The Global Health Politics Podcast

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with Dr. Lioba Hirsch, a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. They talk about her new book, Antiblackness and Global Health: A Response to Ebola in the Colonial Wake, as well as racism, decolonization, North-South power dynamics, global health governance, inequalities in relation to COVID-19, and infectious disease response in Africa.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, I sit down with two researchers doing very exciting - but also very different - kinds of research on global health politics. In the first conversation, I talk with Dr. Katharina Krause, an international relations scholar who is a Research Associate at the University of Tubingen about her book project on the relationship between health security and images of infectious diseases like Ebola. In the second conversation, I talk with Dr. Brooke Bocast, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Western Washington University about her book, If Books Fail, Try Beauty: Educated Womanhood and the New East Africa. The book won the Council on Anthropology and Education's Outstanding Book Award; the Rosalyn Terborg-Penn Book Prize; and was named Honorable Mention for the Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award. Both great conversations. 

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with Adeoye "Oye" Owolewa. A pharmacist recognized for his efforts to protect public health, Dr. Owolewa has served as the Shadow Representative to Congress for the nation's capital since his election in November 2020. He shares his experience as a Nigerian American working in politics, advocating for D.C. statehood at a time when the nation's capital was under federal occupation by National Guard troops, a federalized Metropolitan Police Department, and ICE agents. He reflects on his experience working as a pharmacist at a time when Medicaid is being cut, scientific research for drug development has been slashed, tens of thousands of federal civil servants have been let go, and U.S. global health and development institutions have been decimated. And he offers his vision as a candidate for a seat on the Council of the District of Columbia, also known as the D.C. Council.  

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with New York Times best-selling author John Green to talk about his new book, Everything is Tuberculosis. Best known for novels, like Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns, which have been turned into Hollywood movies, in his latest book Mr. Green turns his attention to a disease for which we have a cure, but which still kills over a million people a year, most in poor countries. They talk about what moved him to write this book, his work on the board of Partners in Health, and his advocacy for addressing global health injustices.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with one of the most prominent voices in global health today, Dr. Madhu Pai. Dr. Pai is a medical doctor and Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology & Global Health at McGill University and the Associate Director of the McGill International TB Centre in Montreal. In this wide-ranging conversation, they talk about tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, the climate crisis, the roots of global health injustice, the recent foreign aid cuts, Global North-Global South inequalities, and moves to decolonize global health. 

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with American University anthropologist Thurka Sangaramoorthy to discuss her work on immigration and health. They talk about her work with Haitian immigrants in South Florida that was the subject of her first book; her work at the CDC and book on rapid ethnographic assessments; her new book - Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America on how immigrants navigate healthcare challenges in rural Maryland; the field of anthropology; and her recent experience working as Refugee Coordinator for the State Department's response in Sudan and South Sudan.  

Send us Fan MailIn this long-awaited episode, originally recorded in Fall 2022, Joseph Harris sits down with Dr. James Pfeiffer, Professor of Global Health and Anthropology at University of Washington. They talk about global health work in Mozambique; World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programs; debt and austerity and their impact on development; and the movement to decolonize global health.

Send us Fan MailIn this podcast episode, Joseph Harris sits down with University of Illinois-Chicago Professor of Sociology Claire Decoteau. They discuss her latest book - Emergency: COVID-19 and the Uneven Valuation of Life - which explores how and why the city of Chicago failed to protect its most vulnerable citizens in its pandemic response. In the process, they explore the changing landscape of global health and sociology and the implications for democracy and health.

Send us Fan MailMany health systems around the world rely on community health workers (CHWs) who play vital roles in health promotion, disease prevention, and primary care. While CHWs in some countries are not paid or receive only small stipends and operate without a great deal of support, guidance, or professional standards, one global movement is trying to change that. In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with Dr. Lennie Bazira - a medical doctor and Policy Director for the Community Health Impact Coalition (CHIC) - and Jannet Otieno - a community health worker in Kenya. CHIC's membership includes thousands of CHWs and dozens of health organizations in 60+ countries who are working to make professional CHWs the norm worldwide by changing guidelines, funding, and policy. They discuss the important work community health workers do and the challenges involved in making change. 

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with University of Chicago sociologist Jenny Trinitapoli. They discuss her new book, An Epidemic of Uncertainty, which explores how young adults negotiate relationships, sex, and childbearing in the context of the AIDS epidemic in Malawi, one of the world's hardest hit nations. Her landmark book draws attention not only to the uncertainty young people face in relation to their HIV status (nearly 60% of the women studied reported that they did not know if they would be infected with HIV in the next two years), but the profound uncertainty they experience in their everyday lives, having to navigate challenges that include food shortages, adequate shelter, and lightning strikes.  

