The Ethics of Precision Medicine and Burned Agency with Paul Scherz and Travis Pickell

Veronica Villarreal earned her joint MHA/MBA at the University of Houston–Clear Lake, took her first job out of the program at DHR Health in the Rio Grande Valley, and worked her way up through revenue cycle and operations into the C-suite. She served as Chief Ambulatory Officer over a network of roughly 75 clinic locations and more than 30 specialty service lines. She then moved to UT Health Rio Grande Valley, where she is now Chief Operating Officer.Along the way, she wrote the book she wishes someone had handed her. C-Suite Bound: How Self-Discovery Leads to Ultimate Success became an Amazon bestseller and was featured in Forbes.In this episode, Veronica traces the actual route: why revenue cycle turned out to be an executive on-ramp rather than a detour, what an interim title really tests, what it takes to move from a private specialty network into an academic health system, and why she thinks comparison is the thing most likely to derail a talented person’s career.Flight Path is produced by the Department of Healthcare Administration at the University of Houston–Clear Lake, which has offered healthcare administration education since 1974 and is based in the Texas Medical Center.A University of Houston - Clear Lake MHA/MBA grad who climbed from revenue cycle to COO, and then wrote the roadmap for everyone behind her.GUEST BIOVeronica Villarreal, MHA/MBA, is Chief Operating Officer of UT Health Rio Grande Valley.At UT Health RGV, she previously served as Assistant Vice President of Operations, leading multi-site ambulatory operations.Before that, she was Chief Ambulatory Officer at DHR Health Clinics, overseeing approximately 75 clinic locations across more than 30 specialty and sub-specialty service lines.She began her career in ambulatory revenue cycle.She is the author of C-Suite Bound: How Self-Discovery Leads to Ultimate Success, an Amazon bestseller featured in Forbes.She holds a joint Master of Healthcare Administration and Master of Business Administration from the University of Houston–Clear Lake.LINKS FROM THIS EPISODEC-Suite Bound: How Self-Discovery Leads to Ultimate SuccessVeronica’s websiteVeronica on LinkedInUHCL alumni feature, “From quiet corners to big impact” Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mapping Medical Modernity: Urban Space and Public Health in Tokyo, 1868–1920 (U Pittsburgh Press, 2026) by Professor Susan L. Burns explores the history of medical modernization and public health in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tokyo, a city undergoing rapid transformation from the seat of power of the Tokugawa shoguns of the Edo period to the capital of a modern nation-state and its expanding empire in the Meiji period.  Tracing the development of institutions and policies designed to improve medical care and public health in a dense urban environment, Professor Burns examines tensions between the involved parties—including doctors and policymakers, police and civil officials, residents and those who governed them—and provides case studies focused on three of the city’s major challenges in public health: syphilis, cholera, and mental illness. Drawing upon a wide range of archival materials and contemporary accounts, Dr. Burns also employs geographic information system analysis in mapping the complicated relationships interlinking aspects of the urban environment, social life, public policy, and commercialized medical culture to demonstrate visually how policy decisions and medical capitalism gradually reshaped existing spatial arrangements in the city as well as the social relations that unfolded within them.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Elizabeth Roberts has experienced the suffering wrought by addiction: her sister’s destructive alcoholism and dependency on prescription drugs, her mother’s hoarding, and her own struggles with binge eating. As for so many of us, addiction brought about self-loathing, reflecting her individual failure to exercise self-control, to keep it together. But during her fieldwork studying chemical exposure in Mexico City, her sense of addiction got turned upside down. She witnessed her neighbors, both young and old, defiantly celebrate their compulsive dependencies on alcohol, drugs, and junk food instead of hiding them in shame. Roberts began to wonder if everything she thought she knew about addiction was wrong.In Praise of Addiction: Or How We Can Learn to Love Dependency in a Damaged World (Princeton UP, 2026) shares the unexpected journey that led Dr. Roberts to a new understanding of addiction. Taking lessons from her years in Mexico City as well as from addiction researchers, harm reduction activists, and scholars of religion, philosophy, and anthropology, Roberts pays close attention to the external forces that so often fuel the damage of addiction. As her neighbors in Mexico City suggest, the adverse health effects brought on by their dependencies on Coca-Cola, processed foods, drugs, and alcohol have more to do with the ongoing effects of the drug war and NAFTA than any personal failings. Taking up this ecological framework, Dr. Roberts draws a line between vice that isolates and addiction that connects, a distinction she movingly integrates into her own life and family, making a case for sharing in the pleasures—and suffering—of dependency.Provocative and deeply humane, In Praise of Addiction invites readers to cast aside the shame, self-hatred, and judgment associated with addiction and discover how dependency can serve as a binding force worthy of our most profound devotion.