The Visible Voices

Documentary Discussion: Syndrome K

Syndrome K is a documentary, which tells the story of three doctors  Adriano Ossicini. Prof Giovanni Borromeo, Vittorio Sacerdoti who saved members of Rome's Jewish community by convincing the Nazis that these Jews were infected with a deadly and contagious disease that the doctors called Syndrome K. (It is thought that the K is mocking in nature and represents the K in Albert Kesselring- the General of the German army  and chief for Italy or the K in Herbert Kappler, the chief, colonel of the SS in Rome.) The occupying Nazis deported over 1,000 Jews to Auschwitz from the Jewish Ghetto in Rome in October 1943. During that period, some Jewish people sought refuge in Fatebenefratelli hospital where the doctors invented the disease to protect them. The hospital is located on Tiber Island in Rome and 200 meters from the Jewish ghetto and near to the great synogogue of Rome. At the time it was run by Catholic friars and controlled by the Vatican. Resa engages guest discussants Dr. Ignazio Roberto Maria Marino, a transplant surgeon, scientist, and former politician, who was Mayor of Rome from 2013 to 2015, Dr. Silvana Boccanfuso, a phD historian with extensive training and experience leading tours in Europe and specifically Italy, and an author of a 2019 biography of Ursula Hirschmann, and Stephen Edwards, the film director and producer, who is best known for his work as a film composer.  Further reading: 2016 article on Syndrome KThere are almost 30,000 Jewish people in Italy today. They are concentrated in Rome (13,000) and Milan (8,000), with smaller communities in Turin (900), Florence (1,000), Venice (600) and Livorno, was (600). Other communities number in the few hundred can be found in Bologna, Genoa, Triste, Ancona, Naples Padua, Pisa, Modena, Siena, Parma, Verona and other areas.  

On Mentorship with Drs. Adaira Landry, Gretchen Diemer, and Stephen Klasko

In this episode, Resa centers the conversation with an early career (Adaira Landry MD MEd) , mid career (Gretchen Diemer MD) and later career physician (Steve Klasko MD MBA) on the topic of Mentorship. At its highest level, Mentorship is about being “good people” and having the right “good people” around us - individuals committed to helping others become fuller versions of who they are. There is brief discussion on extroverts and introverts with a nod to the book Quiet by Susan Cain and Ted talk: The Power of Introverts. Articles to learn more about the topic: What The Best Mentors Do + Mentoring Millennials + Demystifying Mentoring + Social Distancing Doesn't Have to Disrupt Mentorship

Natural Experiments : A Discussion with Anupam Jena and Kali Cyrus

Physician economist Anupam B. Jena advances the understanding of what works and what does not work in health care by using “natural experiments” and big data. He studies phenomena such as the economics of physician behavior and the physician workforce, health care productivity, and the economics of medical innovation. Bapu is the Ruth L. Newhouse Associate Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School, an internist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is the 2007 recipient of the Eugene Garfield Award by Research America for his work demonstrating the economic value of medical innovation in HIV/AIDS. In 2013, he was the first social scientist to win the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award. His research and editorials have been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Freakonomics, and NPR. He is also co-host of the podcast, Tradeoffs, which aims to make sense of the complicated, costly, and often counterintuitive world of health care. He spoke at TEDMED 2020 in Boston. Kali D Cyrus holds a BA in Psychology from Stanford University, an MPH in health policy & management from Emory University and an MD from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She completed her adult psychiatry residency training and served as a public psychiatry fellow at the Yale School of Medicine. Kali is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She worked on Capital Hill from 2017- 2018 as a health policy fellow in the Office of Senator Chris Murphy and was a Jeanne Spurlock congressional fellow.  View her recent work: How Racism is Causing Black and Latinx Communities to Die of COVID-19 at Higher Rates on NowThis News  

Ellen Lupton and Andrew Ibrahim : HealthDesign 101

Special guest Ellen Lupton is a writer, curator, educator, and designer, critic. She is the Senior Curator of Contemporary Design at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City. She has authored numerous books on design processes: Thinking with Type, Graphic Design Thinking, Graphic Design: The New Basics, and Type on Screen, Design Is Storytelling, Health Design Thinking and Extra Bold, a feminist career guide for designers. In 2017, she delivered a TEDxMidAtlantic talk Museums should activate multiple senses, not just the eyeball. Ellen is the founding director of the Graphic Design MFA Program at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) in Baltimore, where she received the AIGA Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in 2007. She was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2019. Guest Andrew M. Ibrahim MD, MSc, is the chief medical officer of HOK’s Healthcare group and a general surgeon at the University of Michigan, where he directs the Design & Health Fellowship with the Department of Surgery and the Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning. Andrew wrote a Fast Company 2020 article reflective of #HealthDesign and #COVID19 What comes next? A surgeon’s 3 predictions for the future of healthcare design. Create a #VisualAbstract from his primer here.  (Episode image with permission and courtesy of Ellen Lupton.) 