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with University of Pennsylvania physician and sociologist Victor Roy. They discuss the issues that are at the core of Dr. Roy's new book, Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines, which is available for free online through open access. The discussion covers the financialization of healthcare and medicine and the impact that finance has had on drug pricing and access, including for Hepatitis C treatment, which has a $90,000 price tag but costs just $100 to manufacture. An important thread explores the need to follow the money in global health research and the Health and Political Economy Project, which Dr. Roy directs.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of the Global Health Politics Podcast, Joseph Harris sits down with University of Pennsylvania political scientist Julia Lynch to discuss her work on politics, pandemics, public health, inequality, and social policy. Our wide-ranging conversation explores the role of political science in understanding the political economy of health and two of her recent books - Regimes of Inequality: The Political Economy of Health and Wealth and The Unequal Pandemic: COVID-19 and Health Inequalities.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Joseph Harris explores the actions taken by the Trump administration to dismantle U.S. foreign aid and the consequences that these actions will have for global health. He sits down with Dr. Beth Cameron, a former Senior Adviser to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); Nidhi Bouri, former Deputy Assistant Administrator at USAID; Dr. Brooke Nichols, Associate Professor of Global Health at Boston University and creator of as U.S. aid freeze impact tracker; and Sheena Adams, Global Communications Director for The Accountability Lab, which launched its own Global Aid Freeze Tracker. 

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of the Global Health Politics Podcast, I sit down with Brown University political scientist Prerna Singh to discuss her latest book project, Moral Vaccination: How Ideas and Institutions Controlled Contagion in China and India. Our wide-ranging conversation explores how states generate compliance with public health interventions, grounded in a comparison of India and China's efforts to eradicate smallpox. Her important work suggests the need to incorporate a broader understanding of human motivations that goes beyond economic rationality, drawing on insights from a range of academic disciplines. Dr. Singh is past President of the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of the Global Health Politics Podcast, I sit down with Georgetown University anthropologist Emily Mendenhall to discuss her book, Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji. We talk about her past work on non-communicable diseases, particularly diabetes and mental health, and her concept of syndemics, which examines how multiple health and social conditions intersect.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of the Global Health Politics Podcast, I sit down with UC-Berkeley Sociologist Ann Swidler to learn from her more than two decades of experience studying the aid industry, global health, culture, and institutions in Malawi amid the HIV/AIDS pandemic.  

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of the Global Health Politics Podcast, I sit down with UC-Riverside Political Scientist Kim Yi Dionne to talk about pandemic response in Africa, the discipline of political science, and her engagement with Malawi.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of the Global Health Politics Podcast, Joseph Harris sits down with Northwestern University anthropologist Adia Benton. They talk about her book, HIV Exceptionalism, her recent work on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the militarization of public health, and efforts to decolonize global health.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, I sit down with Tim Schwab, a freelance investigative journalist, whose new book, The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of a Good Billionaire, critically examines the profound influence of one of global health's biggest players, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of the Global Health Politics Podcast, I sit down with Alexandre (Sasha) White, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, who is jointly affiliated with the School of Medicine and Department of the History of Medicine. We discuss his new book, Epidemic Orientalism: Race, Capital, and the Governance of Infectious Disease, and broader thoughts about the field of global health. 

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of the Global Health Politics Podcast, Joseph Harris sits down with Themrise Khan, a Pakistan-based development professional. They talk about Khan and her colleague's Kanakulya Dickson and Maike Sondarjee's groundbreaking new edited volume, White Saviorism in International Development: Theories, Practices, and Lived Experiences, and its impact on the field of global health and international development. 

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, we have a conversation with Dr. Eduardo Gómez, Professor in the Department of Community and Population Health and Director of the Institute of Health Policy and Politics at Lehigh University. A political scientist by training, Professor Gómez' research focuses on the politics of global health policy, with a focus on emerging middle-income countries. He is the author of several books, and his most recent is titled Junk Food Politics: How Beverage and Fast Food Industries are Reshaping Emerging Economies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). In 2022, he led The Lancet’s first series on political science and global health and has served as co-editor for other major journal special issues. 

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, I sit down with Dr. Adeola Oni-Orisan. who is an Assistant Professor of Family and Community Medicine at UC-Davis. Dr. Oni-Orisan holds an MD from Harvard Medical School and a PhD in Medical Anthropology from UCSF and is an expert in community-centered research, qualitative research, critical race theory, Black feminist studies, and science and technology studies. She has conducted research on issues related to reproductive health, global health, development, religion, and informal sites of care in Nigeria, Zambia, and the United States. Her work on the production of statistics related to maternal mortality has been prominently featured in the wonderful edited volume by Vincanne Adams, Metrics: What Counts in Global Health and PJ Brown and Svea Closser’s Foundations of Global Health: An Interdisciplinary Reader. More recently, she’s published on COVID-19 and the political geography of racialization in San Francisco. Her recent article, published in Global Public Health -- “The Trouble with Maternal Death Narratives” -- critically examines how stories of women dying during childbirth have been used as a tool to mobilize support for global health interventions aimed at women in poor countries.

Send us Fan MailThis week's podcast features a conversation with Dr. Jallicia Jolly. Dr. Jolly is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Black Studies at Amherst College, and a poet, public scholar, equity practitioner, and reproductive justice organizer. In the podcast, she discusses what led her to focus on the subject of HIV organizing and grassroots women's reproductive health in her work as a practitioner and a scholar concerned with transforming structures of power, advancing equity, and affirming health justice. She shares what aspects of research and ethnography are most meaningful to her, the people who have influenced and shaped her thinking, and inspiring advice she has for young scholars beginning their journey.