Session: Health Humanities and Education Flash Session
God Talk and Public Health? A brief inventory of public health podcast and the gaps that remain.
Friday, October 13, 2023
5:00 PM – 6:15 PM ET
Location: Waterview AB (Lobby Level)
Interest in the public health field has skyrocketed in the wave of the Fauci effect during the COVID-19 pandemic. As public health experts work more intentionally to bring scientific research into public facing spaces, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of podcasts addressing a range of public health topics. At the same time, there has been growing awareness of the importance of religious commitments and communities for public health issues ranging from vaccines to reproductive rights. However, the top 5 public health podcasts targeting a general public largely avoid the discussion of religion. This presentation will present a brief analysis of the episodes found in the top 5 most popular “Public Health” related podcasts found on Spotify and give an account of the few instances that religion is recognized as an important social determinant for public health outcomes. Religious commitments and communities are a form of meaning making and ethics for many yet there continues to be gaps in our contemporary public health discourse that needs to be addressed. This flash presentation hopes to draw attention to the lack of conversation at the intersection of public health and religion while argue for the inclusion of more scholarship around religion in public health podcasts.