In 1942, Cleo Wright was removed from a Sikeston, Missouri, jail and lynched by a mob. Nearly 80 years later, Denzel Taylor was killed by police in the same community. The deaths of these two Black fathers tell a story about the public health consequences of racism and systemic bias. Meet residents determined to live healthier lives after generations of community silence. “Silence in Sikeston” is the podcast about finding the words to say the things that go unsaid. This is an invitation. Perhaps...
Dec 09, 2024•26 min
Over 70% of Indigenous people in the United States live in urban areas. But urban Indian health makes up less than 2% of the Indian Health Service’s annual budget. While enrolled members of federally recognized tribes can access the Indian Health Service or tribally run health care on their reservations, Indigenous people who live in cities can find themselves without access to the care they're entitled to. “Even though we're living in urban areas now, that doesn't mean that our benefits should ...
Sep 27, 2022•26 min•Season 4Ep. 12
Lanor Curole is a member of the United Houma Nation. She grew up in Golden Meadow, a small bayou town in Southern Louisiana. The impacts of repetitive flooding in the area forced her to move farther north. Louisiana’s coastal wetlands lose about 16 square miles of land each year. This land loss, pollution from the 2010 BP oil spill, and lingering devastation from Hurricanes Katrina and Ida are pushing many Houma people out of their homes. Since 1985, the United Houma Nation has been seeking fede...
Aug 23, 2022•22 min•Season 4Ep. 11
Mending broken trust may be a first step for investigators who want to increase the participation of Native people in medical research. “There's such a history of extractive research in Indigenous communities, such that ‘research’ and ‘science’ are sometimes dirty words,” said Navajo geneticist and bioethicist Krystal Tsosie. Poor communication and a lack of transparency are among the missteps that have eroded the trust Indigenous communities have in medical research. And that mistrust has contr...
Aug 09, 2022•20 min•Season 4Ep. 10
Correction: This episode was updated on July 27, 2022, to accurately characterize Dr. Charles Eastman’s academic milestone. In 1890, Dr. Charles Eastman became one of the first Native people to graduate from medical school in the United States. Today, one of his descendants, Victor Lopez-Carmen, is a third-year student at Harvard Medical School. He described feeling isolated there. “I did feel alone. There wasn't any Native person around me I could turn to,” said Lopez-Carmen. Less than 1% of me...
Jul 26, 2022•26 min•Season 4Ep. 9
Abby Abinanti is chief judge of the Yurok Tribal Court and a member of the tribe. While previously working in the California court system, she was discouraged and angered by the number of cases in which Indigenous families were separated or tribal members were removed from their communities because of nontribal foster care placements or incarceration. The Prison Policy Initiative, a research and advocacy organization, found that Native people are overrepresented in jails in the United States. Ab...
Jul 14, 2022•23 min•Season 4Ep. 8
Rachael Lorenzo works to address reproductive health disparities in Native communities. In 2018, they founded Indigenous Women Rising , a fund that provides financial help for Native people seeking an abortion. Historically, the federal government has restricted Native people’s reproductive autonomy. Between 1973 and 1976, more than 3,500 Native people were sterilized without their consent . Today, the chronic underfunding of the Indian Health Service (IHS) and remote location of many reservatio...
Jun 28, 2022•26 min•Season 4Ep. 7
In 2020, during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, Zoel Zohnnie was feeling restless. Growing up on the Navajo Nation, he said, the importance of caring for family and community was instilled at an early age. So Zohnnie wanted to find a way to help members of his tribe. One need in particular stood out: water. American Indian and Alaska Native households are 3.7 times more likely to lack complete plumbing compared with households whose members do not identify as Indigenous or Black, acc...
Mar 29, 2022•30 min•Season 4Ep. 6
Editor’s Note: This episode includes descriptions of violence that some might find disturbing. Intimate partner violence, also known as domestic violence, can take the form of physical, sexual, or psychological abuse. If you or someone you know is experiencing intimate partner violence, help is available. StrongHearts Native Helpline provides culturally appropriate support and advocacy for Indigenous women. Call 1-844-7-NATIVE or text the corresponding number: 1-844-762-8483. National Domestic V...
Mar 16, 2022•30 min•Season 4Ep. 5
People living on and near the Navajo Nation have been grappling with the legacy of 40-plus years of uranium mining. According to EPA cleanup reports and congressional hearings, mines were abandoned, radioactive waste was left out in the open, and groundwater was contaminated. This episode is the second half of a two-part series about uranium mining on the Navajo Nation. Part I discusses the history and economic forces that brought mining projects to Indigenous land. It also explores working cond...
