All Things Public Health

A Collection of Public Health Media Resources

Created by Nicole and Simone Vassell

Contents

Achievements in public health

Public health podcasts

Public health movies

Public health books

Public health video games

Careers in public health

Public Health Achievements:

United States

Vaccine-preventable disease
Prevention and control of infectious disease
Tobacco control
Maternal and infant health
Motor vehicle safety
Cardiovascular disease prevention
Occupational safety
Cancer prevention
Childhood lead poisoning prevention
Public health preparedness and response

Public Health Achievements:

Worldwide

Reductions in child mortality
Vaccine-preventable diseases
Access to safe water and sanitation
Malaria prevention and control
Prevention and control of HIV/AIDS
Tuberculosis control
Control of neglected tropical diseases
Tobacco control
Increased awareness and response for improving global road safety
Increased preparedness and response to global health threats

Public Health Podcasts

This Podcast Will Kill You by Exactly Right

This podcast might not actually kill you, but it covers so many things that can. Each episode tackles a different disease, from its history, to its biology, and finally, how scared you need to be. Ecologists and epidemiologists Erin Welsh and Erin Allmann Updyke make infectious diseases acceptable fodder for dinner party conversations and provide the perfect cocktail recipe to match. (Spotify)

Emerging Infectious Diseases by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

A podcast highlighting key articles in the current issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (Spotify)

Public Health On Call by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Evidence and experts to help you understand today’s public health news – and what it means for tomorrow. (Spotify)

Public Health Careers by The Public Health Millennial platform

Omari Richins, MPH, the Founder of The Public Health Millennial platform, chats with professionals and students to hear their unique and diverse public health career stories with tips and insights to help you along your public health career journey. This show is for anyone interested in public health or related fields. It covers stories, live sessions, and other relevant public health content. It offers insightful stories, career strategies, actionable tips, and resources to assist you in taking the next step in your public health career. You’ll learn about the importance of public health, public health issues, and what you can do with your degree in public health. Whether you are a new public health student or professional, this show will surely have helpful stories and tips you won’t want to miss. (Spotify)

Public Health Out Loud by Rhode Island Department of Health

Public Health Out Loud is a podcast that delves into the broader public health concerns and issues facing everyday Rhode Islanders. From discussions about safeguarding against future pandemics to actionable plans for families to help keep their loved ones safe from preventable diseases, Public Health Out Loud is a no nonsense resource for listeners who want to stick to the facts. With all that’s going on in the world at every hour of the day, podcast hosts Dr. James McDonald and Dr. Philip Chan promise to deliver accurate, light-hearted, and informative public health updates that matter to you. This podcast is brought to you by the Rhode Island Department of Health. (Spotify)

Public Health Insight by PHI Media

The Public Health Insight Podcast is a weekly podcast ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally. The podcast covers all things public health and global health, from the sustainable development goals to the social determinants of health, as well as interesting dialogues about the diverse career opportunities that exist in the fields. Since its launch in March 2020, the podcast has featured more than 40 high-profile guests and has built an audience in more than 4,000 cities in over 170 countries. (Spotify)

Public Health Movies and Documentaries

Contagion (2011)

When Beth Emhoff returns to Minnesota from a Hong Kong business trip, she attributes the malaise she feels to jet lag. However, two days later, Beth is dead, and doctors tell her shocked husband that they have no idea what killed her. Soon, many others start to exhibit the same symptoms, and a global pandemic explodes. Doctors try to contain the lethal microbe, but society begins to collapse as a blogger fans the flames of paranoia. (Rotten Tomatoes)

Erin Brockovich (2000)

Erin Brockovich is a woman in a tight spot. Following a car accident in which Erin is not at fault, Erin pleads with her attorney Ed Masry to hire her at his law firm. Erin stumbles upon some medical records placed in real estate files. She convinces Ed to allow her to investigate, where she discovers a cover-up involving contaminated water in a local community which is causing devastating illnesses among its residents. (Rotten Tomatoes)

“Frontline: The Vaccine War S10E08” (2010)

Public health scientists and clinicians tout vaccines as one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine. But for many ordinary Americans vaccines have become controversial. Young parents are concerned at the sheer number of shots — some 26 inoculations for 14 different diseases by age 6 — and follow alternative vaccination schedules. Other parents go further. In communities like Ashland, Oregon, up to one-third of parents are choosing not to vaccinate their kids at all. This is the vaccine war: On one side sits scientific medicine and the public health establishment; on the other a populist coalition of parents, celebrities, politicians and activists. (PBS)

Sustainable (2016)

Farmer Marty Travis watches his land and community fall victim to the pressures of agribusiness. Determined to create a proud legacy for his son, Marty transforms his profitless wasteland and pioneers the sustainable food movement in Chicago. (Rotten Tomatoes)

There's Something in the Water (2019)

Community activists embark on a crusade to protect the environment from landfills and pollutants in Nova Scotia. (Rotten Tomatoes)

Heal (2017)

Scientists and spiritual teachers discuss how thoughts, beliefs, and emotions impact human health and the ability to heal. (Rotten Tomatoes)

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Public Health Books

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Silent Spring is an environmental science book that documented the environmental harm caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly.

