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On Air: Federal News Network
Conversations on Health Care
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This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with renowned writer, environmentalist and climate activist Bill McKibben, whose seminal 1989 book “The End of Nature” was among the first to warn of the coming climate crisis. McKibben points to the dangerous rise in the earth’s temperature spawning droughts, destructive storms and other environmental catastrophes spurred by fossil fuel burning and deforestation. He says if we don't pass President Biden’s reconciliation bill, which has the most sweeping climate change legislation ever proposed in the US, "we won't get another chance". The legislation is a powerful step forward in incentivizing a US shift to renewable energy, which he says must be accomplished before the upcoming climate summit in Glasgow, the most important global climate gathering since the Paris Accords.
September 16, 2021 -
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This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter welcome Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, who also mapped the human genome. Dr. Collins laments the politicization of the pandemic, noting that ‘culture wars are killing people’. He urges patience on vaccine approval for families of younger children heading back to school, confident that scientific rigor will ensure vaccine safety. Dr. Collins, an avowed person of faith, urges faith-based resisters to trust the science that produced this life saving vaccine. He also discusses one of the largest protocols ever launched by the NIH to uncover the mysteries around long COVID syndrome, which is impacting an increasing number of COVID survivors.
September 09, 2021 -
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This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D), on the dire situation in the Commonwealth as the delta-driven pandemic pushes the state’s hospitals to ‘disaster’ mode. He laments the recent State Supreme Court decision limiting his executive order powers, for initiating universal masking for all Kentucky children returning to day care and school, calling it ‘the right thing to do’ for vulnerable kids. He discusses efforts to battle the crisis with assistance from the National Guard and FEMA to address hospitals at the breaking point, with this much more contagious variant leading to highest death rates since the pandemic began, driven predominantly by unvaccinated people.
August 30, 2021 -
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This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Lee Beers, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics on their science-based recommendation that all kids aged 2 and older should be masked in school and daycare in the face of the Delta Variant. They discuss their efforts to communicate the safety and efficacy of the COVID vaccines to patients and their families, and the AAP’s efforts to increase access to mental health services within the pediatric care setting.
August 23, 2021 -
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This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Leana Wen, emergency physician, former Baltimore Health Commissioner, and medical analyst for CNN. Dr. Wen’s new book, “Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health” addresses the dramatic failings of the public health system to adequately address the pandemic, the need to create a more coordinated national and international public health system and the way forward through the pandemic.
August 09, 2021 -
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This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Garth Graham, Director, and Global Head of Healthcare and Public Health Partnerships at Google/YouTube overseeing the creation of credible health content – in partnership with multiple health institutions. They discuss their efforts to disrupt and remove health misinformation from their platform which receives 2 billion visitors per month. They talk about the partnership with the Biden Administration, the CDC, Harvard and England’s National Health Service to remove false information from the platform and drive visitors to credible health information about COVID-19 and all other health topics of interest.
July 22, 2021 -
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This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with renowned vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit, Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. A member of the FDA COVID Vaccine Advisory Panel and co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, Dr. Offit points to the growing body of data around the safety and efficacy of the mRNA-based COVID vaccines, that it’s safe for all populations, including children and pregnant women, and sees it as a game changer for the future of vaccinology. He warns that the lack of global vaccination will impact vaccine effectiveness against growing threat of variants.
July 08, 2021 -
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This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter welcome Dr. Rachel Levine, Assistant Secretary for Health at the US Department of Health and Human Services, the first transgender presidential appointee approved by the Senate. A pediatrician with a focus on child and adolescent behavioral health, and former Pennsylvania Health Secretary, Dr. Levine focuses on the dramatic toll exacted on the nation’s children by the pandemic, the need to advance health equity for the LGBTQ and all vulnerable populations, and the promise of telehealth to eliminate barriers to care.
July 01, 2021 -
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This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter welcome Andy Slavitt, former Senior Advisor to the Biden White House COVID Response Team, discussing his new book: “Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response”. He outlines the ‘sins’ that led to the previous administration’s failed response to the pandemic, and talks about President Biden’s approach to correct course, by taking full responsibility for outcomes and being frank with the American people. He also discusses the significance of the Supreme Court’s latest decision upholding the Affordable Care Act.