Mar 01, 2022•33 min•Season 4Ep. 4
On the morning of July 16, 1979, a dam broke at a uranium mine near Church Rock, New Mexico, releasing 1,100 tons of radioactive waste and pouring 94 million gallons of contaminated water into the Rio Puerco. Toxic substances flowed downstream for nearly 100 miles, according to a report to a congressional committee that year. In the 1970s, uranium mining was a good source of income, leading many Indigenous people and other locals to seek out jobs in the mines and the mills where uranium ore was ...
Feb 15, 2022•35 min•Season 4Ep. 3
Reagan Wytsalucy was looking for a lost orchard. Martin Reinhardt wanted to know more about and better understand the taste of Indigenous foods before European colonization in North America. They followed different paths, but their goals were similar: to reclaim their food traditions to improve the health and vitality of their communities. Native foodways of hunting, fishing, gathering, and farming have been under threat since the arrival of Europeans. Colonization, forced relocations, and, late...
Feb 01, 2022•31 min•Season 4Ep. 2
Travel to the forests outside the Grand Canyon to follow Dr. Sophina Calderon and other Navajo Nation leaders as covid-19 tests the Diné people. Roughly 30% of the homes on the Navajo Nation rely on wood-burning stoves for heat. Many of those households haul wood from nearby forests. That’s what Calderon was doing when she realized the pandemic’s reach wouldn’t stop at the hospital — it was going to create a heating crisis too. This episode explores root causes behind why some citizens of the Na...
Jan 18, 2022•32 min•Season 4Ep. 1
In the years leading up to the pandemic, Dr. Celine Gounder, the host of the American Diagnosis and EPIDEMIC podcasts, had the opportunity to care for patients part-time at several Indian Health Service facilities around the United States. Working on the “rez,” one theme came up over and over: resilience. In this latest season of American Diagnosis, we’re going to share stories of Indigenous people who are taking action to protect the health and wellbeing of their communities in the face of incr...
Dec 20, 2021•4 min
"Science is harmed when scientists don't take into account the bias that comes along with inherently being a human." -Kafui Dzirasa As a result of centuries of discrimination, and lack of access to education and opportunity, African Americans comprise only 5% of active physicians in the United States today. Former-Surgeon General David Satcher, who was also the first African American to lead the CDC, has been working to improve health equity in the United States since his days as a medical stude...
Feb 09, 2021•20 min
"Nobody really wants to leave their community and I don't blame them because it's our culture and we shouldn't have to move just to have clean air to breathe. That should be God-given right to drink clean water, to breathe clean air.” -Hilton Kelley During the modern environmental movement of the late 60’s and early 70’s, landmark legislation was passed in the U.S. to ensure cleaner, safer air and water across the nation. But in recent years it’s been difficult for environmental policies to get ...
Jan 12, 2021•26 min•Season 3Ep. 61
"As we enter into a time of climate change, one of the things we're realizing is these communities that have been systematically oppressed are now the spaces people with money want to be in because all around us is sinking" - Nicole Crooks In this bonus episode of AMERICAN DIAGNOSIS, we’re going to look at how climate change is impacting the health of people… and their communities in South Florida. We'll hear from a physician working to change the way her colleagues think about how climate impac...
Dec 08, 2020•19 min
"This can't continue to go on and if I have to be the one to take up the mantle, then I'll do that because that's what my daughter would have done." -Wanda Irving The United States is the richest country in the world with some of the most advanced medical treatments available anywhere. But you’d never know it if you knew how many mothers die in — and after — childbirth here. The U.S. has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the industrialized world and the rate is staggeringly high for...
Nov 24, 2020•22 min
"We used to be a nation where people were one bad gene or one bad traffic accident away from bankruptcy. That's not true anymore." -Jonathan Gruber It's been 10 years since President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. Some of its most popular provisions included protections for people with pre-existing conditions, allowing children to stay on their family’s health insurance until they turn 26, and expanding prescription drug coverage for Medicare recipients. But the law remain...
Nov 10, 2020•24 min
Transcript “Despite all of those other cues, my white coat, my scrubs, you know, somebody just looked out the window and saw danger. And even the officers who came to talk to me couldn't override their biases that said danger. And this is not a unique experience at all. I have friends, particularly black men who have trained at some of the best institutions in the country, that not only have these experiences with police, they have these experience with campus police as they're walking around, l...
