Healthy Communities Online

Originally broadcast April 3, 2025 Roughly 85% of respondents to a survey cited by Michael Sapienza, CEO of the Colorectal Cancer Alliance, say they would rather do their taxes than get a colonoscopy. “We need to do a better job of talking to the public about the barriers,” Sapienza tells “Conversations on Health Care” hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter. Sapienza, whose mother died of the disease at age 58, says people may be less than excited to do the…

Read More Read More

Originally broadcast March 27, 2025 Two young innovators are leading a movement that proves food isn’t just fuel—it’s medicine. In this episode of “Conversations on Health Care,” Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter talk with Christian Heiden, founder of Levo International, and Alissa Wassung, executive director of the Food is Medicine Coalition, about how their work is shaping the future of healthcare through food. For Heiden, hydroponic farming offers an innovative way to get fresh, nutritious food into the hands of…

Read More Read More

Originally broadcast March 20, 2025 Mary Bono has left the halls of Congress, but she’s still winning with her efforts to stop the misuse of both prescription and illegal drugs. Bono, co-founder and chair of Mothers for Awareness and Prevention of Drug Abuse, wants to see a focus on solutions from lawmakers. With a greater presence of fentanyl in the drug supply, “everything [has] changed because there’s no longer time for experimentation,” Bono says. “‘One pill can kill’ is a [Drug…

Read More Read More

Originally broadcast March 13, 2025 Emmy award-winning actor Michael J. Fox shocked the world when he announced over 25 years ago that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Since then, he’s devoted his talents to eliminating Parkinson’s in our lifetime. Researchers with The Michael J. Fox Foundation now have impressive progress to report. They’ve developed a biomarker test to measure the protein alpha synuclein that’s helping to diagnose Parkinson’s with more than 90% accuracy, even proving effective at identifying…

Read More Read More

Originally broadcast February 15, 2024 About 1 in 5 colorectal patients are now under the age of 55, and colorectal cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death for men under age 50 and the second for women under 50. During Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, we present this encore presentation of our interview with Dr. Alan Venook. Dr. Venook is with the University of California-San Francisco and is one of the nation’s leading colorectal cancer researchers. He explained to…

Read More Read More

Originally broadcast February 27, 2025. How reliable is the current research into the cause of Alzheimer’s disease? Award-winning author Charles Piller’s new book is “Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s”; it’s raising important questions about certain images that may have been manipulated to bolster the amyloid hypothesis as the cause of Alzheimer’s. Piller tells “Conversations on Health Care” that “what you have are a multitude of images — not just in Alzheimer’s disease but in…

Read More Read More