This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Donald Rucker, National Coordinator for Health IT at the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Rucker discusses recently announced rules requiring health providers and hospitals to make electronic health records available to consumers upon request to their smart phones, at no cost them, to give patients more control of their health information.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Jitin Asnaani, Executive Director of the CommonWell Health Alliance which is on a mission to make a nationwide health data exchange a reality. They discuss the national network of payer, provider and EHR vendors joining the Alliance to advance interoperability across multiple electronic health record platforms with health data flowing seamlessly from patient to providers.

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Linda Rosenberg, CEO of the National Council for Behavioral Health on their recent report done with the Cohen Veterans Network confirming that America's mental health crisis is a result of lack of access to care. She discusses the need to remove barriers to behavioral care, the need to embed behavioral health in primary care and for much better mental health and addiction training for providers and social workers.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter revisit their conversation with Dr. Maria Neira, Director of Public Health and the Environment at the World Health Organization who addresses the rising threat to human health from climate change and pollution - now the 4th leading cause of death worldwide. She discusses global strategies that are required to reduce the harm being done to populations around the world, especially those most vulnerable, in the wake of advancing climate change and unmitigated pollution.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with David Pogue, long-time personal tech critic and founder of Yahoo Tech. He discusses the great promise in the growth of consumer technology innovations - Apple Watch, Fitbit and voice recognition platforms like Alexa - to transform health care by informing and empowering consumers and providers.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. John Halamka, Chief Information Officer for Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston where he has launched a new endeavor: the Health Technology Exploration Center. The lab is an incubator for studying emerging technologies in health care such as telemedicine, genomics, blockchain, wearables and smart speakers like Alexa that could potentially improve clinical workflow, data sharing and outcomes.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dan Hawkins, Sr. VP for Public Policy and Research at the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), which supports the thousands of chc's providing care for 27 million underserved Americans. They discuss the care model that embeds behavioral and dental care within primary care, the growing reliance on Nurse Practitioners as front line clinicians, and the training, innovation and quality care the nation's health centers provide.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Samuel H. Sternberg, assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University and renowned expert on CRISPER-Cas9 gene editing technology. Dr. Sternberg co-authored "A Crack in Creation" with CRISPR co-creator Jennifer Doudna, and talks about the limitless potential of this genetic engineering tool to transform how we treat and prevent disease in the future.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Colleen Kraft, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has vocally opposed the separation of immigrant families at the border. She talks about the long term impact of toxic stress in childhood, recommended breastfeeding and vaccination protocols, harm from gun violence, and too much screen time for kids.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Sachin Jain, CEO of CareMore Health, a coordinated and integrated health care system focused on high-use Medicare and Medicaid patients. Dr. Jain discusses CareMore's team-based approach to chronic disease management deploying ride-sharing and meal delivery services, loneliness prevention and patient support across the care continuum.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Eric Topol, renowned cardiologist, geneticist, digital health advocate, and founder of the Scripps Translational Science Institute. They discuss his work developing technologies for the "All of Us" precision medicine campaign at NIH, and the efforts still needed to support true precision medicine initiatives in American health care.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Pulitzer Prize winning Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, author of "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup," a riveting account of the scandal he uncovered at Theranos, a health tech startup that promised to revolutionize diagnostic testing. Mr. Carreyrou uncovered company founder Elizabeth Holmes' widespread deception that duped high level investors and put patients' lives at risk.

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Ashish Jha, Associate Dean for Research Translation and Global Strategy at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. They discuss his recent report analyzing American health care costs compared to 10 other industrialized nations pointing to lack a of data and price transparency as drivers, suggesting that a combination of public policy and private innovations will lead to an "American solution" to the cost problem.

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Charles Alessi, Senior Advisor for Dementia Prevention at Public Health England, the UK's equivalent of the CDC. Dr. Alessi talks about the prevention strategies being deployed across the UK to delay the onset of dementia, the lack of barriers to primary care services, and their recently announced Minister of Loneliness to confront this chronic health issue.

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Rebekah Gee, Louisiana Health Secretary on the state's improved storm preparedness plans based on lessons learned from the devastation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. She talks about the robust state-wide electronic health record system created after the storm including a statewide data base of vulnerable populations for better evacuation strategies, what they've shared with other states facing weather disasters, and how expanded Medicaid has dramatically improved access to primary and preventive care in Louisiana, yielding better health outcomes.

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with two community health center directors, Naomi Fuchs of Santa Rosa Health in Northern California, and Gloria Amador of Salud Integral en la Montana in Puerto Rico, who both experienced severe devastation in the wake of massive hurricanes in the Caribbean and wild fires in Northern California. They both share their experiences of continuing to deliver care to their patient populations in spite of harrowing conditions and massive destruction, and how they hope to rebuild.

This week, Hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Raj Chetty, PhD, MacArthur Fellow and Professor of Public Economics at Stanford University, who's much-lauded research focuses on the impact of zip code on health and economic outcomes. Dr Chetty is lead author on a recent study confirming the widening gap in life expectancy between the poor and the wealthy.