
Advertise on podcast: Social Medicine On Air
Rating
4.9from
This podcast has
40 episodes
Language
EnglishPublisher
Social Medicine On AirExplicit
No
Date created
2020/08/03
Latest episode
2026/04/24
Average duration
60 min.
Release period
130 days
Description
Welcome to Social Medicine On Air, a podcast where we explore the field of social medicine with healthcare practitioners, activists, and researchers. Social medicine hopes to work for a world of justice and health - especially for the most marginalized - and connects clinical care to the deeper causes of health and illness. Through our conversational interviews, we hope to create a warm and welcoming space to learn about social medicine and meet the amazing people you'll find there. Our team: Jonas Attilus, Sebastian Fonseca, Raghav Goyal, Brendan Johnson, Leila Sabbagh, and Poetry Thomas.
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Check latest episodes from Social Medicine On Air podcast
30 | Healthcare in Haiti in Context | Toni Eyssallenne, Youri Louis, and Pierre Minn (with CAR-Haiti)
2026/04/24
Toni Eyssallenne, Youri Louis, and Pierre Minn join us to discuss the larger structural, social, and historical forces which shape healthcare in Haiti. Rather than treating health disparities as isolated or purely clinical problems, this conversation situates them within Haiti’s political economy, colonial and revolutionary legacy, and ongoing global relationships around debt and power. The discussion traces how structural forces shape disease patterns, the delivery of care, and experience as patient and clinician.
This episode is a collaboration with the Campaign Against Racism (CAR) and the CAR-Haiti chapter; enormous thanks to CAR's Anne Marie Collins and Youri Encelotti Louis.
Resources:
"Where They Need Me" by Pierre Minn (2022)St. Damien HospitalHelp! Make it Make Sense podcast (cohost Toni Eyssallenne)SocMed Alumni Haiti
Guests:
Toni Eyssallenne graduated from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry’s Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP). Following her chief residency of the combined Internal Medicine-Pediatrics residency program at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, she worked as a leader in clinical and academic medicine in both the US and Haiti. She designed and led clinical and academic tracks, programs, and departments for faculty, trainees and students in both countries and has dedicated her professional career to underserved communities domestically and abroad. She is currently the Deputy Chief Medical Officer at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and continues to provide primary care to both adults and children with Strong Children Wellness in Queens, NY. Her scholarly work focuses on Sickle Cell Disease and Anti-Racism in clinical medicine and medical education.Pierre Minn is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Université de Montréal. His research interests include the moral dimensions of medical practice, transnational humanitarian aid, and global health education and practice. He has conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Haiti since the late 1990s. He is the author of Where They Need Me: Local Clinicians and the Workings of Global Health in Haiti (Cornell University Press, 2022), which analyzes the place of Haitian clinicians the context of foreign medical aid and development projects.Youri Encelotti Louis is a Haitian-trained physician and social medicine expert dedicated to dismantling systemic healthcare inequities. As a Co-Founder of SocMed Alumni Haiti, Board member - Program Lead at EqualHealth and Care Coordinator at Dialogue Health, he leverages over a decade of experience in program management and research to advance decolonization and health equity. His work centers on building community-led initiatives that bridge the gap between medical practice and social justice.
[Trailer] Introducing Hope is a Talent!
2024/06/25
Dear Social Medicine On Air community!
We are incredibly excited to share with you our new project, Hope is a Talent, a podcast exploring the intersection of health and Palestine.
Our first three episodes can all be found here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hope-is-a-talent
We have more interviews and work lined up and are excited to share it with you. We also have NOT stopped working on SMOA content, and are currently working on a new episode to release separate from this Palestine series -- excited to get it out there.
As always, we love to hear from folks. If you have ideas, suggestions, interview recommendations or ANYTHING at all, please email us at [email protected].
With so much gratitude,
Nadine, Brendan, and Raghav
[UNEDITED] Hope is a Talent - 1 | Testimony from Northern Gaza
2024/05/31
This is the companion piece to the first episode of our new series, Hope is a Talent. This is the unedited audio journal shared to us from our colleague in northern Gaza, Amro Hamadda between the months of November 2023 through March 2024. He is an inspiration to us, and his voice is a guide.
We are unendingly grateful for him taking the time to record these, record them in English, somehow figure out how to upload them to the cloud, and get them to us while trying to survive and provide for his family.
