Public Health is Dead

Public health has been used as a tool of empire for centuries. Keeping settlers healthy enough to maintain colonial control over land, resources, and capital is a part of public health’s history. It’s also part of its present.

*Content Note: This episode contains mentions of residential schools and colonial violence. (Transcript HERE).

In this episode, hear about Renee Bach, an ill-famed recent character in the long line of drop-in missionaries or "voluntourists" who go to Africa to “help” poor people and end up doing a lot of harm. Featured guest, Professor Matiangai Sirleaf, discusses her paper “White Health in International Law”, breaks down how the interests of whiteness have always been at the forefront of public health globally. How has the COVID pandemic response reinforced global hierarchies of care and concern? Can public health move towards emancipatory futures?

We hear about show host Daniella’s university exchange trip to Ghana as an African-born immigrant to Canada, why race is usually not relevant to public health research but *racism* is, how experiments on Indigenous children shaped Canada’s food policy, and the little-known history of the Hepatitis B vaccine—a public health advancement which has been under recent scrutiny (for the wrong reasons) by RFK Jr. and his public health demolition crew. We also meet Daniella’s mom, an immunologist who shares her experience as a medical doctor in Zimbabwe and her response to growing anti-vax ideas in the West.

Epidemiology methods partly grew from the massive data and surveillance possibilities that existed in captured populations. This same data collection and surveillance can perpetuate harm, especially when AI is involved. Hear how First Nations communities have established OCAP® (Ownership, Control, Access, Possession) in response to harmful research practices in the past.

Has public health shed its colonial lens? And what do these legacies of colonialism mean for addressing ongoing and future pandemics?

RESOURCES

** READ THIS FIRST IF YOU ARE NEW TO THINKING ABOUT RACISM & PUBLIC HEALTH: 
Systemic And Structural Racism: Definitions, Examples, Health Damages, And Approaches To Dismantling (2022)

White Health and International Law (2025), Matiangai Sirleaf published in Race, Racism & International Law, Devon Carbado, Kimberle Crenshaw, Justin Desautels-Stein, and Chantal Thomas eds., Stanford University Press.

Rethinking Race & Risk in Epidemiological Training (2023), Natasha Richmond

Find more resources on the episode website

CREDITS

Created, written, produced, edited, and hosted by Daniella Barreto.

Music, mixing, and sound design by Alexandria Maillot. 

Script editing by Kevin Ball and Lauren M.

Additional script feedback from Gordon Thane.

Fact checking by Anika Sharma.

Final mix and mastering by Nick Dooley at Good Egg Audio.

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Visit the episode webpage for an AirFanta air purifier discount code for listeners!

This is an independent, listener-supported show. If you like what you hear, and you'd like to support production costs for more of Public Health is Dead, visit publichealthisdead.com!

Book report! What Daniella & MJ liked and didn't like about John Green's newest book, "Everything is Tuberculosis". 
Written in the age of COVID, does he address the thing TB is known for: airborne disease transmission? Can he separate himself from tired old tropes of white saviourism in Africa? Do we think the book does enough to challenge the systems producing inequity in the first place? 
Hit play and our opinions will be revealed!

Another crossover episode edited by MJ of Everything is Public Health.
RESOURCES
Me-to-We/The Kielburgers' WE Charity ScandalWE Charity misled donors about building schools in Kenya, records show [CBC]
WE is actually we [Briarpatch]
WE charity scandal - A simple guide to the new crisis for Trudeau [BBC]

Canadian Medical Association's Apology for harms to Indigenous Peoples
Tuberculosis among Inuit 
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa - Walter Rodney
(Note/Correction: Daniella quotes a sentence from the book that says "Inuit people" but this is redundant as Inuit means "the people" in Inuktitut therefore should have only said "Inuit".)
 
 

This is an independent, listener-supported show. If you like what you hear, and you'd like to support production costs for more of Public Health is Dead, visit publichealthisdead.com!

If you go into hospital, you shouldn’t have to worry about getting more sick. Many people get COVID, flu, and other airborne infections from being in hospital, even though it’s preventable. This is a policy failure. And it's fixable.

