Aspen Ideas: Spotlight Health

This is Spotlight Health on Aspen Public Radio, our six-part series partnering with the Aspen Ideas Festival and the Spotlight Health conference. Each week, we bring you conversations with an exceptional mix of inspiring and provocative experts, who dive into topics of global and domestic health.

  This is Spotlight Health on Aspen Public Radio, our six-part series partnering with the Aspen Ideas Festival and the Spotlight Health conference. Each week, we bring you conversations with an exceptional mix of inspiring and provocative experts, who dive into topics of global and domestic health.

  This is Spotlight Health on Aspen Public Radio, our six-part series partnering with the Aspen Ideas Festival and the Spotlight Health conference. Each week, we bring you conversations with an exceptional mix of inspiring and provocative experts, who dive into topics of global and domestic health.

This is Spotlight Health on Aspen Public Radio, our six-part series partnering with the Aspen Ideas Festival and the Spotlight Health Conference.

This is Spotlight Health on Aspen Public Radio, our six-part series, partnering with the Aspen Ideas Festival and the Spotlight Health Conference.

This is Spotlight Health on Aspen Public Radio, our six-part series, partnering with the Aspen Ideas Festival and the Spotlight Health conference. Each week, we bring you conversations with an exceptional mix of inspiring and provocative experts, who dive into topics of global and domestic health.

Our guest today is Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University. Julianne studies the effects of social relationships and social isolation on health and longevity.   

Her research has found that loneliness can be just as unhealthy as smoking and obesity, and she’s encouraging the medical community to consider the importance of relationships when talking to patients.  

Our first guest is Steven Keating.  When a tumor was discovered in Steven’s brain, he wanted to know everything he could about it, even choosing to stay awake during the surgery that removed the mass. But getting information about his own treatment was much more complicated than he anticipated. His experience led him to become a patient advocate.  He now works on technology that would make medical data more accessible and easier to understand for patients themselves.  

We speak to Dr. Andrew Morris-Singer, president and founder of Primary Care Progress, or PCP.  His organization provides leadership development and training to primary care doctors. Part of this training is centered on how a focus on collaboration and relationships can help doctors treat patients more effectively.

This week we talk to Dixon Chibanda, a psychiatrist and researcher at the University of Zimbabwe.  He focuses on community mental health and developed the "Friendship Bench" community mental health intervention.  It's now been scaled up to over 70 primary care clinics in Zimbabwe.  

We talk with Ngozi Erondu, an assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene and Topical Medicine and co-founder of the Global Bridge Group.  She is an infectious disease epidemiologist and global health policy expert. Her research looks at where "gaps" happen in health systems, things that might prevent people from receiving treatment if health workers don't have the resources they need.  

Hosts Alycin Bektesh and Christin Kay talk with Minda Dentler. When she was an infant in India, she contracted polio, which left her legs paralyzed.  She was adopted into an American family.  Minda began competing in triathlons, using a handcycle and a racing wheelchair.  In 2013, she became the first official female handcyclist in history to complete an Ironman Championship.  She's also a passionate advocate for global immunization and polio eradication.   

In the last episode of our spring series on critical health issues, host Elise Thatcher

talked with neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt about the short and long term effects of going on a diet.

  In the fifth episode of our spring series on critical health issues, host Elise Thatcher talks with a doctor about his experiences being a black medical student and physician. We also delve into the world of using art when treating military service members.

In the fourth episode of our spring series on critical health issues, host Elise Thatcher talks with two guests about the value of truly being yourself, even when it’s challenging or dangerous.

  In the third episode of our our spring series on critical health issues, host Elise Thatcher talks with guest BJ Miller about managing pain, and how we can change the experience of dying. Miller is senior director and advocate at the Zen Hospice Project.

  In the second episode of our our spring series on critical health issues, host Elise Thatcher talks with nutrition researcher and cardiologist Dariush Mozaffarian about how calories from different kinds of foods can affect us in different ways.

  This is the first episode in our spring series on critical health issues. In this program we’ll talk with researcher Vic Strecher about the boost you could get if you have a specific purpose in life. One example? People with a purpose are “2.4 times less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease 7 years later,” according to Strecher.