On today’s episode, we revisit a conversation we had with two pioneers of the mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines, Katalin Karikó, PhD, and Drew Weissman, MD, PhD. The two were just awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their groundbreaking research in messenger RNA (mRNA) technology. When we spoke with Dr. Kariko and Weissman in June 2022, they had just received the Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine. The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research grants this honor to recognize promi...
Oct 02, 2023•21 min•Ep. 121
On the third and final episode in our series on child suicide prevention , we discuss the spike in suicidality among our LGBTQIA+ youth, as reported in 2023 by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, as well as The Trevor Project. David Rosenthal, DO, PhD, and Helena Roderick, PhD, highlight the many challenges negatively impacting these kids, including minority stress, discrimination and unconscious bias, and how each contributes to this horrifying trend. They share what individuals a...
Sep 28, 2023•21 min•Ep. 120
“We need to change the conversation from mental illness to mental wellness,” says Sharon Feldstein, who helped launch a nonprofit called YourMomCares with the goal of creating and supporting programs that better behavioral health in our kids. This group of concerned mothers, whose children are prominent athletes, musicians and actors, is bringing much-needed attention to the crisis in children's behavioral health. Demand for services is far outpacing the resources to support it, and the situatio...
Sep 20, 2023•19 min•Ep. 119
With suicidal thoughts and behaviors on the rise in the U.S., Vera Feuer, MD , director of Emergency Psychiatry Services at Cohen Children’s Medical Center, joins Sandra Lindsay, RN , on the podcast to explain the warning signs and helpful resources for caretakers, including what language to use — as well as what to avoid — when talking to children struggling with suicidality. This is Part 1 of our series examining child suicidality , a term that may be new to some. It is defined as suicidal ide...
Sep 13, 2023•22 min•Ep. 118
Murray Bocian, 76, was prone to spilling things: His hands were so shaky that he had to begin using a child's sippy cup. Murray was battling a condition called essential tremor , and it was impacting many aspects of his daily life. A nervous system disorder, essential tremor starts in the brain and triggers shakiness in the extremities, most often the hands. For most of the 10 million Americans living with essential tremor, lifestyle changes and medications can help manage symptoms. But when the...
Sep 06, 2023•20 min•Ep. 117
The field of sports medicine isn’t just for serious athletes: The Nicholas Institute for Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma (NISMAT) , Northwell’s sports injury clinic, has made sports medicine better, more accessible, and grounded in research. On this episode, the 20-Minute Health Talk team pays a visit to NISMAT, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, to talk to Tak Fukunaga, DPT, ATC, CSCS , sports physical therapist and NISMAT’s Manager of Rehabilitation Services, and Michael ...
Aug 16, 2023•21 min•Ep. 116
While cancer deaths are in decline in the United States, there is one glaring exception: Prostate cancer. Over the last decade, the number of prostate cancer deaths has risen by 3%. Our guest today, Ardeshir Rastinehad, DO , has made it his mission to turn that number around. In addition to his leading role in developing a safer, more accurate approach to prostate biopsies, the former National Institutes of Health researcher is now part of the team at Northwell Health implementing a new fast-tra...
Aug 07, 2023•17 min•Ep. 115
Within a three-block radius of P.S. 175 in Harlem, there are 55 fast-food restaurants, 29 pharmacies and not one affordable food option, something Tony Hillery noticed while volunteering at the school more than a decade ago. He also saw an opportunity to help, which is why he launched Harlem Grown . Starting with one abandoned lot across the street from the school, Tony and the kids have built it into a network of 13 urban farms that harvest 6 tons (that's 3,000 lbs) of fresh, organically grown ...
Jul 20, 2023•21 min•Ep. 114
The lack of consistent access to quality food, or food insecurity , can have a devastating impact on people's health and well-being. In the wealthiest nation in the world, 34 million people, including 9 million children, are food insecure — a silent crisis that our guest, Debbie Salas-Lopez, MD, MPH , says is only getting worse. She explains how food insecurity impacts health at every age and what Northwell Health is doing to support these communities. This is Part 2 of our three-part series on ...
Jul 05, 2023•18 min•Ep. 113
Hospital food has a reputation for being bland and inedible — something that's no longer true at Northwell's 21 hospitals. Over the last seven years, our guests — Sven Gierlinger and Chef Bruno Tison — have transformed hospital meals by ditching frozen food and sugary drinks for fresh meats, fruits and vegetables. They've ensured that hospital kitchens prioritize fresh ingredients and cater to the patient population, and now chefs are able to deliver meals that look, smell and taste better — and...
