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Health & Veritas

Howard Forman and Harlan Krumholz, two Yale physician-professors, discuss the latest news and ideas in healthcare and seek out the truth amid the noise.

Produced with the Yale School of Management and the Yale School of Public Health. New episodes are available every Thursday.

Health & Veritas show art

Howard P. Forman

Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Economics, Public Health, and Management; Co-founder, Pozen-Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Health Equity Leadership, MD/MBA Program, and MBA for Executives Program
Photo of Howard Forman
Bio

Professor Forman is a Professor of Diagnostic Radiology (and faculty director for Finance), Public Health (Health Policy), Economics and Management. Professor Forman directs the Health Care management program in the Yale School of Public Health and teaches healthcare economics in the Yale College Economics Department. He is the faculty founder and director of the MD/MBA program as well as the faculty director of the healthcare focus area in the School of Management’s MBA for Executives program. He is the co-founder and special advisor to the Pozen-Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Health Equity Leadership program. He co-hosts the Health & Veritas podcast with Dr. Harlan Krumholz.

As a practicing emergency/trauma radiologist, he is actively involved in patient care and issues related to financial administration, healthcare compliance, and contracting. His research has been focused on improving imaging services delivery through better access to information. He has worked as a health policy fellow in the U.S. Senate, on Medicare legislation.

During the COVID Pandemic, Professor Forman has actively tracked outbreaks at local, national, and international levels; expounding on mitigation strategies and engaging to dispel misinformation through social and print media. He has been a frequent guest commentator and expert on national video and audio platforms.

Harlan M. Krumholz

Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine and Professor in the Institute of Social Policy Studies, of Investigative Medicine, and of Public Health (Health Policy); and Director of the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation
Harlan Krumholz
Bio

Harlan Krumholz is a cardiologist and scientist at Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital. He is the Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine, and Professor in the Institute of Social Policy Studies, of Investigative Medicine, and of Public Health (Health Policy), and the Director of the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation. He is a leading expert in the science to improve the quality and efficiency of care, eliminate disparities and promote equity, improve integrity and transparency in medical research, engage patients in their care, and avoid wasteful practices. Recent efforts are focused on harnessing the digital transformation in healthcare to accelerate knowledge generation and facilitate the delivery of care aligned with each patient’s needs and preferences.

Dr. Krumholz is director of the Yale New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE), an organization dedicated to improving health and health care through research, tools, and practices that produce discovery, heighten accountability and promote better public health and clinical care. He co-founded and co-leads the Yale University Open Data Access (YODA) Project, designed to increase access to clinical research data and promote their use to generate new knowledge. He also co-founded and co-leads medRxiv, a non-profit preprint server for the medical and health sciences. He was a founding faculty co-director of the Yale Center for Research Computing.

Dr. Krumholz has been honored by membership in the National Academy of Medicine, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He was named a Distinguished Scientist of the American Heart Association and received their Award of Meritorious Achievement and their Clinical Research Prize. He served as a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Krumholz received the Friendship Award from the People’s Republic of China in recognition of his collaborative efforts to develop a national cardiovascular research network and was named by the Chinese Society of Cardiology as a Top-10 Distinguished International Cardiologist for his contributions to the development of cardiovascular medicine in China. He founded the American Heart Association’s Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Council and co-founded their annual conference. He was the founding editor of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes; founding editor of CardioExchange, a social media site of the publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine; and editor of Journal Watch Cardiology of the New England Journal of Medicine. He was a founding Governor of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

Episodes

  • Podcast
    Episode 51
    Duration 33:06

    Taking the Pulse

    Howie and Harlan check in on new research and health issues in the news, including studies on colonoscopies and the timing of hypertension medication, the state of the monkey pox and polio outbreaks, and the wave of legislation restricting treatment of trans youth.

