PUBLIC HEALTH IS DEAD
Your anti-establishment field guide to surviving in the era of pandemics
Public Health is Dead is a forward-thinking autopsy on how we've f*cked up in public health. How do we prepare for future pandemics while we're already in the thick of one? And how do we reinvent systems that place some of us closer to death?Through examining our past successes and failures, often through the lens of COVID, we plot a route out of apathy and denial towards health liberation for all.You'll hear unusual tales of how we've battled infectious disease throughout history and mind-stretching interviews with undaunted public health advocates today. This podcast is your anti-establishment field guide to surviving in the era of pandemics — full of vision, hope, and a little punk rock attitude.Public Health is Dead is a eulogy for the field as we know it and a gathering of voices to map out where we go next.
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast app
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Through Public Health is Dead, I'm on a quest to figure out how we overhaul public health and make it work for us, not against us.
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Public health is dead might just become your new favourite show.
“These things frighten people. It’s best not to talk about them.”
“But, Dad, that’s like… ignoring a fire in the living room because we’re all in the kitchen, and, besides, house fires are too scary to talk about.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR A SHOW LIKE THIS.
A eulogy.
Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here in memory of the institution of public health, to map and create a new future where true access to health for all is a reality.Preventing and mitigating disease used to be the bedrock of public health. Not anymore. Some say this is the dawn of the pandemicene (or, colloquially, the era of Finding Out). We have arrived here fuelled by capitalism and its climate crisis and we are so far from ready.Our leaders have failed us in the face of undeniable scientific evidence. COVID comes at a heart-stopping* short- and long-term cost to individuals and populations and economies. While leaders ignore the growing problem, there are inevitably more pandemics waiting in the wings. We need to figure out what to do about public health. Fast.In Public Health is Dead, we examine the rot in a field we once believed in, pack up what's salvageable, and, together, plot a course for redemption – mostly through the lens of COVID, the biggest scale public health f*ck-up in living memory. It's not the only one though. And public health institutions have not worked for a lot of communities for a long time.This podcast is a tool to build knowledge, collaboration, connection, and power. We bring together the disparate voices of reason in public health and beyond as we work towards health liberation for all.Guests include Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, Alice Wong, Dr. Mike Hoerger, Hazie Thompson, and more...Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast app
* COVID is a multi-system disease that does cumulative damage to the heart, brain, immune system, kidneys and more.
YOUR HOST
Daniella Barreto (MSc, BSc)
Hi! I'm Daniella (she/her). I'm a longtime public health advocate with a background in epidemiology and health science. I'm also an award-winning podcast producer with a track record of troublemaking.Public Health is Dead exists for the simple reason that institutional public health is failing us. It's never been great for the communities I'm from and we all need a different plan.There are dozens of bland public health podcasts. This one is different.To build this podcast I've interviewed giants in the field and beyond, spoken to regular people resisting the impacts of our leaders' failures, scoured through myths and histories of public health, and spent countless late nights editing, mixing, and stitching the pieces together.Public Health is Dead is an informative and entertaining podcast to connect the people who want to choose a different world. I hope this show brings us together and helps light the path in its own way. I can't wait to meet you! More about me below.
Photo by Phoebe Nezil
None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more. Then we can teach one another.
We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
PUBLIC HEALTH IS DEAD
who is this podcast for?
✅ If you have a feeling all is not well in the world of disease control...
✅ If you and your kids are sick of being sick (and their teachers are too)...
✅ If you think a revolving door of illness at schools, hospitals, and workplaces can't possibly be a sustainable plan... then this show is for you!Together we'll learn about what's not working in public health, what we can do about it, and why it matters so much for you and the people you love. You deserve to know.
Perhaps you or someone you know is on their 6th or 7th COVID infection and you're beginning to wonder if it's taking a toll.
What will we do when H5N1 comes to town?
What kinds of masks will help protect your loved one at their next visit to the hospital?
Maybe you saw Olympic athletes collapsing with COVID and you're wondering if being "young and healthy" is a good reason to ignore it.
Or maybe you're just looking for other people who are talking about these things because it's become taboo to mention the C-word among your friends.
It's also for you...
✅ If you are frustrated by our leaders washing their hands of responsibility to prevent and mitigate disease
✅ If you are lonely and exhausted from working against denial and apathy
✅ If you feel betrayed that nobody told you about Long COVID or how to protect yourself
✅ If you look around and wonder what the f*ck we are collectively doing to ourselves and othersPublic Health is Dead brings together COVID-informed people looking for others who understand that public health is necessarily a collaborative effort and "you do you" will never work. It's for people who believe that scientific knowledge comes with a moral imperative.
This show is for activists, organizers, researchers, people living with Long COVID, epidemiologists, physicians, parents, patients, and caregivers who want health liberation for everyone.
It is for people who were told they'll "fall by the wayside" – people who have been disabled their entire lives, become disabled recently, or have developed disabilities from COVID. All groups that experience health inequities from systemic oppression include disabled people and these health inequities are consistently enacted along lines of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.
Public Health is Dead aims to be anti-ableist, anti-oppressive, and anti-racist in facing the field's entrenched power structures.
⛔ This podcast is not made for people who deny our collective public health reality, or people who can't imagine living life on this planet differently. But you might listen anyway. I hope you learn something from the people and stories on this show.
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🚀 SHORT RUN PILOT COMING
NOV 29, 2024Support Public Health is Dead for the show you want to hear.
What goes into making a quality podcast?
