In this episode, Dr. Joneigh Khaldun sits down with Ramsey Alwin, President and CEO of the National Council on Aging (NCOA), for a conversation about ways that public health practitioners can advance healthy aging on a population level. Together, they discuss key issues facing the aging population and explore meaningful opportunities for the public health sector to support seniors. Alwin also shares initiatives and programs that NCOA offers, such as fall prevention and chronic disease self-management and spotlights free tools and community supports that enable older adults to remain healthy and independent as they age.

In this episode, Dr. Joneigh Khaldun sits down with Dr. Megan Ranney, Dean of the Yale School of Public Health and Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, for a conversation about bridging clinical medicine and public health. Dr. Ranney reflects on how her Peace Corps experience in Côte d'Ivoire during the HIV epidemic shaped her commitment to strengthening systems, expanding access, and closing gaps between health care and public health. They discuss why the divide between these fields persists, how fragmented data slows progress, and what it will take to build more integrated and sustainable models of care, as well as the realities of practicing medicine today including burnout, limited resources, and growing social needs. The conversation covers what digital health has achieved, where it has fallen short, and why long-term payment models are needed to ensure technology supports human connection. Dr. Ranney also shares pandemic lessons, the importance of rebuilding trust through listening, her work at Yale to democratize health data with tools like PopHIVE, information about Yale's MPH program, and the university's "Leaders in Public Health" speaker series.

In this episode, Dr. Joneigh S. Khaldun speaks with Dr. Alen Voskanian, a physician-leader whose career spans HIV care, palliative medicine, operations leadership, and system transformation. Dr. Voskanian shares the personal experiences that shaped why he entered health care and why he now focuses on fixing what he calls the "pebbles in the shoe": workflow frictions, broken processes, and system barriers that drain joy from clinicians, public health professionals, and patients alike.

Together, they explore the global lessons he's learned from health systems in Japan, India, Spain, and South Korea; the connections between built environments, isolation, and chronic disease; and why high-functioning operations and humanity must coexist.

Dr. Voskanian also reveals his framework for reclaiming joy—heart, head, and body—and offers practical guidance for future physicians, public health leaders, and anyone working to strengthen the health of their communities.