Podcast #19 - Oral Health and Older Americans

Older adults - particularly poor older adults - are among the Americans with the worst oral health. With this in mind, Oral Health America has teamed up with Columbia University and theNew York Academy of Sciences to host an Oct. 16 symposium aimed at building bridges between medicine and dentistry, with a special focus on the needs of older people. Our guests today are Beth Truett, President and CEO of Oral Health America, and Dr. David Albert, Course Director at the Columbia University College of Dental Medicine. To listen to the podcast, click on the media player below. If you don't see a media player below, click here.

Podcast #18, Rep. Lois Capps

Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) is a member of one of the three committees in the U.S. House of Representatives that have worked to draft health reform legislation. In this podcast, she discusses an amendment for which she won approval that prohibits Medicaid from charging co-payments and deductibles for clinical preventive services. She also talks about how prevention fits into the overall bill, and her experience as a public health nurse before coming to Congress. To listen to the podcast, click on the media player below. If you don't see a media player below, click here.

Podcast #17 - The Commission to Build a Healthier America

What makes Americans sick, and how can we keep them healthy? The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation established a panel of distinguished experts - the Commission to Build a Healthier America - to explore these fundamental but complex questions. Dr. David R. Williams, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, is the commission's staff director. He discusses the commission's findings and how they impact every segment of society.

Show #16 - FDA Gets Power to Regulate Tobacco

After a decade of wrangling on Capitol Hill, Congress has approved and President Obama has signed into law a bill giving the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products. This has huge implications for the tobacco industry and for public health policy. Discussing those implications with us in this podcast is Dr. Corinne G. Husten, Partnership for Prevention's Executive Vice President and former Director of the Office of Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To listen to this podcast, click on the media player below. If you don't see a media player, click here.

Podcast #15 - Calculating Prevention's ROI

How do you prove the value of disease prevention and health promotion? A research team at Harvard Medical School thinks they may have an answer. They have developed a calculator that allows them to estimate the return on investment of prevention services. Dr. Nancy Oriol, dean of students at Harvard Medical School and a leader of the research team, explains how this new tool operates. She also discusses "The Family Van," a mobile clinic program she has helped to operate in the Boston area that inspired their efforts to develop the calculator. To listen to this podcast, click on the media player below. If you don't see a media player below, click here.

Podcast #14 - TFAH Poll Re: American Attitudes on Prevention

The American people overwhelmingly believe that investing more in disease prevention will save money. Even more importantly, they believe overwhelmingly that we should invest more in prevention, even if it doesn't save money. In this podcast we talk with Richard Hamburg, Director of Government Relations for the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH). His organization has conducted an extensive survey of Americans to find out how they feel about disease prevention and health promotion, as well as how big of a priority they think it should be as Congress tries to reform the health care system.To listen to this podcast, click on the media player below. If you do not see a media player below, click here.

Podcast #13 - Modernizing Medicare

In this podcast, we talk with Dr. Douglas Kamerow, Chief Scientist for Health, Social and Economics Research at RTI International. Doug, who’s also a professor of clinical family medicine at Georgetown University in Washington, was part of a group of national prevention experts who prepared policy papers for Partnership for Prevention on how to incorporate disease prevention and health promotion into the health reform legislation being developed by Congress. In one of those papers, he offered an analysis of how we can modernize Medicare’s prevention policies. With the health reform debate nearing full throttle, he discusses those recommendations. To listen to this podcast, click on the media player below; if you dont' see a media player below, click here.