Dr. Dick Zoutman, Board Chair at the Canadian COVID Society, and professor emeritus at Queen’s University, shows us 5 ways to stop COVID from running rampant at hospitals. Infection control, hospital and public health leaders, here are some suggestions to get a handle on transmission now and in the future! 
This interview was recorded in early 2025.
RESOURCES
(See more on the episode webpage.)
Dr. Zoutman's Town Hall with the World Health Network: The Fight for Canadian Respirator Mask Standards
Swedish study on COVID infection in hospitals
Do No Harm BC's petition for masks in healthcare
@ratnegative's post about BCCDC wastewater cuts

Transcript available here.
CREDITS
Public Health is Dead is created, produced, written & hosted by Daniella Barreto
Music, mixing, and sound design by Alexandria Maillot
Fact checking on this episode by Roanne G.

This is an independent, listener-supported show. If you like what you hear, and you'd like to support production costs for more of Public Health is Dead, visit publichealthisdead.com!

Most people get a lot of what they know about public health from what’s in the news. But what’s in the news—and the way it’s talked about—is not always clear or accurate.
 
This episode tracks how the media has contributed to the alarming decline of public health and played a role in blocking meaningful understanding and action on COVID. What is reported and how it's framed can have a huge impact on what people think and how they behave. And if public health leaders are the ones sending foggy messages through unquestioning journalists, it becomes difficult to address collective health threats—now and in the future. 
 
The interplay between public health institutions, politicians, and the media is so powerful it affects who suffers, who survives, and who doesn’t. And with the certainty of future pandemics coming along, honest and clear news media that serves the public can be a lifeline. It’s long past time to change the COVID narrative.
 
We talk to journalist, Julia Doubleday of The Gauntlet and researcher/science communicator, Kayli Jamieson about media narratives, propaganda, and why it's become so hard to get good COVID coverage as the pandemic smoulders on. This episode also features Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, former Technical Lead for COVID-19 at the World Health Organization. 
 
Note: When this episode discusses communications about COVID vaccines and effectiveness, it refers to mRNA vaccines against COVID generally. Presently, other vaccines like Novavax, which may perform better in some measures, are unavailable in Canada.
 
Find Julia at thegauntlet.news and Kayli on Instagram @wandering
 
We had some audio recording and technical issues with this episode but pulled through thanks to the painstaking work of our amazing mixer/sound designer/musician, Alexandria Maillot. The transcript is available on the ​episode webpage​.
 
CREDITS 
Huge thanks to the Skeleton Crew for all their work on this episode: 
Hosted, produced, written, edited by Daniella Barreto
Music, Mixing, and Sound Design by Alexandria Maillot
Script editing by Lauren M. and Kevin Ball
Fact checking by Anika Sharma and Roanne G.

Additional music by Alex Productions, sound byte "Freaky Halloween"

RESOURCES
Some articles by Julia Doubleday: 
"How the press manufactured consent for never-ending COVID reinfections"
"Institutional COVID denial has killed public health as we knew it. Prepare to lose several centuries of progress."
"Liberals joined conservatives to mainstream anti-vax beliefs about viruses and public health"

This episode is in memory of Leslie Lee III and Alice Wong — fierce public health and disability justice advocates. Leslie was living with Long COVID. They both encouraged me to keep making this podcast. May we all keep working towards the world they were fighting for. - DB

This is an independent, listener-supported show. If you like what you hear, and you'd like to support production costs for more of Public Health is Dead, visit publichealthisdead.com!

Canada could lose its measles elimination status, which says a lot about the state of public health overall. Media coverage leaves much to be desired when it comes to informing the public about measles vaccines, airborne transmission, and social determinants of health, especially with a new school year beginning. Daniella & MJ chew over the hits, swings, and misses in a recent measles episode of CBC Frontburner ("Canada has a measles problem", May 16, 2025). 
Resources
How Mennonite women are building bridges between public health and community amid measles outbreak
(As referenced in the episode, here [from 22:22] is Dr. Bonnie Henry's November 2024 presser on H5N1 saying she finds the word "pandemic" triggering in her role as a public health leader.)
CREDITS
Public Health Media Club is a crossover public health show hosted by Daniella (of Public Health is Dead) and MJ (of Everything is Public Health). All audio editing by MJ.
To PHID listeners: ~Thanks for listening to this late summer crossover! Public Health is Dead post-summer production will be ramping up again. The horrors persist but so do we~

This is an independent, listener-supported show. If you like what you hear, and you'd like to support production costs for more of Public Health is Dead, visit publichealthisdead.com!