  • Podcast
    Episode 50
    Duration 35:13

    Dr. Ania Jastreboff: The Revolution in Obesity Medication

    Howie and Harlan look at the plunging cost of sequencing an individual genome, and the problem of concussions among athletes at all levels. And they’re joined by Dr. Ania Jastreboff, a Yale obesity specialist, to discuss the dramatic results from a new class of drugs that target the brain’s system for regulating body fat.

  • Podcast
    Episode 49
    Duration 31:13

    Ingrid Nembhard: Improving Healthcare Organizations to Improve Health

    Harlan discusses the problem of “financial toxicity”—how medical bills can wreak havoc in vulnerable patients’ lives. Howie reflects on the protests in Iran and the precariousness of the freedoms we enjoy in the United States. And they are joined by Ingrid Nembhard of the University of Pennsylvania to discuss her work on the organizational factors that shape patient care.

  • Podcast
    Episode 48
    Duration 30:53

    Jonathan Rothberg: The Scientist-Entrepreneur

    Howie and Harlan react to President Joe Biden’s declaration that the pandemic is over. Then they’re joined by Jonathan Rothberg, a Yale-trained scientist who has created new methods for sequencing DNA and founded a series of successful biotech companies.

  • Podcast
    Episode 47
    Duration 36:56

    Dr. Jeremy Faust: Is COVID Over? It's Complicated.

    Howie and Harlan discuss the confusion over COVID therapeutics, even among professionals. Then they're joined by Dr. Jeremy Faust, a researcher, emergency physician, and public voice on COVID and other issues—as well as an active choral conductor. They discuss his unusual path, the state of the pandemic, and the importance of understanding “excess mortality.”

  • Podcast
    Episode 46
    Duration 33:55

    Dr. Esther Choo: The View from the Emergency Department

    Harlan outlines his new study tracking excess mortality over the course of the pandemic in the highly vaccinated state of Massachusetts; Howie discusses how the Inflation Reduction Act will tackle drug prices. They're joined by Dr. Esther Choo to talk about life as a doctor on social media and the crisis facing emergency departments.

  • Podcast
    Episode 45
    Duration 16:33

    Beating the Outbreaks

    Monkeypox, polio, and COVID-19 have all received the World Health Organization’s rarely used global health emergency designation. Howie and Harlan offer a needed sense of proportion alongside health information, updates on research, and policy developments for the grim trio of diseases.

    Health & Veritas show art
  • Podcast
    Episode 44
    Duration 32:16

    Dr. James Hamblin: Should You Stop Washing?

    Howie and Harlan talk with Dr. James Hamblin, a journalist and a lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health. They discuss his approach to communicating about public health, his prescient February 2020 article on COVID-19, and why he’s quit taking showers.

    Links:

    James Hamblin: The Body

    “You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus”

    Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM.

    Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

  • Podcast
    Episode 43
    Duration 31:11

    Teresa Chahine: The Social Entrepreneur’s Guide to Making Change

    Howie and Harlan are joined by Teresa Chahine, the Sheila and Ron ’92 B.A. Marcelo Senior Lecturer in Social Entrepreneurship at Yale SOM. They discuss how social entrepreneurs use an interdisciplinary, iterative, community-centric approach to innovation to create self-sustaining solutions to problems in public health and other areas.

  • Podcast
    Episode 42
    Duration 35:20

    Jennifer Miller: Scoring the Ethics of Pharma Companies

    Howie and Harlan discuss Harlan's large new study tracking the trajectory of patient safety in hospitals, and consider how individuals should respond to the latest COVID-19 variants. They're joined by Jennifer Miller, a Yale bioethicist and the director of the Good Pharma Scorecard, which evaluates the performance of pharmaceutical companies on measures like the transparency of clinical trials and the accessibility of medicines.

    Links:

    “New Federal Study Evaluates the Safety of US Hospitals and the Answer Is…”

    “Trends in Adverse Event Rates in Hospitalized Patients, 2010-2019”

    Good Pharma Scorecard

    Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM.

    Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.