Healthy Communities Online

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Shelley Lyford, CEO of the Gary and Mary West Foundation which is dedicated to reducing costs and improving care for America’s seniors. She discusses the launch of Civica Rx – a not for profit entity that will supply low-cost generic drugs to a consortium of partner foundations and hospitals to disrupt monopolies and price gouging in the pharmaceutical industry.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. John Halamka, Chief Information Officer for Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston where he has launched a new endeavor: the Health Technology Exploration Center. The lab is an incubator for studying emerging technologies in health care such as telemedicine, genomics, blockchain, wearables and smart speakers like Alexa that could potentially improve clinical workflow, data sharing and outcomes.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with renowned Stanford economist Dr. Raj Chetty on his seminal work linking zip code, poverty and health and economic disparity. Dr. Chetty has mined large data sets from the US Census Bureau and public tax information to confirm the undeniable link between poverty, race and the lack of upward mobility, as well as a widening gap in life expectancy between the rich and poor in America.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Michael J. Nyenhuis, CEO of the international relief agency Americares, whose focus is to support the health care infrastructure in war-torn and storm-ravaged regions of the world. Mr. Nyenhuis speaks about their efforts underway in Peurto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Texas and other areas hit by recent hurricanes, and their ongoing efforts to support primary care in underserved parts of the world.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. John Brownstein, Director of Innovation at Boston Children’s Hospital and Professor of Pediatric Epidemiology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Brownstein discusses big data driven epidemiology tools he has developed, such as the global open source disease tracker HealthMap, and Circulation which provides on-demand health services through ride sharing platforms like Uber.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Andy Slavitt, former Acting Administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Sr. Advisor to the Bipartisan Policy Center on seeking sound health reform for all Americans. Mr. Slavitt analyzes the threats to health coverage under the Graham-Cassidy ACA replacement bill and the need to foster bipartisanship in health policy making.