Public Health Pulse Podcast, Season 2 Episode 2
Channel: The League of Revolutionaries for a New America
Date: 14/11/2023

Public Health Pulse Podcast Season 2 Episode 2: Rob Wallace and Lara Jirmanus,  Hosted By Rita Valenti 

Welcome to the Public Health Pulse podcast series!  This is an exciting exploration of Health & Healing Justice conducted through seven 30-minute interviews with leaders from science, student, medical, public health, and healing justice communities across the country. Initiated and produced by the Crescent City Media Group out of New Orleans, interviewees dynamically analyze the failed response to the pandemic and mechanisms of the Medical Industrial Complex. Leaning on the intersections of abolition, reproductive justice, bodily autonomy, and scientific integrity, the mandate and responsibility for politicization of healthcare and healing workers is revealed:  Not as allies but as a part of our big class tasked with revolutionary transformation. Interviewees are brutally honest in critiquing the response to the pandemic. Yet all are loving and passionate about building a vision for healing the public’s health: A vision that’s free from capitalism and its crushing pillars of white supremacy, patriarchy, and ableism.

Note: The podcast was filmed in the summer of 2023 and does not address the genocide in Gaza and/or the unending U.S. funding for war, destruction and an extension of the border wall.

Interview #1, Rob Wallace
We will briefly discuss the current landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic and the implications of ending the Public Health Emergency. We’ll look at some practical steps to address the current and likely future pandemics. And finally, we’ll raise the question of what kind of public health and scientific infrastructure could we have and need?

Rob Wallace is a co-founder of the Agroecology and Rural Economics Research Corps and Pandemic Research for the People. He is author of Big Farms Make Big Flu and most recently, the critically important and timely: The Fault in Our SARS: COVID-19 in the Biden Era. He has consulted for the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and is an active contributor to the People’s CDC.

Book Link:
https://nyupress.org/9781583679937/the-fault-in-our-sars/

Interview #2, Dr. Jirmanus
Dr. Jirmanus will explore the reasons for creating the PCDC External Review of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the Biden era of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Dr. Lara Jirmanus is a family physician at the Cambridge Health Alliance and a Clinical Instructor at Harvard Medical School and faculty at the CHA Center for Health Equity Education and Advocacy. She founded and coordinates the Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity that advocates for an equitable response to the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. She is a member of the People’s CDC and the lead author of the People’s CDC External Review, “Too Many Deaths, Too Many Left Behind”.

We invite you to read “Too Many Deaths, Too Many Left Behind,”: The Fact Sheet, Executive Summary and the Full Report and its critically important recommendations.

Report Link:
https://peoplescdc.org/2023/04/05/too-many-deaths-too-many-left-behind-a-peoples-external-review-of-the-cdc/

Host: Rita Valenti is a Registered Nurse, retired from Grady Health Systems.  She is deeply engaged with health and healing justice strategies as a focus of her political work.  She holds membership in many diverse healthcare organizations and healing justice collectives including, the People’s CDC, Healthcare-NOW, Georgia Physicians for a National Health Program, Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective and the Healthcare Committee of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America.  She is a co-founder of Project South, a former Georgia State Legislator and frequent speaker on the embedded harms in corporate private healthcare, while promoting the necessity for free, universal, equitable, comprehensive and trusted healthcare for all.          

Links: 
https://peoplescdc.org
https://leagueofrevolutionaries.org

Produced by:
Rita Valenti

Executive Produced by:
Crescent City Media Group
https://www.the-mediagroup.us

Supported by: 
Project South 
https://projectsouth.org