Thank you Amro.
Hope is a Talent - 1 | Testimony from Northern Gaza
2024/05/31
Welcome to a new series we are working on -- Hope is a Talent -- in which we examine the terrifying and bloody shoreline that has formed between healthcare and Palestine.
This is the edited and editorialized episode from the beautiful and compelling audio diaries shared to us from Amro Hamadda, a medical student who is currently living and surviving in Northern Gaza.
We will also be uploading the unedited version of his audio and STRONGLY encourage you to listen to Amro's beautiful and precious voice. He is an inspiration to all of us in this field.
Our music comes from Samah Mustafa's album BALLOOR; please check out her beautiful and mesmerizing work on BandCamp: https://samahmustafa.bandcamp.com/
Thank you for joining us. Feel free to send us any thoughts or suggestions at [email protected].
28 | Glocalization: Mobilize Locally to Act Globally | Claudio Schuftan
2022/05/06
Claudio Schuftan, MD joins us today to discuss how human rights problems today have solutions, but priorities are determined by politics. It includes a review of Salvador Allende and Latin American social medicine history, the People's Health Movement and International People's Health University, corporate capture of the World Health Organization, how decisions actually get made at the international level of health, the role of civil society actors, the right to health and how it is implemented, the role of economists and economics in maintaining hegemony, cultural relativism and human rights, the tension between the local and the global, mass mobilizations, the class background of medical trainees, popular participation in health, his own story of exile, and how to think and act globally and locally.
Dr. Schuftan is a freelance public health consultant in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and an ex-adjunct associate professor in the Department of International Health at the Tulane School of Public Health in New Orleans, USA. He is a Chilean national and received his MD and pediatrics degree in his native country. Since 1975, he has been working on nutrition, primary health care and human rights issues in more than 50 countries the world over. From 1988-1995 he worked in Kenya. Since 1995, he lives in Vietnam and consults worldwide. He started working on human rights issues in the late 1990s and is the author of a fortnightly column, the Human Rights Reader. Most importantly, he is one of the founding members of the People’s Health Movement.
Recommended Resources:
People's Health Movement website https://phmovement.org/
Claudio Schuftan's website/blog (over 600 posts) https://claudioschuftan.com/
International People's Health University (IPHU) https://phmovement.org/iphu/
27 | Why American Medical Education Is So Bad | Beyond Flexner Alliance
2022/03/18
Isabel Chen and Jamar Slocum join us to discuss the history of American medical education and how its evolution has maintained injustice. They speak about prestige, research dollars, medical school rankings, race, admissions, wealth and power, health disparities, and the long shadow of the 1910 Flexner Report that laid the foundation of the current system. They also share how justice-informed movements like the Beyond Flexner Alliance are attempting to rattle the paradigm and recenter care, love, and justice as the ‘social mission’ of medicine.
Beyond Flexner Alliance (BFA) is a national movement, focused on health equity and training health professionals as agents of more equitable health care. This movement takes us beyond centuries-old conventions in health professions education to train providers prepared to build a system that is not only better, but fairer. The Beyond Flexner Alliance aims to promote social mission in health professions education by networking learners, teachers, community leaders, health policy makers and their organizations to advance equity in education, research, service, policy, and practice.
Beyond Flexner Conference 2022 (March 28-30, 2022), Phoenix AZ: https://flexnerconference.org/
Isabel Chen MD MPH is a family medicine resident and Chief of Social Mission & Advocacy at the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center. She is a staunch advocate for social justice through the lens of health and medicine. She performs medical evaluations for asylum seekers in Southern California and is implementing a social determinants of health curriculum and patien screening tool for Kaiser Permanente. She founded the Keep Safe Initiative, a grassroots organization that develops panic alarms for sex-trade workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and co-founded The Reading Bear Society, a citywide early education that promotes inner-city health and literacy. She has servedon multiple boards including at Yale, UNESCO, UBC, APHA, CAFP, and STFM.
Jamar Slocum MD MBA MPH is a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the George Washington University (GW), where he practices hospital medicine and serves as faculty for the Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity and Beyond Flexner Alliance. During the course of his career, he has combined his skills and experience in clinical medicine and public health to build a healthcare system that is based on equity and prevention. He is a former board member of the Tennessee Health Campaign, one of the leading non-profit advocacy organizations working to ensure affordable and high quality health care for all Tennesseans. Jamar completed his residency training in internal medicine at Brown University in Providence, RI and fellowship training in general preventive medicine at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins.
