Every four years someone says, “This is the most important election ever.” But from the top of the ballot to the bottom, it’s hard to doubt that Election Day 2024 will have a long-term impact.
As such, the first five episodes of the Fall 2024 season of “First Opinion Podcast” will tackle campaigns and their engagement with health, medicine, and life sciences. We will talk with experts about issues that have come up in the election campaign, what topics candidates should focus on, and what the second Trump administration and the first Harris administration will do. Perhaps think of this as “First Opinion Podcast getting off the ground.” Except that I’m sitting at home in the battleground state of Pennsylvania dodging campaign texts.
In our debut episode, we spoke with Kathleen Kelly Doty, vice president of campaigns and civic engagement at Inseparable, a policy-focused mental health advocacy organization. “Mental health has a long history as a bipartisan issue,” she says. “If you read Vice President Harris’ speech, he says well that health doesn’t start from the head down.”Furthermore, while the Trump administration focused on combating opioids, the Trump and Biden administrations Prevention has been a priority.
“Essentially, we’re hopeful,” Doty said. “But tone-wise, that doesn’t help much. I think they’re still [using] Really derogatory language that happens during election campaigns. And that’s pretty regressive at this point. ”
We hear about what questions Mr. Doty wants debate hosts to ask, about state and local elections, the 988 suicide and crisis hotline, new equality rules, and about himself during a difficult campaign. We talked about taking care of our mental health. “I don’t disagree that mental health should be more important, but…it’s hard to actually get things done,” she told me.
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