June 28, 2021 -
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This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to the Biden Administration's COVID-19 Team. They discuss the decades of science behind the 'remarkable' vaccines, the decision by the US and G7 members to scale up global vaccine donations, and the virulent variants that pose a greater risk to the unvaccinated. He also predicts the dramatic discovery around COVID-19 will pave the way for a vaccine for HIV/AIDS within the decade.
June 15, 2021 -
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This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with former US Congressman Patrick Kennedy, founder and CEO of The Kennedy Forum, an organization dedicated to advancing policies and best practices to improve access to mental health and addiction services. Congressman Kennedy, who co-sponsored the 2008 Mental Health Parity Act, addresses the devastating toll the pandemic has had on mental health and addiction, and talks about Biden Administration efforts to address the mental health crisis through expanded health coverage and more resources for addiction and mental health treatment.
June 04, 2021 -
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This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Elena Rios, President and CEO of the National Hispanic Medical Association, representing the interests of the nation’s 50,000 Latino Physicians. She discusses the devastating toll the pandemic has taken on the nation’s Hispanic population who have suffered a greater death toll and significant economic as well as mental health burdens. Dr. Rios NHMA’s efforts to improve pipelines for young Latinos to enter the medical field, and for measures to address health inequity impacting communities of color.
May 27, 2021 -
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This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Walensky defends the science behind lifting mask restrictions for vaccinated Americans, examines the ongoing research on vaccine efficacy against emerging COVID variants and possibility of a need for booster shots. She also outlines efforts underway by the CDC and the Biden Administration to leverage provisions in the American Recovery Act to address health inequity by strengthening the nation’s public health infrastructure.
May 24, 2021 -
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This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 Technical Lead at the WHO. They discuss the world’s lack of readiness and supply chain infrastructure to confront the pandemic. She says the lessons learned from this collective ‘trauma’ is sparking new efforts to build more robust surveillance and response systems for emerging pathogens, the concerning new variant out of India, and the need to accelerate global vaccinations to stop the continued spread of the pandemic.
May 14, 2021
Conversations on Health Care®
Learn about the hosts
About Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter
Mark Masselli is the President/CEO of Community Health Center, Inc., Connecticut’s largest and most comprehensive provider of primary health care services for the uninsured and underserved. CHC is located in over 203 cities throughout Connecticut – serving 145,000 patients statewide. Providing medical, dental and behavioral health services, CHC is a nationally recognized innovator in the delivery and the development of primary care services to special populations.
Mark has played an important leadership role as a founding member of many health and human services initiatives in Middletown, including New Horizons Battered Women’s Shelter, Nehemiah Housing Corporation, and Oddfellows Youth Playhouse. In addition to local issues, Mark has worked on a range of international human rights issues. He has worked with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and has traveled in Tibet, Nepal, India and China working on the issues facing the Tibetan people. He also was active in the development of the Bishop Tutu Refugee relief agency during the critical years fighting the apartheid system in South Africa. Mark was honored with a Doctorate of Humane Letters by Wesleyan University in 2009 for his work in the Health Care field.
Margaret Flinter is Senior Vice President and Clinical Director of the Community Health Center, Inc. and is a family nurse practitioner by profession. Margaret earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing from the University of Connecticut, her Master’s Degree from Yale University, and her doctoral degree at the University of Connecticut. She was the recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellowship from 2002-2005.
Following her graduate training at Yale University, Margaret joined the Community Health Center in 1980 as a National Health Service Corps Scholar and CHC’s first nurse practitioner. Since 1987 she has held both clinical and administrative leadership roles in the organization. She recently established the Weitzman Center for Innovation in Community Health and Primary Care as the “research and development” arm of CHC and serves as the Director of the Weitzman Center. Margaret is also the founder of America’s first Nurse practitioner residency program which operates out of the Community Health Center.
