The Dose
The Dose is the Commonwealth Fund's podcast that presents fresh ideas, new perspectives, and compelling conversations about where health care is headed. Join host Joel Bervell this season for conversations with leading and emerging experts in health care and health policy. Get the Dose in your inbox: https://thedose.show/signup
Episodes
When people receive a medical diagnosis or experience a new symptom, the first thing many of us do is reach for our phone. If a doctor isn't available to provide an answer, someone else is.
On The Dose podcast, host Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Dr. Mike Varshavski, a primary care physician with more than 30 million social media followers, about what it takes to fight health misinformation at scale, wh...
Dr. Kaytura Felix didn't set out to document the Black maternal health crisis. She set out to find the people who are already doing something about it.
On this episode of The Dose podcast, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Felix, founder of the Black Birthing Futures project, about what she discovered: a constellation of Black community midwives providing "deep care" — clinical, emotional, social, and spir...
Four in 10 Americans have medical debt. Most don't know there's a federal law that could eliminate it.
On this episode of The Dose podcast, host Joel Bervell talks with Jared Walker about his nonprofit, Dollar For, which has helped Americans erase more than $100 million in medical debt by connecting them to the charity care programs that hospitals are legally required to offer but rarely publicize.
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Seventy billion dollars is flowing into health care AI, but the people building it and the patients who need it most are rarely in the same room.
On this episode, host Dr. Joel Bervell talks with pediatrician, researcher, and tech optimist Dr. Ivor Horn about what responsible AI innovation in health care requires. Drawing on her work building open-access datasets and equity frameworks for machine learning, Horn says that rigorous r...
Uterine fibroids may affect up to 80 percent of women in their lifetime, but they remain under-researched, underfunded, and routinely dismissed. Lupita Nyong'o is working to change that.
"I could not believe that women were partially or wholly losing their reproductive organs because of this noncancerous tumor situation."
On this episode, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Academy Award–winning actor and activist Lupita Nyong'o about her ...
A new movement in the United States is taking shape in maternal care, one that seeks to restore trust, center women, and protect lives.
On this episode of The Dose podcast, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with author and advocate Elaine Welteroth about her own struggle finding patient-centered care during pregnancy and how the organization she founded, birthFUND, is funding midwifery care, supporting new mothers, and reimagining what safe, ...
Across Oklahoma, a community-powered doula network is reshaping what equitable maternal care looks like.
On this episode of The Dose, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Omare Jimmerson of the Oklahoma Birth Equity Initiative about how culturally rooted doulas, smart policies, and practical supports—from rides to diapers—are helping hundreds of families thrive each year.
AI therapy for children with anxiety, mental health training for staff at nonprofits that work with young people, and an "art pharmacy" that prescribes free museum tickets to kids — these are just some of the things Dr. Kevin Simon and his team are doing to help meet the mental health care needs of Boston's children.
Simon, the city's first chief behavioral health officer, talks to host Dr. Joel Bervell on the new episode of The Do...
"The proportion of energy and resources that goes into getting paid instead of taking care of patients is out of whack."
That's Dr. Mai Pham's assessment of how we pay for health care in the United States — where all too often the imperative is volume over value, and billing over better care. In the latest episode of The Dose podcast, host Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Dr. Pham about how we can do better and deliver on the promise of...
Medical care for people with obesity is changing rapidly. Body mass index, or BMI, was once considered the gold standard for diagnosis but has proven to be less accurate than once thought. Meanwhile, the advent of GLP-1 drugs has provided patients with treatment options that were unimaginable just a decade ago.
Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine physician, joins host Dr. Joel Bervell on a new episode of The Dose podcast ...
"If people stop trusting science, they stop trusting each other. That has huge implications for everything, not just medicine."
Science, and medical science in particular, is under attack in today's world. Many of our nation's leaders are choosing politics over facts, and prioritizing profit over public health. Online, misinformation about vaccines and medications is spreading at an alarming rate.
On a new episode of The Dose, host...
Look forward to a new season of The Dose, featuring your host Dr. Joel Bervell, launching this Friday.
What happens when your zip code threatens your health? Broadband access is often framed as a tech issue, but in some rural communities it's a matter of health equity. Broadband internet is so limited in some areas that patients can't use remote monitoring devices, hospitals can't support telehealth, and electronic health records slow down care instead of streamlining it.
On this week's episode of The Dose, journalist Sarah Jane Tri...
Data is the engine of health innovation, but too often it can't tell the full story. On this week's episode of The Dose, Dr. Sema Sgaier joins host Joel Bervell to talk about the future of equitable health care: how we collect data, who's included, and what it means for clinical trials, mental health, and the role of AI.
Tune in to hear Dr. Sgaier explain why solving health care's toughest challenges starts with understanding the h...
We're in a pivotal moment for health care equity and public health. Systems for tracking data on maternal mortality and chronic disease are being dismantled, with consequences that could last generations.
On this week's episode of The Dose, Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith joins host Joel Bervell to talk about who's represented in the health data we collect, and who isn't, and why it's so important for "people to feel safe in sharing" thei...
When private equity firms buy your local hospital, your primary care doctor's office, or your local nursing home, they profit. But what happens to those health care institutions, the patients they serve, and the people who work there?
On The Dose this week, Dr. Zirui Song, a renowned expert on private equity in health care, talks with host Joel Bervell about the ways private equity maximize...
As the American Medical Association's first chief equity officer, Dr. Aletha Maybank guided the legacy medical institution through a difficult reckoning with its past exclusion of Black and women physicians. In a new episode of The Dose, host Joel Bervell talks to Dr. Maybank about how she did it, what lessons the AMA holds for our current moment, and why she has hope that American institutions can ...
Yes, the planet is getting hotter, tropical storms are becoming ever more fierce, and the Arctic is melting — but what's that got to do with health care? This week on The Dose podcast, host Joel Bervell explores the intersection of climate change and public health with Admiral Rachel L. Levine, M.D., the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health.
Levine, who oversees the federal Office of Climate Change and Health E...
As climate change intensifies and New Yorkers face record-breaking heat, the city is taking new measures to protect residents' health. Landlords will soon have to provide air conditioning to tenants, school bus fleets are going electric, and efforts are underway to make housing more affordable.
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Evidence of a mental health crisis is everywhere — from the recent surgeon general advisory about social media's effects on our youth to the pandemic's documented impact on medical professionals. To whom does a college student turn for help so far from home? And who cares for the mental health of those caring for us?
E...
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