Does public health belong to people with a specific perspective, or is it—as the term implies—for the public at large?

Today’s episode is different. Dean Sandro Galea, Dean and Distinguished Professor at WashU School of Public Health, returns to the podcast to discuss the Purple Public Health Project (PPHP), a new initiative he is launching with Salma. The PPHP aims to start a conversation about how public health thinks, acts, and communicates so we can reach people of all stripes, ideologies, and perspectives. Using concrete examples, they discuss whether public health should be grounded in science or values, or both. They also explore what each one of them thinks success would look like.

Join Salma and Dean Galea as they commit to this process of thinking rigorously in public about public health and contribute to shifting the thinking of the field.

Useful resources:

• Healthier Futures Lab. www.healthierfutureslab.org

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

In global health, evidence, authority, and distance are often deeply entangled.

Dr. Seye Abimbola is Professor of Health Systems at the School of Public Health, University of Sydney. He is a leading voice in debates on decolonizing global health, with scholarship focused on health systems governance and epistemic injustice. He is also the founding editor-in-chief of BMJ Global Health and the author of The Foreign Gaze (2024).

In this episode, Seye joins Salma to discuss his collection of essays interrogating the epistemological foundations of the field currently known as global health—and to reflect on what it might mean to reshape that field. Together, they examine who gets to define global health problems and solutions, noting how the field is often shaped by distant, powerful actors rather than those closest to the contexts in which interventions are meant to work.

They also explore how knowledge is generated and valued in global health, questioning the routine elevation of randomized controlled trials as the gold standard for complex social interventions, unpacking why author affiliations can obscure deeper issues of “gaze” versus “pose,” and discussing how local practices are frequently overlooked or rendered illegible as evidence.

Throughout the episode, Seye and Salma invite listeners to reflect on positionality, take complexity seriously, and imagine what the “field formerly known as global health” could become.

Useful resources:

• Abimbola S. The Foreign Gaze: Essays on Global Health. IRD éditions; 2024.

• Abimbola, S. (2011). Seye Abimbola: David Cameron, homosexuality, and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. The BMJ Opinion. https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2011/12/08/seye-abimbola-david-cameron-homosexuality-and-hivaids-in-sub-saharan-africa/

• Abimbola, S. (2019). The foreign gaze: Authorship in academic global health. BMJ Global Health, 4(5), e002068. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2019-002068

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editor: Catalina Melendez Contreras Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

Will superbugs take over the world, as increasing media articles suggest?

Dr. Sabiha Essack is Professor in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), where she established the Antimicrobial Research Unit, and the South African Research Chair in Antibiotic Resistance and One Health. Dr. Essack’s research focuses on evidence-informed strategies to mitigate antibiotic resistance through prevention and surveillance strategy using a One Health approach, which accounts for the health of humans, animals, plants and the environment.

In this episode, Sabiha joins Salma to discuss antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and its unequal impact on health. While AMR is driven by indiscriminate use and misuse of antimicrobials globally, low- and middle-income countries—with weak health and regulatory systems, limited access to diagnostic tools and alternative solutions, and vulnerable populations—bear most of the burden. Dr. Essack highlights the importance of equitable access to antibiotics, diagnostics, and vaccines, as well as the critical role of governance, financing, stewardship, and environmental controls. They also analyze current AMR communication approaches and question whether fear-based messages are effective and appropriate.

Considering the global and polycentric scope of this issue, with no single right answer, this episode underscores the need for innovative, equitable alternatives to address the growing AMR challenge.

Useful resources:

• Altevogt BM, Taylor P, Akwar HT, et al. A One Health framework for global and local stewardship across the antimicrobial lifecycle. Commun Med. 2025;5(1):414. doi:10.1038/s43856-025-01090-4

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras and Zachary Linhares Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

When the International Criminal Court prosecutes gender-based violence in conflict, what evidence do they need? And who gathers it?

Kim Thuy Seelinger is a Professor of Practice at Washington University School of Public Health and former senior coordinator for Gender-Based Crimes at the International Criminal Court in the Hague until the Spring of 2025. For over two decades, she's worked at the intersection of international criminal law and public health.

