Conversations on Health Care Federal News Network | Hubbard Radio

As we mark Earth Day, we have just experienced the hottest March on record. But climate change’s impact isn’t stopping with the weather; it’s also affecting our mental health, says Dr. Gary Belkin, director of the Billion Minds Project at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Climate anxiety, which refers to having distressing feelings related to climate change impacts, is increasingly prevalent in communities where the impact is the most severe.
And the problem is only getting worse.
Dr. Belkin says it is important to ask, “What happens when there is mass hopelessness?” From individuals to politicians to society as a whole, feelings of hopelessness can hamper people’s ability to problem solve and result in people giving up and retreating from the issue.
A solution? Start small in communities, Dr. Belkin says.
He’s putting this idea into practice through his work as chair of COP², an organization that curates coalitions of experts, advocates, care providers, decision-makers and funders to support projects that are co-created with local communities living on the front lines of the climate crisis.
“What I think is really exciting,” he tells hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter, “is that the climate pressures have generated some powerful forms of local organizing and intersecting actions.”

What happens when music therapists and neuroscientists team up? Patients win, says Dr. Francis Collins. From adults with Parkinson’s disease to children with autism, music has the power to help people walk, talk, ease pain and so much more.
Dr. Collins recently stepped down from his role as the longest-serving director of National Institutes of Health. As he faces a personal battle against prostate cancer, he’s exploring the promising impact that music and art therapy could hold for patients with health challenges.
Dr. Collins is hoping to develop a deeper understanding of music’s influence on brain circuitry. The goal? To help patients ease the symptoms of conditions like chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder and dementia.
His interview with hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter is a follow-up to a conversation with opera singer Renée Fleming about her new book “Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness,” for which Dr. Collins wrote the foreword.

She’s received worldwide praise for singing at the Super Bowl, during a presidential inauguration and regularly for The Metropolitan Opera, but Renée Fleming is stretching her voice in new ways. She’s the editor of “Music and Mind,” a curated collection of essays from leading scientists, artists, creative arts therapists, educators and health care providers about the powerful impacts of music and the arts on health and the human experience.
Renée shares how she discovered her own music and mind connection early in her career when she had back pain and how a dinner with three Supreme Court justices led her to become an unexpected advocate for neuroscience.
Renée, a five-time Grammy award winner, also explains to hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter what happened when she saw the results of a functional MRI experiment she took and what it means for all of us.
This special edition of “Conversations on Health Care” will continue on April 18 with guest Dr. Francis Collins, the former National Institutes of Health director, who’s written the foreword to Renée’s book.

It’s about seven months to election day and our regular panel of health care journalists sees a lot of divisions in the electorate. Joyce Frieden, who’s in charge of MedPage Today's coverage of Washington and health policy, says the debate over abortion is driving voter interest. Yet Ben Leonard, a health care reporter at POLITICO, notes that Republican voters place issues such as immigration ahead of health care.
Meanwhile, Nathaniel Weixel, a health policy reporter for The Hill, says the health care sector should consider itself a winner for avoiding the chopping block during the recent federal budget showdown. This trio of journalists joins hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter to share their insights about their news stories including Washington’s take on artificial intelligence in health care and efforts to get federal dollars for the new obesity drugs.

Medicare just announced that it will pay for weight loss drugs if patients using them also have heart disease and need to reduce the risk of future heart attacks and strokes. Medicare has already been covering the costs of the GLP-1 class of drugs to treat diabetes problems. However, Medicare Part D plans are still restricted by law from covering obesity medications used for chronic weight management alone.
It’s a decision the American Diabetes Association would like to see overturned. “It really is important that we try to get upstream of diseases…we know that obesity is a disease and it’s a bigger driver to the increasing number of people developing diabetes…it’s important that people have access to treatments that are effective. Medicare isn’t covering that [obesity] treatment and that’s something we’ve been advocating for,” says Dr. Robert Gabbay, chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association
Dr. Gabbay also tells hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter that anybody with diabetes on insulin should have access to a continuous glucose monitor and the ADA is proud that it helped secured Medicare coverage for such monitors.

The recent death of former college football player Craig Roh from colon cancer at age 33 has brought attention to the “alarming” increase of colorectal cancer in young people. The American Cancer Society reports colon cancer is now the most common cause of cancer deaths in men under 50 and second for women under 50.
Dr. Alan Venook at the University of California-San Francisco is one of the nation’s leading colorectal cancer researchers. March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month and Dr. Venook explains to “Conversations on Health Care” hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter how to stem the rise in cases among young people.
Dr. Venook also talks about his research that found there’s no compromise in colorectal cancer patient survival or the risk of recurrent cancer over time with less radiation—a finding that goes against conventional wisdom.