Humans in Public Health Brown University School of Public Health

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the most common conditions facing U.S. Veterans, and there is currently no effective cure—what’s more, many Veterans use alcohol in an effort to alleviate their trauma, making their medical treatment even more complex. For these high risk patients, two professors at Brown are thinking outside the box: Could a treatment involving psychedelic drugs potentially save Veteran lives?
In this episode, Megan speaks to Professors Christy Capone and Carolina Haass-Koffler, part of a team at Brown running the first study of a promising new treatment that combines therapy with MDMA (aka the party drug molly, or ecstasy) for Veterans with PTSD and alcohol use disorder. The researchers explain the science guiding their study, why they believe this treatment could be a game-changer and the upcoming FDA decision regarding MDMA’s role in medicine.

How do we receive the information that shapes our beliefs, and how do we know if we can trust our sources? Stefanie Friedhoff directs the Information Futures Lab at the Brown University School of Public Health, a group committed to understanding the contemporary information landscape and how mis- and dis-information impacts people's health outcomes.
She joined Evelyn Pérez-Verdía, community leader and founder of We Are Más, to pilot a project in Southern Florida that collaborated with 25 leaders in Hispanic diaspora communities to capture and respond to evolving questions and concerns of community members.
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Today we’re sharing an episode of the show Trending Globally, from our friends at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. In our last episode we talked about the new safe injection site coming to Rhode Island this summer. Trending Globally released an episode earlier this month about the new safe injection site as well, and we wanted to share it with you. In this episode, Trending Globally’s host Dan Richards talks to Colleen Daley Ndoye, the executive director of Project Weber/RENEW, the organization running the new site, and to Brandon Marshall, a School of Public Health faculty member researching substance use and harm reduction. 
If you like Trending Globally, you can find more episode of their show at trending-globally.captivate.fm or by searching "Trending Globally" wherever you get your podcasts.

Providence, Rhode Island is set to become the location of the first state-sanctioned safe injection site in the country. Professor Brandon del Pozo, who spent over two decades serving as a police officer, has researched the impact these sites have had on the neighborhoods in New York City where two centers opened in 2021. He discusses what he found and how he envisions police and public services can work in coordination to improve public health. 

Professor Jennifer Nuzzo, epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, joins host Megan Hall for a timely update on the recent outbreaks of H5N1 Bird Flu.

Different countries around the world have very different ways of providing health care. In order to learn from these varied systems—each with its own unique goals and priorities—and to compare their outcomes, researchers must devise new methodologies of working with highly sensitive data to overcome not only language differences, but vast organizational, operational and infrastructure differences between countries. 
Brown’s new Center for Health System Sustainability (CHeSS), led by Professor Irene Papanicolas, aims to standardize data from across global health systems, then compare them in order to inform policy choices and improve health care value and patient care.
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And one last thing! If you enjoyed today’s episode, text a friend and let them know about the show.