In this episode, Kim and Salma explore how gender-based violence manifests in conflict—not just sexual violence, but forced starvation, attacks on healthcare, reproductive coercion, and denial of education. They examine how international law distinguishes between war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, and why proving these crimes remains so difficult, especially when prosecuting high-level perpetrators.

The conversation tackles a fundamental question: How can public health methods strengthen international justice? Kim explains how epidemiological data, trauma-informed approaches, and understanding of health systems can help document crimes at scale, establish patterns of violence, and ensure reparations address survivors' long-term needs. But she's also honest about the tensions—between prevention and punishment, between individual accountability and systemic change, and between what the law promises and what survivors actually experience.

This is a conversation about breaking down silos between fields that urgently need each other and confronting the gap between justice on paper and justice in practice.

Useful resources:

• Seelinger KT. Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict- Theories, myths, and holistic response. Presented at: Public Health Speaker Series; February 25, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4B7s2pEPMQ
• Seelinger KT. Substance, Systems, Survivors: The essential synergy of public health and international justice. Presented at: Talking Public Health seminar series; April 25, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BU1iSV68xU
• Center for Human Rights, Gender & Migration, Mukwege Foundation. Understanding Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Ethiopia; 2022. https://www.mukwegefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/ETH_CRSV-in-ETH-Report_221012_FINAL.pdf

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras and Zachary Linhares Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

What is global health—and who gets to define it?

For decades, the field has claimed universality while being shaped largely by specific institutions, priorities, and assumptions. But what happens when we center the places where most global health “problems” are identified? What does it mean to tell someone living in a Dhaka slum to shelter in place during a pandemic?

In this episode, Salma is joined by Dr. Sabina Faiz Rashid, Professor and Mushtaque Chowdhury Chair in Health and Poverty at the BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health in Bangladesh; Director of the Center of Excellence for Gender, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights; and Honorary Professor at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. As a medical anthropologist whose career has been rooted in the alleys, kitchens, and courtyards of Dhaka’s urban slums, Dr. Rashid has spent decades challenging how we think about health, poverty, gender—and whose knowledge counts.

Together, they examine what global health often misses: the over-reliance on disease-focused indicators, the tendency to blame individuals for choices that are shaped by circumstance, and the habit of designing interventions far from the communities they attempt to serve. Drawing on vivid examples from Dr. Rashid’s ethnographic work, they explore how a mother’s health depends not only on symptoms or clinical markers, but on whether water runs for 20 minutes today, whether her husband finds work, and whether she has more than one egg to feed her children.

The conversation moves from methodology to power. Salma and Sabina discuss why qualitative and quantitative approaches both matter—and why neither is meaningful without genuine community partnership. They also consider the limitations of current “decolonization” conversations, suggesting that simple binaries obscure the complex power dynamics that exist both between and within countries.

This episode is an invitation to rethink global health from the ground up—its assumptions, its methods, its politics, and its future. It’s a conversation for anyone who believes public health must reflect the lived realities of the people it aims to serve.

Useful resources:

- "Sabina F Rashid, PhD." BRAC University, www.bracu.ac.bd/about/people/sabina-f-rashid-phd. Accessed 24 Nov. 2025.

- Rashid SF. Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows. Routledge; 2024.

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras and Zachary Linhares Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

What do we mean when we say health is a human right? Dr. Benjamin Mason Meier is a Professor of Global Health Policy at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill who has focused his research on the development, evolution, and application of human rights-based approaches to health.

In this episode, Dr. Meier joins Salma to explore the foundations of health as a human right—from its post-World War II origins to its development in international law. They discuss the obligations this framing creates for governments and international organizations, how rights must translate into tangible policies that improve health outcomes, and the tensions between advocacy and accountability. They also address the politics related to global health governance and human rights and consider what a human rights approach to health might look like in a future shaped by AI, climate change, and increased polarization.

Join this episode to learn about the difference between health as a human right as a slogan and health as a human right as a legal obligation—and why that distinction matters for global health's future.

