Healthy Communities Online

Originally broadcast Tuesday, September 23, 2025 Happy anniversary to “Conversations on Health Care”! We posted our first program 16 years ago on Sept. 23, 2009. Now, we’re bringing back our first two guests to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re going in health care. Nancy Pelosi was serving as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and trying to get the Affordable Care Act passed when she joined us on that inaugural show. Today, she continues to serve…

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Dr. Wayne Jonas, who formerly led the National Institutes of Health Office of Alternative Medicine, now directs the Healing Works Foundation, which has a mission to “make whole person, integrative care regular and routine.” “The data is very clear: most health does not come from going to your doctor and getting a diagnosis or treatment,” Jonas tells hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter. “The body is continually healing.” Jonas shares the story of a man he calls “Joe,” a grandfather…

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Next week former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez will testify in a Senate hearing. The reporters who cover health care in Washington think there could be big revelations about why Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. fired her. Sandhya Raman, health care reporter for Congressional Quarterly and Roll Call, and Michael McAuliff, who covers policy for Modern Healthcare, join our Reporters’ Roundtable. McAuliff says no matter what is discovered during the testimony, Kennedy’s…

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Supporters say Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is fulfilling his vision to be “pro-safety,” not anti-vaccine. His recent actions have included restricting COVID eligibility, dissolving expert panels, installing skeptical voices and defunding mRNA development.  Michael Osterholm, Ph.D., director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, is pushing back and says, “I’ve never in my 50 years in public health experienced anything like this in terms of the threat to good public health.”  Osterholm and…

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Originally broadcast Wednesday, August 27 Dr. Victor Montori, a Mayo Clinic endocrinologist, internationally recognized researcher, and author of “Why We Revolt,” joins hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter to talk about what it really means to fix a health care system that he believes has lost its way. Montori leads The Patient Revolution, a global movement aiming to make health care more elegant with “no waste or haste, focused on the biology and biography of each person, responsive to each…

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Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s FitnessGram is on the ropes. President Trump recently reestablished the Presidential Fitness Test; over 10 years ago, the government replaced the test with Dr. Cooper’s FitnessGram, “the first student fitness report card.” Dr. Cooper has a cautious reaction. “Whether they’re going to be using exactly as the test [in the new process] is not really known. I am delighted to see that they realize the importance of childhood fitness.” To him, it just makes sense to measure…

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