes.” Johns Hopkins epidemiologists Elizabeth Selvin and Michael Fang talk with Stephanie Desmon about new research debunking a lot of previously held assumptions about Type 1 diabetes, the prevalence of adult onset and correlation with obesity, and why different approaches to diagnosis and management are necessary. They also discuss the cost of insulin and why more research is needed around medications like Ozempic for Type 1 diabetes.

Cigarette butts are the most littered object in the world. With their plastic filters and toxic substances, they are a significant source of contamination for soil and water. Grazi Grilo, a researcher at the Global Institute for Tobacco Control, talks with Stephanie Desmon about her work quantifying the scope of the problem, and why some of the very things that make cigarettes so environmentally hazardous also provide enormous benefits for the tobacco industry.Read more about her work here: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/institute-for-global-tobacco-control/2024/assessment-of-littered-cigarette-butts-in-brazil-informs-strengthening-of-global-treaty