AMERICAN DIAGNOSIS with Dr. Céline Gounder

Lanor Curole is a member of the United Houma Nation. She grew up in Golden Meadow, a small bayou town in Southern Louisiana. The impacts of repetitive flooding in the area forced her to move farther north.

Louisiana’s coastal wetlands lose about 16 square miles of land each year. This land loss, pollution from the 2010 BP oil spill, and lingering devastation from Hurricanes Katrina and Ida are pushing many Houma people out of their ...

Mending broken trust may be a first step for investigators who want to increase the participation of Native people in medical research. 

“There's such a history of extractive research in Indigenous communities, such that ‘research’ and ‘science’ are sometimes dirty words,” said Navajo geneticist and bioethicist Krystal Tsosie.

Poor communication and a lack of transparency are among the missteps that have eroded the trust Indigenous c...

Correction: This episode was updated on July 27, 2022, to accurately characterize Dr. Charles Eastman’s academic milestone.

In 1890, Dr. Charles Eastman became one of the first Native people to graduate from medical school in the United States. Today, one of his descendants, Victor Lopez-Carmen, is a third-year student at Harvard Medical School. He described feeling isolated there.

“I did feel alone. There wasn't any Native person ar...

Abby Abinanti is chief judge of the Yurok Tribal Court and a member of the tribe. 

While previously working in the California court system, she was discouraged and angered by the number of cases in which Indigenous families were separated or tribal members were removed from their communities because of nontribal foster care placements or incarceration. The Prison Policy Initiative, a research and advocacy organization, found that Na...

Rachael Lorenzo works to address reproductive health disparities in Native communities. In 2018, they founded Indigenous Women Rising, a fund that provides financial help for Native people seeking an abortion. 

Historically, the federal government has restricted Native people’s reproductive autonomy. Between 1973 and 1976, more than 3,500 Native people were sterilized without their consent.

Today, the chronic underfunding of the Indi...

In 2020, during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, Zoel Zohnnie was feeling restless. Growing up on the Navajo Nation, he said, the importance of caring for family and community was instilled at an early age. So Zohnnie wanted to find a way to help members of his tribe. One need in particular stood out: water.

American Indian and Alaska Native households are 3.7 times more likely to lack complete plumbing compared with hous...

Editor’s Note: This episode includes descriptions of violence that some might find disturbing. Intimate partner violence, also known as domestic violence, can take the form of physical, sexual, or psychological abuse. If you or someone you know is experiencing intimate partner violence, help is available.   

StrongHearts Native Helpline provides culturally appropriate support and advocacy for Indigenous women. Call 1-844-7-NATIVE or...

People living on and near the Navajo Nation have been grappling with the legacy of 40-plus years of uranium mining. According to EPA cleanup reports and congressional hearings, mines were abandoned, radioactive waste was left out in the open, and groundwater was contaminated. 

This episode is the second half of a two-part series about uranium mining on the Navajo Nation. Part I discusses the history and economic forces that brought ...

On the morning of July 16, 1979, a dam broke at a uranium mine near Church Rock, New Mexico, releasing 1,100 tons of radioactive waste and pouring 94 million gallons of contaminated water into the Rio Puerco. Toxic substances flowed downstream for nearly 100 miles, according to a report to a congressional committee that year.

In the 1970s, uranium mining was a good source of income, leading many Indigenous people and other locals to...

Reagan Wytsalucy was looking for a lost orchard. Martin Reinhardt wanted to know more about and better understand the taste of Indigenous foods before European colonization in North America. They followed different paths, but their goals were similar: to reclaim their food traditions to improve the health and vitality of their communities.

Native foodways of hunting, fishing, gathering, and farming have been under threat since the a...

Travel to the forests outside the Grand Canyon to follow Dr. Sophina Calderon and other Navajo Nation leaders as covid-19 tests the Diné people. 

Roughly 30% of the homes on the Navajo Nation rely on wood-burning stoves for heat. Many of those households haul wood from nearby forests. That’s what Calderon was doing when she realized the pandemic’s reach wouldn’t stop at the hospital — it was going to create a heating crisis too. 

Thi...

In the years leading up to the pandemic, Dr. Celine Gounder, the host of the American Diagnosis and EPIDEMIC podcasts, had the opportunity to care for patients part-time at several Indian Health Service facilities around the United States. Working on the “rez,” one theme came up over and over: resilience.

In this latest season of American Diagnosis, we’re going to share stories of Indigenous people who are taking action to protect t...

"Science is harmed when scientists don't take into account the bias that comes along with inherently being a human." -Kafui Dzirasa

As a result of centuries of discrimination, and lack of access to education and opportunity, African Americans comprise only 5% of active physicians in the United States today.  Former-Surgeon General David Satcher, who was also the first African American to lead the CDC, has been working to improve hea...

"Nobody really wants to leave their community and I don't blame them because it's our culture and we shouldn't have to move just to have clean air to breathe. That should be God-given right to drink clean water, to breathe clean air.” -Hilton Kelley

During the modern environmental movement of the late 60’s and early 70’s, landmark legislation was passed in the U.S. to ensure cleaner, safer air and water across the nation. But in rec...

"As we enter into a time of climate change, one of the things we're realizing is these communities that have been systematically oppressed are now the spaces people with money want to be in because all around us is sinking" - Nicole Crooks

In this bonus episode of AMERICAN DIAGNOSIS, we’re going to look at how climate change is impacting the health of people… and their communities in South Florida. We'll hear from a physician workin...

"This can't continue to go on and if I have to be the one to take up the mantle, then I'll do that because that's what my daughter would have done." -Wanda Irving

The United States is the richest country in the world with some of the most advanced medical treatments available anywhere. But you’d never know it if you knew how many mothers die in — and after — childbirth here. The U.S. has one of the highest maternal mortality rates i...

"We used to be a nation where people were one bad gene or one bad traffic accident away from bankruptcy. That's not true anymore." -Jonathan Gruber

It's been 10 years since President Barack Obama  signed the Affordable Care Act into law. Some of its most popular provisions included protections for people with pre-existing conditions, allowing children to stay on their family’s health insurance until they turn 26, and expanding presc...

Transcript

“Despite all of those other cues, my white coat, my scrubs, you know, somebody just looked out the window and saw danger. And even the officers who came to talk to me couldn't override their biases that said danger.  And this is not a unique experience at all. I have friends, particularly black men who have trained at some of the best institutions in the country, that not only have these experiences with police, they have...

EPIDEMIC is a new, weekly podcast on the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19). Hear from some of the world’s leading infectious disease and public health experts. We’ll help you understand the latest science, the bigger context, and bring you diverse angles—from history and anthropology to politics and economics—depth and texture you won’t get elsewhere.

Hosted by Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologis...