Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Health Policy Podcast

Over the last four years, 22 states and six cities have introduced legislation to levy taxes on sugary beverage sales but the $125 billion-a-year U.S. beverage industry has defeated every one of those efforts. University of Minnesota professor Sarah Gollust, who specializes in researching public opinion dynamics and obesity prevention, is exploring strategies that might help to offset that industry's political messaging. In this interview with University of Pennsylvania Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar Chileshe Nkonde-Price, Gollust discusses her latest work.

In a video interview with University of Pennsylvania Wharton School economics professor Mark Pauly, Chileshe Nkonde-Price, MD, discusses the price of hospital care for patients covered by public and private insurance. The issue has been much in the news and public debate in the wake of a special issue of Time magazine that published the most extensive report ever written about the little-known systems hospitals use to set prices hundreds or even thousands of times higher than the real costs of the services they provide. This is the third in a new series of online video and audio casts jointly produced by LDI and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars program.

Although the U.S. public expects quick and massive government response to natural and man-made disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, terror attacks and mass school shootings, federal and state legislative budget cutters have quietly eliminated 45,000 public health jobs during the last several years, according to Nicole Lurie, the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Department of Health and Human Services. That fact and its implications were among the points she emphasized in this seventeen minute interview at the University of Pennsylvania. In the discussion with Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar Chileshe Nkonde-Price, MD, Lurie, MD, MSPH, also pointed out various areas of the health-related disaster response field that appear ripe for further scholarly study.

The RWJF Clinical Scholars Health Policy Podcast kicks off a new season with special guest, Elliott S. Fisher, MD, Director of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. Dr. Fisher, a former Clinical Scholar (University of Washington ’83-’85) and current Professor of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine, shares with series host, Dr. Chileshe Nkonde-Price, his take on variations in care and advancing the concept of accountable care organizations (ACOs).