Recommended Resources:
Beyond Flexner Alliance website
Mullan F, Chen C, Petterson S, et al. The Social Mission of Medical Education: Ranking the Schools. Ann Intern Med.2010;152:804-811. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-152-12-201006150-00009
Mullan F. White Coat, Clenched Fist: The Political Education of an American Physician (Ann Arbor: University of Mich. Press, 2006)
Wright-Mendoza, J., 2019. The 1910 Report That Disadvantaged Minority Doctors. JSTOR Daily. bit.ly/3u2kMTI
26 | Grounding Communication in Equity | Dr. Anne Marie Liebel
2021/10/22
SMOA Survey: bit.ly/SMOAsurvey
In what ways do our personal biases seep into our conversations with others? How does the structure of our language impact the reception of the information we are trying to share? In the era of digital medicine and health misinformation, how can we ensure we are communicating effectively with our patients? Anne Marie Liebel attacks questions like these in today’s episode of SMOA.
Dr. Liebel is the president of Health Communication Partners LLC, the host of the “10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication” podcast series, and the administrator of HealthCommunicationPartners.com. She is writing a book about health literacy from a critical social perspective.
To learn more, check out:
What Counts as Literacy in Health Literacy: Applying the Autonomous and Ideological Models of Literacy
https://doi.org/10.21623/1.8.2.7
25 | Deep Medicine | Rupa Marya & Raj Patel
2021/10/06
SMOA Survey: bit.ly/SMOAsurvey
Raj Patel and Rupa Marya join on this episode to draw the links between physical inflammation, injustice, decolonizing medicine, and the relationship between human and non-human flourishing. They discuss environmental racism, political economy and capitalism, the way that inflammation modulates social and biological health, reductive Enlightenment science, the need for decolonized care, and what deep healing looks like. Their new book is Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice (2021).
Raj Patel is an author, film-maker, activist, and academic. He is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. He has degrees from the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell University, has worked for the World Bank and WTO, and protested against them around the world. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and The Value of Nothing, as well as co-author of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. He co-directed the documentary The Ants & The Grasshopper.
Rupa Marya is a physician, activist, artist and writer who is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, the founder of the Do No Harm Coalition, and the founder and executive director of the Deep Medicine Circle, a worker-directed nonprofit committed to healing the wounds of colonialism through food, medicine, story, learning and restoration. In addition to her work in medicine and writing, Rupa is also the composer and front-woman for Rupa and the April Fishes.
Animation Video (3:18) for Inflamed: bit.ly/3B4Zp6y
Video (28:28): Health and Justice: The Path of Liberation through Medicine (Rupa Marya): bit.ly/3a0xXLe
Synopses of Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2021):
Prasad A, "Inflamed by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel review – Modern Medicine's Racial Divide," The Guardian (2021), bit.ly/3nQWUkp
Jones S, "The Public Body: How Capitalism Made The World Sick," The Nation (2021), bit.ly/3lLHlYu
(Disclaimer: at the request of the podcast, two free pre-print copies of the book were supplied by FSG in preparation for this episode)
Group Meditations: It Takes a Village
2021/08/11
Link to SMOA listener survey: bit.ly/SMOAsurvey
For the very first time (!), we have the ENTIRE SMOA team here to address the question: “Are you exempt from social justice work when you’re off the clock?”
This week’s episode is dedicated to Nath Clarke and their legacy of activism. In honor of Nath’s work, all donations to this GoFundMe will go to Southern Solidarity, a black, queer-led grassroots organization that delivers food, medical resources, and basic needs directly to people experiencing homelessness in downtown New Orleans. Please consider donating if you can.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/celebrating-nath-clarkes-legacy-of-activism
24 | Resisting Domestic, Market, and State Violence | Anna Mullany
2021/07/28
Content warning: today's episode discusses domestic violence.
We also appreciate your patience with this episode as we know it is a few weeks behind our usual schedule! Thank you all for your support.
Short SMOA listener story: bit.ly/smoasurvey
In this episode, Anna Mullany discusses the interrelationship between domestic abuse, capitalism and political economy, patriarchy, and the teaching of social medicine. She discusses the history of the anti-domestic violence movement, the violence of the state, the rise of the carceral state, and the 'social problem apparatus.' She also shares stories from students learning about structural violence and social medicine in the classroom. In combining the micro and macro, she points a way towards emancipation for all.