Producer time to develop concept + strategy
Creative direction
Graphic design
A podcast trailer
Research
Finding, chasing + booking guests
Crafting good questions
Recording equipment
Interview recording
Writing
Editing interviews
Fact checking
Composing original music
Other music + licensing
Mixing audio
Audio editing program subscription
Podcast hosting subscription costs
Website + domain subscription costs
Promotion, marketing, media engagement
Transcription and captioning
Social media strategy and content creation
... it takes a lot to make a good podcast!
I've previously made Amnesty International Canada's flagship show, Rights Back at You, and currently co-produce an indie show, Actors & Ancestors, which has won a 2024 Signal Award for Best Film and TV podcast and a 2024 W3 Award for Best Indie Podcast.
Season One In Production
If you like the idea of Public Health Is Dead and want to help make it happen, please support the show. Quality indie shows are hard to make, especially when they're self-funded, so anything helps!
PHiD would also like to be able to compensate guests who do not have stable income and/or are not paid to do their public health work.
Public health is dead
What does it sound like?
Public Health is Dead sounds a bit like 99% Invisible meets Ologies meets Science Vs. but specifically about public health!
Public Health is Dead is a scrappy indie show punching above its weight, keeping an archive of truth, and building up resistance to institutional abandonment.Despite its name, Public Health is Dead exists to help fill a public health communications void and create space for critical public health conversations like how we let dogma get in the way of effective airborne protections; or what we can learn from the ventilation system in a theatre built after the 1918 flu pandemic.On the surface, the show is a tongue-in-cheek lamentation for public health as a practice.At its core, the show is a call for accountability in the echoes of hollow values and a breath of fresh air after battling denial at every turn.Public Health is Dead is a sharp refocus on the task at hand: mitigating the mounting damage of COVID, and figuring out a real public health plan for the impacts of future disasters, which are already breathing down our necks as the temperature rises, alongside the ongoing public health impact of multiple genocides, and a drug poisoning crisis right in front of us.Public Health is Dead will spell out how we lost public trust, millions of lives, and created a worse disaster through the betrayal of our own leaders and colleagues. It will become a tool to help build a public health that answers to each other, not money and power.This show will be heavy in parts. But it's easier to carry heavy things together. We shed individualist notions and recognize there is no safe future without each other. And there is no safe future without adapting to new information.The show will also be hopeful, generative, inclusive and entertaining to listen to – a space for us to escape the pit of despair. We can turn disappointment into direction and chaos into community without choosing to leave people by the wayside. This show is a tool to compost the radical ideas of yesterday into tomorrow's health liberation for all.You'll be inspired about where we go next, find community, scientific collaborators, or organizing accomplices, and build something new together.
Episodes will be approximately 40 minutes to an hourProduction for production’s sake is not a healthy thing
(and neither is noise pollution)."Public health is dead" will aim for regular releases but will only contribute something good and thoughtful to your playlist when it's ready.ANTICIPATED LAUNCH DATES:
SHORT RUN PILOT (3 EPS): NOV 29, 2024
FIRST SEASON OFFICIAL LAUNCH: FEB 28, 2025
This show aims to play a small but helpful role in strengthening our vision, goals, values, and purpose for addressing public health challenges of the present and future.Geographically, we hope to be global but we'll tend to focus on so-called Canada/North America since that's where we live.We particularly want to uplift and centre disabled people, Black and Indigenous people, people of colour, and 2SLGBTQ+ folks because we are, of course, overrepresented in poor public health outcomes because of systemic inequities and the ongoing impacts of colonialism. We hope to be another platform to share COVID-related mutual aid funds or mutual aid requests from people trying to survive colonial violence.
Public Health is Dead is produced and recorded on unceded and stolen xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories.
who the heck is making this?
I'm Daniella (she/her), a longtime public health advocate with a background in epidemiology & health science (MSc., BSc.). I'm also a podcast producer and have been making podcasts since 2017.I created, hosted, and produced a narrative podcast series on anti-Black racism and policing for a global nonprofit. I currently help produce an award-winning film & TV podcast for Indigenous actors. The first show I ever worked on was a podcast for millennial troublemakers with a collective of "emerging leaders" (this is where I met Snoop Dogg and got him to talk about cannabis legalization but that is a story for another time). All of the podcasts I have produced have been featured in Apple Podcasts’ New & Noteworthy curation. The two most recent have also made the Apple Podcasts home page as an "Editors’ Choice" and "Emerging Voices" selection.In 2020 I had One Hit Tweet about anti-Black racism, COVID, and public health and that's kind of my whole thing in a nutshell. My research and activism background is in HIV and systemic violence, anti-Black racism, sexual health, and 2SLGBTQ+ issues. I've done public health work from running inclusive sexual health workshops in high schools to peer-reviewed epidemiology research. I'm Black, queer and an immigrant currently based in so-called Canada. In my current day job I'm a strategist at an equity-focused organization that tries to make social impact workplaces suck less.Watching the scale and severity of SARS2 unfold and the failure of our leaders to address it made me want to do something about it in my own way. Approaching 5 years of the COVID pandemic and the growing normalization of mass death and eugenics, I decided to make something out of my anger to counter the fatalism around me in the only way I know how (and that could only come from me) – this show is the inevitable culmination of my education, skills and experiences. With Public Health is Dead, I hope to bring back some of the subversive spark that attracted me to public health in the first place, contribute a body of work that is useful to the field and help support communities that deserve better.Everything is connected and public health is connected to everything. We truly have life or death decisions to make. So let's get to it.
-Daniella 💀
Public Health is Dead is an independent podcast created, hosted, and produced by Daniella. There's a small crew helping with pieces of production like music composition, admin, guest curation, fact checking, and content development. If you can, and you'd like to support the show's production, please visit the link above! You can contact the show at PublicHealthIsDead [at] g mail [dot] com. The show is open to constructive feedback but if you are a troll you may return to your bog under the bridge.