Jun 22, 2023•26 min•Ep. 112
Pregnancy is like a stress test on the body. Most women adapt just fine, but for some, the strain can dramatically raise the risk of heart disease — even in young women. Worse, that risk can remain elevated for years and even decades. On this episode, host Sandra Lindsay, DHS-c, RN, speaks with Evelina Grayver, MD , about how to prevent heart-related problems before, during and after pregnancy. Because heart disease continues to be the No. 1 cause of maternal mortality in the US, Dr. Grayver hel...
Jun 07, 2023•22 min•Ep. 111
Knowing what you want to be when you grow up can be tricky, but the New York City's Department of Education internship program, FutureReadyNYC , is designed to help. The program provides high school students with exposure to professional careers; Northwell is the program's first healthcare partner. Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side, LIJ Forest Hills Hospital in Queens, and Lenox Health Greenwich Village in lower Manhattan gave students a sense of what a career in medicine could ...
May 24, 2023•25 min•Ep. 110
Of the 1 million people who need hernia surgery in the US each year, most get a procedure that inserts a mesh patch to cover the hernia. Mesh surgery has a high rate of success and satisfies most patients, but some people would rather skip the insert. There is an alternative called the Shouldice Approach: Instead of using mesh, this procedure stitches together the patient's own tissue to repair a hernia. Samer Sbayi, MD , is a leading expert in both surgical approaches and joins the podcast to e...
May 10, 2023•22 min•Ep. 109
On this episode, Sandra Lindsay speaks with Monique Rainford, MD , about her new book, " Pregnant While Black: Advancing Justice for Maternal Health in America ." The Yale Medicine OB-GYN discusses the role implicit bias and institutional racism play in the birthing experience for Black women in the United States. She offers strategies to reduce maternal mortality rates, which are three times higher for Black women than their white peers. Podcast transcript...
Apr 27, 2023•17 min•Ep. 108
For too long, Black women have faced high maternal mortality rates, largely due to institutional bias, says Dawnette Lewis, MD , director of Northwell Health's Center for Maternal Health. She joins host Sandra Lindsay, RN, DHSc on this episode during Black Maternal Health Week to discuss the barriers to care Black women face, and what her team is doing to improve access to life-saving services before, during, and after pregnancy. Dr. Lewis has practiced for more than 20 years in maternal-fetal m...
Apr 12, 2023•21 min•Ep. 108
This new docu-series follows the lives of a diverse cast of healthcare pros, including paramedics, nurses, emergency physicians and surgeons. On this podcast, we speak with two of the people featured in Emergency NYC: David Langer, MD , and his patient Julian Primiano, a young opera singer who underwent brain surgery. Dr. Langer is the chair of neurosurgery at Lenox Hill Hospital, one of several Northwell hospitals where filming took place. Others include: Cohen Children's Medical Center, North ...
Mar 29, 2023•21 min•Ep. 107
In Part 2 of this deep dive into ECT, which stands for electroconvulsive therapy, Sohag Sanghani, MD , director of the ECT service at Zucker Hillside Hospital, talks about how the treatment was born, from its invention in 1938 by Italian scientists Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, to the advent of modified ECT, to it’s impact today. He shares the importance of shedding stigma around ECT, which continues to create barriers to a highly effective therapy for those living with severe depression, psychos...
Mar 22, 2023•15 min•Ep. 106
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) carries stigma thanks to negative portrayals in movies like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Such portrayals hide ECT's true value — and the truth about the treatment: ECT has a decades-long track record of safety, and it offers a fast-acting solution for difficult-to-treat severe depression. ECT is also effective for patients with suicidal ideation or depression with psychosis or catatonia, says Sohag Sanghani, MD . He joins Sandra Lindsay, RN, and Rob Hoell to...
Mar 08, 2023•20 min•Ep. 105
Stacey Rosen, MD , joins Sandra Lindsay on this 20-Minute Health Talk to discuss why heart disease disproportionately impacts Black women, what factors contribute to their risk and what health systems like Northwell are doing to change the statistics. Meet the expert Stacey Rosen is the senior vice president of Katz Institute for Women's Health at Northwell Health; partners council professor of women's health at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell; and a spokesw...
Feb 15, 2023•23 min•Ep. 104
There are many misconceptions around weight — starting with the fact that people burn fat differently depending on their size, says Mitchell Roslin, MD , director of bariatric surgery at Lenox Hill and Northern Westchester hospitals. On this episode, he breaks down the factors that contribute to obesity, from genetics and lifestyle to the way our bodies convert food into energy. Obesity itself has an impact on one's ability to lose weight due to something he calls the " metabolic switch ." Dr. R...