Useful resources:

• Forman L, De Mesquita JB, Filho LB, Meier BM, Sirleaf M. How Did Human Rights Fare in Amendments to the International Health Regulations? J Law Med Ethics. 2024;52(4):907-921. doi:10.1017/jme.2024.172

• Gostin LO, Meier BM. Foundations of Global Health & Human Rights. Oxford University Press; 2020.

• Gostin LO, Meier BM, eds. Global Health Law and Policy: Ensuring Justice for a Healthier World. Oxford University Press; 2023.

• Robinson M. Human Rights in Global Health. Vol 1. (Mason Meier B, Gostin LO, eds.). Oxford University Press; 2018. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190672676.001.0001

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras and Zachary Linhares Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

What can Reddit, Instagram, and other digital platforms tell us about population health? Dr. Yulin Hswen, associate professor at the University of California San Francisco and associate editor of JAMA and JAMA+ AI, is a computational epidemiologist using big data to understand population health in our increasingly digital world.

In this episode, Salma sits down with Dr. Hswen to explore what our digital environments can tell us about public health. From Reddit threads revealing untold health experiences to phone data mapping mobility patterns during disease outbreaks, Dr. Hswen challenges us to see social media platforms and online data not just as communication tools but as health environments that shape—and sometimes distort—population well-being.

Dr. Hswen shares how a personal healthcare experience first sparked her interest in digital data and reflects on what these traces can reveal about collective behavior, equity, and trust. The conversation dives into the ethics of digital and AI research—issues of privacy, representation, and accountability—and unpacks her proposal of “virtuosity” as the sixth V of big data. Dr. Hswen also discusses her work on ethical guidelines for AI using in public health and clinical medicine and how she approaches her editorial work at JAMA and JAMA+ AI and what excites her about the future of computational epidemiology and the use of AI in clinical and public health research.

Whether you're a researcher considering how to incorporate digital methods and AI into your work or simply curious about what your online activity reveals about population-level health patterns, this episode offers essential perspectives.

Useful resources:

• Hswen Y, Naslund JA, Hurley M, Ragon B, Handley MA, Fang F, et al. AI-Y: An AI Checklist for Population Ethics Across the Global Context. Curr Epidemiol Rep. 2025;12(1):13. doi:10.1007/s40471-025-00362-w

• Kosmyna N, Hauptmann E, Yuan YT, Situ J, Liao XH, Beresnitzky AV, et al. Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. arXiv. Preprint posted online June 10, 2025. doi:https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.08872

• Roose K. Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/business/cell-phone-addiction.html. February 23, 2019.

• Science & technology. Will AI make you stupid? The Economist. Published online July 16, 2025. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/07/16/will-ai-make-you-stupid

• Wesson P, Hswen Y, Valdes G, Stojanovski K, Handley MA. Risks and Opportunities to Ensure Equity in the Application of Big Data Research in Public Health. Annu Rev Public Health. 2022;43(1):59-78. doi:10.1146/annurev-publhealth-051920-110928

• JAMA+ AI Conversations. https://jamanetwork.com/channels/ai/pages/podcast

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras and Zachary Linhares Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

What if we could build our world from scratch—with health, justice, and thriving communities at its core?

In his new book Imagine Doing Better: Why Policies Backfire and How Prevention Thinking Can Change Everything, Dr. Paul J. Fleming, Associate Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan, argues that prevention—and imagination—should guide how we shape the future.

In this conversation, Salma and Paul explore what our great-great-great-great-grandchildren might say about the choices we’re making today, and how we can reimagine the systems that define our lives—from healthcare and education to the environment, justice, and public safety. Together, they discuss how prevention thinking moves beyond treating problems after they arise to transforming the structures that create them in the first place.

They also grapple with deeper questions: Are current reforms truly changing the systems that cause harm—or simply reinforcing them? Who gets to shape the conversation about the policies and practices that define a better tomorrow? And how do we sustain hope in generational work that, like a relay race, depends on each generation taking concrete steps and handing the baton forward from a stronger starting point?

Useful resources:

• Fleming PJ. Imagine Doing Better Why Policies Backfire and How Prevention Thinking Can Change Everything. Johns Hopkins University Press; 2025.
• Fleming PJ. Making a Better World Possible. https://pjfleming.com/newsletter

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras and Zachary Linhares Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.