Podcast - The Recovery | Cochrane Sustainable Healthcare

Welcome to the Cochrane Sustainable Healthcare and the BMJ pop-up podcast series, “The Recovery – Voices of action towards sustainable healthcare.” In this podcast series, we will explore the many challenges facing the sustainability of healthcare and talk to extraordinary healthcare researchers, doctors, and activists from around the world, who are pushing for a shift towards a new paradigm to improve our health, well-being, and climate.

We will talk about everything from an evolutionary patient revolt, challenging professional norms in medical practice, and the widespread use of low-value care in low- and middle-Income countries, where the problem of waste is a great challenge to healthcare systems. These new emerging initiatives will be explored in our podcast episodes hosted by Dr. Ray Moynihan, an acclaimed journalist and health researcher based at Bond University in Australia and co-hosted with Dr. Fiona Godlee, a leading figure in medical publishing globally and the first female BMJ Editor-In-Chief.

We start off with an introduction to our podcast series from our Director Dr. Minna Johansson followed by 6 episodes. Listen in below or find us on the following podcast channels.

Explainer episode: Director Minna Johansson, Cochrane Sustainable Healthcare

What does sustainable healthcare mean?
Our Director, Dr. Minna Johansson talks about why a new focus on sustainability of health and healthcare is urgently needed – for patients, health systems, societies, and the planet.

Read Minna's interview about our Field here and the BMJ opinion piece about our podcast series on sustainable healthcare here.

Episode 1: Professor Rachelle Buchbinder, Monash University and Professor Ian Harris, New South Wales University

First, do no harm – The dangers of medical excess
In this episode, we talk to rheumatologist Rachelle Buchbinder and orthopaedic surgeon Ian Harris. Rachelle is also a Coordinating Editor for Cochrane Musculoskeletal and Cochrane Back and Neck. Both Ian and Rachelle are vocal advocates for evidence-based medicine - and fearlessly challenge professional norms and are creating new structures to wind back ineffective and dangerous care in medicine and surgery.

If you are on Twitter, you can follow Rachelle and Ian for updates on their work. They have also written an opinion piece in the BMJ to accompany this podcast, which can be found here.

Episode 2: Dr. Gillian Orrow, Growing Health Together

Community healthcare leads the way
In this interview, we talk with Dr. Gillian Orrow, a true example of real and radical action towards sustainable healthcare. Enabling physical activity, creating garden spaces, and improving access to fresh food, Gillian takes us through how a ‘community approach’ is being implemented in her medical practice to empower patients, improve equity, and ultimately enhance the greater community’s wellbeing and health in Surrey, England.

You can find out more about the Growing Health Together programme here and follow them on Twitter @GH_Together.

Read Gillian's accompanying opinion piece in the BMJ here.

Episode 3: Dr. Renee Salas, Harvard Medical School & Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Climate change, its impact and what we can do about it
Hope and inspiration flows through this conversation with Dr. Renee Salas, a Harvard-based emergency doctor who has testified to the US Congress about the urgency of addressing climate change, and who is transforming what it means to be a medical doctor.

Follow Renee on Twitter @ReneeNSalas_MD to keep up to date with her work and projects. Renee has also contributed with an opinion piece about the impact of climate change on healthcare to the BMJ.

Episode 4: Professor Victor Montori, Mayo Clinic

Why we need a patient revolution
In this episode, we will hear from Victor Montori, the Peruvian-born Mayo Clinic-based doctor who is inciting a non-violent revolution of careful and kind care, of unhurried conversations with patients, built on compassion and solidarity.

Follow @Vmontori on Twitter to keep up to date with his work on the patient revolution movement. You can also find his accompanying opinion piece on the need for a movement for common care.

Episode 5: Professor CS Pramesh, Tata Memorial Hospital

Addressing inequality in healthcare and raising the bar in cancer treatment
From ensuring fairer healthcare in India to addressing medical overuse, high-profile cancer specialist, CS Pramesh is challenging norms within cancer healthcare and practice. Pramesh is also helping to lead Choosing Wisely’s efforts to reduce wasteful care in low- and middle-income countries – with the aim to achieve more efficient, higher quality, and equitable care for all.

To find out more about Pramesh and his work, you can follow him on Twitter @cspramesh.

Episode 6: Dr. Leonore Tiefer

The risks of medicalizing sexuality
Our last interview in this podcast series is with Dr. Leonore Tiefer who has written widely about the medicalization of men’s and women’s sexuality. Her global campaigns have been successful in slowing the medicalization of common female sexual problems and is a model for community action against overdiagnosis and overtreatment. You can find more information about Leonore's work on the newviewcampaign.org website.

A little more about us…

Fiona Godlee is the Editor in Chief of the BMJ. She qualified as a doctor in 1985, trained as a general physician in Cambridge and London, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. She has written and lectured on a broad range of issues, including health and the environment, the ethics of academic publishing, evidence-based medicine, access to clinical trial data, research integrity, open access publishing, patient partnership, conflict of interest, and overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

She is honorary professor at the Netherlands School for Primary Care Research (CaRe), honorary fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners, a senior visiting fellow at the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge, honorary fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and a by-fellow of King’s College Cambridge.

She is on the advisory or executive boards of the Health Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute, Alltrials, The Peer Review Congress, The International Forum for Quality and Safety and Healthcare, Evidence Live, Preventing Overdiagnosis, The UK Health Alliance on Climate Change and the Climate and Health Council.

Ray Moynihan is co-creator and co-host of The Recovery. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Bond University’s Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, an NHMRC Early Career Fellow, and an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and author.

Ray spent plenty of time as a producer at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s, ABC’s, flagship investigative TV program Four Corners, as a reporter at the ABC TV’s 7:30 Report and as a presenter on Radio National. He’s written 4 books on the business of medicine, including Selling Sickness, which has been translated into 12 languages. He's also a former Harkness fellow at Harvard University, has been a columnist with The BMJ and the Medical Journal of Australia, and has also had original research published in The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, PLOS Medicine and The BMJ - to name a few. Regularly interviewed by media globally, and invited to speak around the world, Ray has a long-time interest in the evidence-informed approach and the work of Cochrane. He has also hosted the Cochrane Australia podcast The Recommended Dose, which has had more than 200 000 downloads.

The podcast team

The recovery is produced by Cochrane Sustainable Healthcare’s Director Minna Johansson and Field Coordinator Dina Muscat Meng. It has been edited in Byron Bay by audio aficionado Jan Muths and co-published with the BMJ.

Our graphics and assorted images are all thanks to Danielle Bailey at SEVENLEVELSLEFT.

For more details or to suggest a guest for the show, email us at dmm@cochrane.dk