Jun 23, 2020•36 min
EPIDEMIC is a new, weekly podcast on the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19). Hear from some of the world’s leading infectious disease and public health experts. We’ll help you understand the latest science, the bigger context, and bring you diverse angles—from history and anthropology to politics and economics—depth and texture you won’t get elsewhere. Hosted by Dr. Celine Gounder , an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist who has worked on tuberculosis and HIV in sub-Saharan Africa,...
Feb 28, 2020•3 min•Season 3Ep. 58
Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the Parkland shooting. How have the survivors channeled their grief into advocacy? What were some of the tough lessons they had to learn about inclusion along the way? And how do we all move forward as a nation together? Guests: David Hogg and Tyah-Amoy Roberts, student members of the Board of Directors of the March for Our Lives and survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting; David Yamane, Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University...
Feb 13, 2020•32 min•Season 3Ep. 36
Black and brown communities have borne the brunt of gun violence for decades. But when it comes to the national debate about gun safety or gun violence prevention, their efforts have largely been overlooked. Now that new constituencies have come to the table, how do we make sure POC don’t just have a seat, but a real voice? Guests: Kayla Hicks, Director of African-American & Community Outreach for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV); Reverend Jeffrey Brown, Baptist minister and Preside...
Feb 06, 2020•25 min•Season 3Ep. 35
Joseph Sakran was shot in the neck as a teenager. He went on to become a trauma surgeon. When the NRA tweeted doctors should "stay in their lane," Joseph and others were outraged. Joseph started #ThisIsOurLane, an umbrella for health care providers and all the other communities who've lived and borne witness to gun violence. Guests: Dr. Joseph Sakran, Director of Emergency General Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital; Dr. Damon Clark, Assistant Professor of Clinical Surgery and Associate Medical Di...
Jan 16, 2020•31 min•Season 3Ep. 34
Vets know guns and gunfights better than most of us. Guns are a big part of their identity. So why have so many stepped up to speak out in favor of gun safety and gun reform? Guests: Peter Lucier, Marine veteran, Afghanistan; Kyleanne Hunter, Vice President of Programs for the Brady Campaign, U.S. Marine Corps Legislative Liaison Officer, and Marine combat helicopter pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan; Joseph Plenzler, former Marines’ commandant spokesman at the Pentagon, and Marine veteran, Iraq; St...
Jan 09, 2020•29 min•Season 3Ep. 33
For a long time, there was a passion gap between the gun-rights and gun violence prevention movements. But then Sandy Hook and Parkland sparked a change… for moms and youth. Guests: Allison Volkmann, Project Director for the Doctors for America Gun Violence Prevention Initiative; Anneliese Dickman, Milwaukee Program Manager for the Brady Campaign’s Combating Crime Guns Initiative; Penelope Spurr and Eli Counce, co-founders of Students for Change; and Michelle Roehm McCann, a children’s book edit...
Dec 19, 2019•27 min•Season 3Ep. 32
Many social movements—including civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, and environmental protection—have their origins in the 1960s. In the aftermath of the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, the NRA joined the American Culture Wars and became the militant gun-rights advocacy organization we know today. But there hasn't been an analogous gun violence prevention movement... at least until now. What changed and why? Guests: Kristin Goss, Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duk...
Dec 05, 2019•30 min•Season 3Ep. 31
Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world. The United States is the only other developed country with more guns per capita than Switzerland. And yet, Switzerland has one of the world's lowest crime and gun homicide rates in the world. Is there a way to have a strong gun culture without gun violence? Guests: Nora Markwalder, Assistant Professor of Criminal Law, Law of Criminal Procedure and Criminology, Universität St. Gallen; Thomas Reisch, Professor of Psychiatry, Univ...
Nov 14, 2019•24 min•Season 3Ep. 30
Americans have the right to own guns. But what responsibilities do gun owners have? to themselves? their families? and their communities? Guests: Tony Gomez, Manager of Seattle & King County's Violence and Injury Prevention Unit; Cassandra Crifasi, Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Deputy Director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research, and a law-abiding gun owner; Dr. Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Wa...
Oct 31, 2019•30 min•Season 3Ep. 29
Gun owners, their kids, and their families and friends are dying from gun-related suicides. By the numbers, this is the biggest gun violence problem we've got. We live in two very different worlds when it comes to guns in the U.S. The people for whom their only experience of guns is as a problem… and the people for whom guns will never be a problem… until… they are. What can we say to gun owners to help them understand that we care about their safety? Who the messenger is—that matters. Guests: D...
Oct 17, 2019•25 min•Season 3Ep. 28
