Health Wanted: Emory University, WABE Launch Fun Public Health Radio Show
Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health is partnering with WABE—Atlanta’s original, independent, non-profit source for news and the market’s home for NPR and PBS content—to present a fun, fresh, and myth-busting alternative to the critical health discussions impacting communities across the state, nation, and globe.
At 1 p.m. every Friday, host Laurel Bristow—a research scientist and infectious disease expert leading social media science communication at Rollins—will deliver the week’s essential public health headlines and demystify the science behind trending topics during the new hour-long radio show and podcast, Health Wanted.
—Listen to the first episode here.
Bristow has more than a decade of experience in infectious disease research, including roles at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and Emory's Hope Clinic Vaccine Center. Her combination of candor, infectious disease expertise, and clear explanations helped her become a trusted social media science influencer with nearly 400,000 followers. This science communication prowess led to Bristow being interviewed by a host of national media including NPR, Mother Jones, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Health Wanted provides Bristow an opportunity to dig even deeper into a wide range of complex health topics—from Ozempic and the ozone to epidemics and extreme heat—through providing easy-to-digest and scientifically accurate information, as well as interviewing experts and answering listener questions.
“Beyond being a safe space for trustworthy facts, Health Wanted will also be entertaining, myth-busting common questions and conspiracy theories,” Bristow says. “We aspire to be a beacon of sanity, humor, and vital scientific truth, helping listeners navigate through the noise with clarity and confidence.”
Scotty Crowe, WABE's senior vice president of audio, said Health Wanted provides the station an exciting opportunity to partner with Bristow and a city icon like Emory University.
"There is wonderful alignment with the Rollins School of Public Health’s vision and our own mission to provide vital information to the public by informing, inspiring, reflecting, and empowering our community,” Crowe says. “We are committed to ‘Amplifying Atlanta’ and are thankful that this show will bring a diverse mix of voices across public health to share essential and accessible information from our city that will resonate across the region and nation."
Health Wanted premiered Aug. 2 with the episode “Mosquitoes: The Bane of Summer and Public Health” featuring a discussion of mosquito risks and interventions with Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, PhD, the Winship Distinguished Professor in Environmental Sciences at Emory’s College of Arts and Sciences.
New episodes will air every Friday at 1 p.m. WABE 90.1 FM, WABE.org, the WABE app. Audiences can also experience Health Wanted on demand via the WABE/NPR Podcast Network on their favorite podcast platforms or as a video podcast on WABE's YouTube TV channel.
Upcoming episodes of Health Wanted include:
- Extreme Heat: A Summer Review
- Back to School: The State of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases
- An Ode to Sewers: How the Creation of Sewer Systems is One of the Best Possible Inventions for Public Health
- People Sign Up for This? How (and Why) We Do Clinical Trials