In the late 1950s, Carson began to work on environmental conservation, especially environmental problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result of her research was Silent Spring, which brought environmental concerns to the American public. The book led to a reversal in U.S. pesticide policy, a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses, and an environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (Wikipedia)

Bodies and Barriers: Queer Activists on Health by Adrian Shanker

Bodies and Barriers informs health care professionals, students in health professions, policymakers, and fellow activists about worsened health challenges LGBT people face, providing insights and a road map for action that could improve queer health. Through artfully articulated, data-informed essays by twenty-six well-known and emerging queer activists, Bodies and Barriers illuminates the ubiquitous health challenges LGBT people experience and challenges conventional wisdom about health care delivery. It probes deeply into the roots of these disparities and empowers activists with crucial information to fight for health equity through clinical, behavioral, and policy changes. The activist contributors in Bodies and Barriers look for tangible improvements, drawing lessons from the history of HIV/AIDS in America and from struggles against health care bias and discrimination. (Barnes and Noble)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Known to scientists as HeLa, Henrietta Lacks was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells (taken without her knowledge in 1951) became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, invitro fertilization, and more. Henrietta’s cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can’t afford health insurance.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells a story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew. It’s a story connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we’re made of. (Rebecca Skloot)

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist.

From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave may have cut off her diseased breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy, to Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive—and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease. This book also provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments, along with hope and clarity to those seeking to understand cancer. (Siddhartha Mukherjee)

The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS by Elizabeth Pisani

As an epidemiologist researching AIDS, Elizabeth Pisani has been involved with international efforts to halt the disease for fourteen years. With wit, fierce honesty, and more than a little political incorrectness, she dishes on herself and her colleagues as they try to prod reluctant governments to fund HIV prevention for the people who need it most: drug injectors, gay men, sex workers, and johns. Pisani shows the general reader how her profession really works; how easy it is to draw wrong conclusions from “objective” data; and, shockingly, how much money is spent so very badly. (Barnes and Noble)

Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology by Deirdre Cooper Owens

In Medical Bondage, Cooper Owens examines a wide range of scientific literature and less formal communications in which gynecologists created and disseminated medical fictions about their patients, such as their belief that black enslaved women could withstand pain better than white "ladies." Even as they were advancing medicine, these doctors were legitimizing, for decades to come, groundless theories related to whiteness and blackness, men and women, and the inferiority of other races or nationalities.

Medical Bondage moves between southern plantations and northern urban centers to reveal how nineteenth-century American ideas about race, health, and status influenced doctor-patient relationships in sites of healing like slave cabins, medical colleges, and hospitals. It also retells the story of black enslaved women and of Irish immigrant women from the perspective of these exploited groups, and thus restores for us a picture of their lives. (Barnes and Noble)

Public Health Video Games

Outbreak at Watersedge

The need for public health professionals has never been greater. But what is "Public Health" anyway? This interactive game will introduce you to the world of public health as you help discover the source of the outbreak that has hit the small community of Watersedge and stop it before more residents get sick. (MCLPH)

Cards Against Calamity

In Cards Against Calamity, you take on the role of mayor of a small coastal town. You must balance the needs of various stakeholder groups, from fishermen to tourists and small business owners, while protecting the town from job loss, pollution, hurricanes, and hipsters. Do you have what it takes? (Games for Change)

Newsfeed Defenders

NewsFeed Defenders is a challenging online game that engages players with the standards of journalism, showing you how to spot a variety of methods behind the viral deception we all face today. Join a fictional social media site focused on news and information, and meet the challenge to level up from guest user to site admin. This can only be achieved by spotting dubious posts that try to sneak in through hidden ads, viral deception, and false reporting. In addition to maintaining a high-quality site, you are charged with growing traffic while keeping the posts on topic. (Games for Change)

Solve the Outbreak

Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to get clues and analyze data to Solve the Outbreak and save lives. In this fun, interactive app you get to try your hand at becoming a Disease Detective. You’ll travel the world chasing outbreaks like the ones real-life CDC Disease Detectives help fight. Should you quarantine the town, send for more lab results, or alert the media?

The better your answers, the faster you’ll climb the ranks and achieve Disease Detective status! Master Level 1 to unlock even more exciting scenarios and earn honors for your demonstrated expertise! (CDC)

Dumb Ways to Die

In this mobile game, players will need to tilt, blow on, and tap their device to survive an endless sequence of absurd, death-defying mini-games. The longer players hold on to their three lives, the faster-paced and more aggressive the game becomes about ensuring a very dumb death. In between poking a grizzly bear or dressing like a moose during hunting season, players must also avoid death around public transportation by jumping back from the edge of a train platform and keeping motorists from driving around railroad crossings as trains approach. As players reach certain point benchmarks, they unlock new characters to populate the game’s train station platform. (Games for Change)