Senator Maggie Hassan and Dr. Hiral Tipirneni: Why Go Into Politics

Resa welcomes Senator Maggie Hassan and Dr. Hiral Tipirneni for a discussion on current events and politics. Why go into politics? Why does representation in politics matter? Senator Hassan is one of only two women in American history to be elected as both a Governor and a Senator. She was the 81st Governor of New Hampshire, from 2013 to 2017. She has been active and focused during the recent period advocating on topics, such as PPE, Nursing Homes, the Opioid epidemic, Unemployment insurance Paid sick leave, and Training the returning workforce. See Senator Hassan's Press Releases. Dr. Hiral Tipirneni is running for election to the U.S. House to represent Arizona's 6th Congressional District. She is on the ballot in the Democratic primary on August 4, 2020.  Hear more about Hiral and her path in a 2018 FemInEM podcast .In 2020, 127 (105D, 22R) women hold seats in the United States Congress, comprising 23.7% of the 535 members; 26 women (26%) serve in the U.S. Senate, and 101 women (23.2%) serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. Four women non-voting delegates (2D, 2R) also represent American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in the United States House of Representatives. There are 54 African American Members of the House and3in the Senate. This House number includestwo Delegates. There are 51 Hispanic or Latino Members (a record number) serving: 46in the House, including 2 Delegates and the Resident Commissioner, and 5 in the Senate. There are 20 Members (14Representatives, 3Delegates, and 3Senators)who are Asian Americans, Indian Americans, or Pacific Islander Americans. This is also a record number. A record four American Indians (Native Americans) serve in the House.

Structural Racism and the #COVID19 Pandemic as Health Care Crises

Resa speaks with Max Tiako MS and Lauren Powell MPA PhD. They discuss #COVID19, protests, structural racism, and Black racism.  The launch point is Lauren's 02 June 2020 OpEd My nightmare: Covid-19 meets racism meets the killing of a Black person by police.  Lauren leads the health care industry for TIME’S UP. She is formerly the Director of the Virginia Department of Health’s Office of Health Equity. Max is an engineer completing his 4th year of medical school at Yale in New Haven CT. He is the founder and host of @FlipScriptPod podcast covering health disparities in the U.S. & globally.  Episode cover Donna M Parker MD, Associate Dean Office for Diversity and Health Equity University of Florida - COM. Photographer: Giuliano De Portu MD, FACEP. 

Ashish Jha and Miriam Laufer on the CDC + #COVID19 current events

21 May 2020 The #COVID19 series continues.: Resa speaks with Ashish Jha MD MPH and Miriam Laufer MD MPH.  They discuss the Atlantic magazine article ‘How Could the CDC Make That Mistake?’, Hydroxychloroquine, Vaccines, Summer Camps, and opening institutions of higher learning (see NYTimes Op Ed by Christina Paxson) Dr. Ashish K. Jha is the K.T. Li Professor of Global Health at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI). He is a practicing General Internist and is also Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Jha received his MD from Harvard Medical School and trained in Internal Medicine at the University of California in San Francisco. He completed his General Medicine fellowship at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and received his MPH from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Jha is a member of the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. In September, Dr. Jha will begin work as the Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. Dr. Miriam Laufer is Professor of Pediatrics, Medicine, Epidemiology and Public Health, and Faculty of the graduate program in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She received her medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania and completed her residency in pediatrics at Babies and Children’s Hospital of New York (now New York Children’s Hospital) of Columbia University. She completed fellowships in pediatric infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University and in malaria research at the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland. She received her MPH from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

#COVID19 chat with Dr. Eric Topol and colleagues on #OpenSafely around the world

20 May 2020 In this #COVID19 episode, Resa speaks with physicians in Sweden, France, and the USA. A group of health experts published a USA Today OpEd in the USA: We stuck together to #StayHome, now we can start together to #OpenSafely  Subject matter expert Dr. Eric Topol offers his thoughts on how different countries are opening. Follow him on Twitter Dr. Josefin Elzen works at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm Sweden. She is an Anesthesiologist and Critical Care physician. Dr. Laurence Amar Hatchuel works in Paris at the HEGP Hypertension unit, Centre of Excellence, Hôpital européen Georges Pompidou. She is a Vascular Internal Medicine physician.  Episode image with permissions rob@flamingpencil.com

The Amazing Rise of #Telehealth in the Time of #COVID19

15 March 2020. The curve steepened. Telehealth has exploded during the #COVID19 pandemic, Resa speaks with two visionary physicians,, who are subject matter experts and leaders in Telemedicine. Jane van Dis, MD is an Obstetrician-Gynecologist, Co-Founder and CEO of Equity Quotient.  She is Medical Director for Ob Hospitalist Group, and Medical Director for MavenClinic. Emergency Medicine physician, Aditi U. Joshi MD is the Medical Director of JeffConnect, in Philadelphia. Jefferson’s tele-health platform running both on-demand tele-health program and tele-intake programs. She is the director of the digital health scholarly inquiry track at Sidney Kimmel Medical College, and director of the Telehealth fellowship. Prior to Jefferson, she worked at a telemedicine startup, learning barriers in uptake, marketing and business development. 

#COVID19 and Representation: Does it Matter?

This episode was recorded before the #COVID19 pandemic and is now timely. May 06 2020 NBC Chicago headline: The Latinx Community Testing Positive at Higher Rate Than Any Other Group in Illinois . Resa speaks with Drs Ivette Motola - an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Director of the Prehospital and Emergency Healthcare Division at the Gordon Center for Research in Medical Education, M Fernanda Bellolio - a Professor of emergency physician and health sciences researcher dedicated to research methodology, knowledge synthesis and comparative effectiveness, and Marina Del Rios - Associate Professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine Director of Social Emergency Medicine and Emergency Ultrasound Research Director. Does representation in medicine matter?