Anna Mullany is a 4th year doctoral student at the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of MA Amherst. The focus of her doctoral work is on rural intimate partner violence and social services. Taking a political economic perspective, she looks at how the structural determinants of health determine people's wellbeing and daily lives within capitalism. She is committed to investigating how we create a truly equitable world in which health for all is a reality. She teaches courses on "Health Communication" and "Population Health and Imperialism" to undergraduates in the Public Health Department at UMass Amherst. Additionally, she is on faculty with the Spark Teacher Education Institute in Brattleboro, VT. Prior to her doctoral studies she worked for 6 years at the Women’s Freedom Center in Brattleboro, VT – a crisis center responding to intimate partner violence. Anna also serves as a one of the hosts of Indigo Radio, a weekly radio show on the Brattleboro Community Radio Station WVEW, broadcasts of which focus on connecting local and global issues.
Recommended Resources:
Harvey M. How Do We Explain the Social, Political, and Economic Determinants of Health? A Call for the Inclusion of Social Theories of Health Inequality Within U.S.-Based Public Health Pedagogy. Pedagogy in Health Promotion. 2020;6(4):246-252. bit.ly/3iNgzNX
Gimenez, M. Capitalism and the Oppression of Women: Marx Revisited. Science & Society, 2005;69(1), 11-32. bit.ly/3kTxbGA
Waitzkin, H. "The Social Origins of Illness: A Neglected History" in The Second Sickness: Contradictions of Capitalist Health Care (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). bit.ly/3eUsJU5
Brown TM, Fee E. Rudolf Carl Virchow: medical scientist, social reformer, role model. Am J Public Health. 2006;96(12):2104-5. bit.ly/3x5cObK
Indigo Radio, bit.ly/3kU4iu3
Spark Teacher Education, bit.ly/3BBRcr7
23 | Good Systems Save Lives | Agnes Binagwaho
2021/06/09
Link to SMOA listener survey: bit.ly/SMOAsurvey
We're joined today by the incredible Agnes Binagwaho, who speaks with us about gender equity and religion before, during, and after the colonial era, the positive power of institutions like the University of Global Health Equity, the importance of teaching leadership and implementation science, and the importance of good systems in care for the most vulnerable. She talks about demystifying healthcare systems, explaining how Rwanda has seen some of the fastest declines in mortality in human history, the importance of human rights, and the importance of trust, accountability, and community (including community health workers). "Tell the truth!"
Agnes Binagwaho MD, M(Ped), PhD is the Vice Chancellor of the University of Global Health Equity, the former Minister of Health of Rwanda and former Professor of Global Health Equity at UGHE. She also is a trained pediatrician, Senior Lecture at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a member of the US National Academy of Medicine and the African Academy of Sciences, and was Co-Chair of the UN task force on the Millennium Development Goals Project for HIV/AIDS and Access to Essential Medicines (among many, many other positions).
Resources related to this episode:
A. Binagwaho "How Women are Revolutionizing Rwanda" (TED Talk, 2020), bit.ly/3w5hOxB
A. Binagwaho "Lessons from Rwanda's Journey to an Equitable Health System" (TED Talk, 2017), bit.ly/3znfhRw
Farmer P E et al. Reduced premature mortality in Rwanda: lessons from success. BMJ 2013, bit.ly/2TSvuOj
Binagwaho A et al. Rwanda 20 years on: investing in life. Lancet 2014, bit.ly/3cv7N58
Sunday Meditations: Trusting Transitions, Not Postponing Joy, and the Racialization of Wellness
2021/05/31
Hello SMOA family! We are trying something new! In addition to our bi-weekly podcast releases (which we attempt to keep evergreen and not overly current), we are going to try recording some sessions with just the SMOA team responding to the world and what is on our minds. We begin with a guided meditation, then kinda just let the ramble ramble. Join us to hear us talk about transitions (both wanted and unwanted), not postponing joy, and the racialization of wellness.
If you guys like this format, please let us know. If not, also please let us know!
Grateful for all of you. Take care of yourselves. And take some naps!!