Feb 08, 2023•21 min•Ep. 103
People with Covid-19 often get sick because the body’s inflammatory response to the virus overreacts. To tamp down that inflammation, researchers at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, turned their sights toward famotidine, the active ingredient in a common over-the-counter heartburn medication with anti-inflammatory potential. On this bonus episode, we speak with the lead researcher of a unique clinical trial testing famotidine for Covid . Tobias Jan...
Jan 19, 2023•16 min•Ep. 102
While Covid-19 vaccines remain the best protection against the novel virus, if you do catch Covid there are also several treatments to help manage symptoms, like Covid cough, and prevent hospitalization. Onisis Stefas, PharmD , executive director of VIVO Health, breaks down what treatments are available over the counter, by prescription (paxlovid and molnupiravir) and if you do end up in the hospital (remdesivir). He explains the difference between the types of medications (anti-viral vs monoclo...
Jan 13, 2023•20 min•Ep. 102
On this episode, we look back on Northwell Health’s most newsworthy moments from 2022. Our experts made headlines with life-saving treatments and innovative approaches that improved care for patients from New York to Ukraine. Here are Northwell's Top 5 moments of 2022: 00:36 - Extending benefits of telemedicine to War in Ukraine 02:22 - Heart, double lung transplant saves young mother's life 03:35 - Sandra Lindsay awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom 04:40 - Ross Prize awarded to mRNA inventors...
Jan 04, 2023•7 min•Ep. 101
As 2022 comes to a close, we look back on five exciting medical advances coming from clinical researchers at Northwell Health and the health system's Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research. In the last year alone, investigators published more than 2,500 papers in peer-reviewed journals. In this episode, we spotlight studies that made strides against endometriosis, diabetes, lupus, pancreatic cancer and (yes) Covid-19. Read more about these Five notable Northwell advances of 2022 . Chapters: 0...
Dec 29, 2022•23 min•Ep. 101
It's a staggering stat: More than 15 million children and adolescents are in need of a pediatric psychiatrist. But finding treatment is anything but easy with just around 8,300 trained pediatric mental health professionals in the U.S. The consequence: Long wait times, worsening symptoms and even higher costs when they do get help. To increase the pool of providers that can offer effective treatments to this population, Project TEACH is training pediatricians, as well as family doctors and Ob/Gyn...
Dec 22, 2022•15 min•Ep. 99
Heading into the holidays, surging cases of Covid-19, the flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) pose a unique threat, which many are calling a "tripledemic" or "tridemic." While RSV cases have plateaued, Covid-19 and the flu are on the rise. Hospitalizations for the flu are the highest seen at this time of year in a decade. While unprecedented, experts in infectious disease and emergency medicine say the convergence of these illnesses is not a reason to live in fear. On this episode, Bruce F...
Dec 15, 2022•25 min•Ep. 100
While we associate mental health care with psychologists and psychiatrists, primary care doctors are often the first to see children and families with behavioral health issues. To strengthen and support doctors' ability to deliver that care, a state-wide program called Project TEACH provides free psychiatric consultation support and training. Since its inception in 2010, Project TEACH has enrolled nearly half of the 9,000 primary care physicians in New York State, leading to over 23,000 consulta...
Dec 08, 2022•21 min•Ep. 99
More than just a treatment for scuba and deep sea divers experiencing decompression sickness, hyperbaric oxygen therapy has evolved during the last 70 years and become an option for more than a dozen other conditions. In part two of this episode, Owen J. O’Neill, MD, MPH , and John Peters, two experts in undersea and hyperbaric medicine, discuss the research driving this field forward, including a clinical trial conducted during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic that offered patients an altern...
Nov 30, 2022•13 min•Ep. 98
Oxygen is crucial to healing — but it has to be able to reach the damaged tissue to help the body recover and fight off infection. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy can facilitate that process by dramatically boosting the amount of oxygen your blood cells deliver to an injury. You may have heard about the therapy’s use in treating scuba diving incidents or carbon monoxide poisoning, but it can also speed healing from crush injuries, chronic wounds related to diabetes, radiation damage from cancer treatm...
Nov 23, 2022•21 min•Ep. 98
Typically, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) sends thousands of children to the hospital over fall and winter, peaking in January and February. But for the second year in a row cases have spiked early and continue to grow. This has led to unprecedented cases of the common respiratory virus across the U.S. On this episode, Cohen Children's Medical Center leaders Joshua Rocker, MD , and Margaret Duffy, PhD, RN, NEA-BC , discuss what they are seeing on the front lines in New York, the impact flu wi...
Nov 17, 2022•21 min•Ep. 97