SMOA's recommended songs for transitions:
Prince, "Let's Pretend We're Married" - youtu.be/KXkCtFo4ttI
Mandolin Orange, "Golden Embers" - youtu.be/fEt2lf7L13g
Peter Mayer, "Japanese Bowl" - youtu.be/qOAzobTIGr8
Angie Stone, "No More Rain (In This Cloud)" - youtu.be/UgG0Hu_FeiA
Nina Simone, "Feelin' Good" - youtu.be/D5Y11hwjMNs
22 | Nursing as Radical Solidarity During the Honduran Coup | Adrienne Pine
2021/05/26
Self-described "militant anthropologist" Professor Adrienne Pine speaks with us today about the 2009 coup in Honduras. We discuss the Washington Consensus, hybrid wars, embodied somatic solidarity, and explore the role that nurses played as agents of change and healing during the coup in 2009. Dr. Pine also shares her own journey with us, and talks about how she has balanced the extractive demands of neoliberal academia with bodily solidarity with the people she has worked with around the world, and how she's further balanced this with being a mother.
Her recommended article, discussed during this episode:
Pine A (2013), Revolution as a care plan: ethnography, nursing and somatic solidarity in Honduras. Soc Sci Med. 99:143-152. bit.ly/3voxDyZ
Also check out Dr. Pine's recent edited book, Asylum For Sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry (Oakland: PM Press, 2020), where she breaks down the disaster capitalist network of players who benefit off the chronic transmigration of displaced persons. Super relevant!
Sunday Morning Meditations: Gaslighting, Palestine, and the Politics of Self-Care
2021/05/16
Hello SMOA family! We are trying something new! In addition to our bi-weekly podcast releases (which we attempt to keep evergreen and not overly current), we are going to try recording some sessions with just the SMOA team responding to the world. We begin with a guided meditation, then kinda just let the ramble ramble. Join us to hear Jonas talk about the double murder, Raghav quote a random book, and Poetry tell us why naps are a radical tool for social change!
If you guys like this format, please let us know. If not, also please let us know!
Grateful for all of you. Take care of yourselves. And take some naps!!
#GazaUnderFire - #BlackLivesMatter - #FreePalestine
21 | Birthing Black Freedom: A Midwife Fighting Structural Racism and -isms | Jamarah Amani
2021/05/12
(Short Audience Survey: bit.ly/SMOAsurvey)
Jamarah Amani (@jamarahAA) shares how her work and activism as a midwife fights racism and injustice. She shares her own birth story and ancestors, the racial violence in the history of birth in the United States, obstetric violence, the Birth Justice Bill of Rights, health disparities, community members as healthcare designers, being able to unapologetically be one's whole self, queer midwives and midwifery, incarceration, shackling, prison doulas, the ways in which social work can collude with the mass incarceration system, and how midwifery chose her.
Jamarah Amani, LM is a community midwife building a movement for Birth Justice. A community organizer since the age of sixteen, she has locally, nationally, and globally worked on HIV prevention, maternal and infant mortality, and access to emergency contraception and midwifery care. She is currently the director of the Southern Birth Justice Network, and the National Black Midwives Alliance. Jamarah is the 2019 recipient of the Trailblazer Award from the City of Miami.
SBJN's Birth Justice Bill of Rights, bit.ly/3hkMVRb
Southern Birth Justice Network, bit.ly/3blrfkc
National Black Midwives Alliance, bit.ly/3oaj5A6
Podcast reviews
Read Social Medicine On Air podcast reviews
kjohnson16 2023/11/17
Inspiring!
Wonderful, interesting, challenging, insightful conversations. We need more conversations like these in our institutions of higher learning as well as...
Fhjddgn 2021/01/09
One of the Best!
One of the best podcasts out there for helping medical students and physicians understand the limits of a medicalized framework for illness/health. Fa...
Le Matrix 2020/12/19
Viva la revolución!
Great to hear these champions of justice interview social medicine practitioners. Brilliant discussions!!
sarahbcarleton 2020/09/12
Thank you
As an educator/artist who also does work as a standardized patient this podcast is a wealth of conversations and insight into how to support the learn...
PVLe--76 2020/09/10
Fantastic!
Outstanding podcast! Every health professional and trainee should listen to this. I’ve learned so much from every guest. Thank you!
DSJ. 2020/08/13
Insightful
The first couple installments have been mind-opening, discussing aspects of social medicine and care of the underserved I’d never dreamed of before. I...
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