\This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Human Rights in Psychiatry: Prospects and Dilemmas of Abolishing Coercion in Mental Health Care (Springer, 2025), Professor Dirk Richter describes the ethical lines of conflict, shows why coercion can no longer be justified and analyzes the consequences and dilemmas of a possible abolition of coercive measures in psychiatric care. The use of coercion in mental health care is one of the most controversial topics in psychiatric nursing and psychiatry. The conflict line centers around the UN-Convention in the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD). Advocates of the CRPD are pushing for the complete abolition of coercion while opponents see central medical and legal aspects of care for people with mental health problems at risk. Clinicians in conventional psychiatry, including many mental health nurses, primarily justify these measures because of the assumed benefits of coercion-associated care and with the argument that many people affected are unable to make appropriate decisions for their own health in a crisis situation. This argument also applies to human rights, for example by basing coercive measures in the event of suicidality on the right to life. Three central topics are developed in the book. First, it is shown that psychiatric coercion can no longer be justified because the current practice of psychiatric care does not meet the ethico-legal requirements for the use of coercion. Second, a human rights-based approach of psychiatric care is outlined, which is fundamentally based on the will and preferences of people with mental health problems. Third, the consequences and dilemmas are indicated, e.g., the issue of how to deal with suicidality or dementia without the use of coercion. This book is aimed to receive a specific attention from the psychiatric nursing community. It is also relevant to lawyers, human rights practitioners, and mental health professionals more broadly. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this special installment of the University of Notre Dame Press's Books for Better Understanding, Paul Scherz, the Our Lady of Guadalupe Professor of Theology with the University of Notre Dame, and Travis Pickell, Assistant Professor at George Fox University, get together to discuss their books, The Ethics of Precision Medicine: The Problems of Prevention in Healthcare, and Burdened Agency: Christian Theology and End-of-Life Ethics, both available from the University of Notre Dame Press.You can purchase The Ethics of Precision Medicine hereYou can purchase Burdened Agency here Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Drawing on decades of experience in recovery advocacy, Keith Keller's new book, The Warm Hug: Substance Use and How to Fix the Failure of Treatment and Recovery in America (Infinite Recovery, 2026), takes a candid look at the challenges facing substance use treatment and recovery systems in America. More importantly, Keith offers practical insights and solutions aimed at improving outcomes for individuals, families, communities, and professionals alike. Recovery, Keith emphasizes, is a skill that anyone can learn.The book will resonate with those directly affected by substance use disorder, but its message extends beyond recovery circles. The Warm Hug is written for anyone interested in understanding the realities of addiction, the shortcomings of current treatment approaches, and the opportunities for meaningful change. Keith explores these topics with host Emily Dufton. Emily is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). Her new book, Addiction, Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs, was released in 2026. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As overdose deaths continue to mount and debates rage over harm reduction, drug policy, and homelessness, Hit Doctors: Care, Harm, and the Art of Survival (U California Press, 2026) offers a crucial on-the-ground perspective pointing to a humane future.Finding a vein is difficult. As veins collapse and scar over, it becomes almost impossible. For millions of Americans who inject drugs and can’t do it alone, the solution is to find someone who can. Enter the “hit doctor.” Though uncredentialed, hit doctors develop expertise through necessity, providing injection assistance and addressing needs that dominant medical systems exclude or criminalize. They share the same conditions as the people they serve: sleeping in encampments and alleys, living in cramped single-room-occupancy hotels, suffering from untreated illness and trauma, and grieving friends who keep dying. Sarah Brothers spent more than seven years observing and interviewing hit doctors and their clients across San Francisco. Hit Doctors is an intimate portrait of the daily lives, relationships, and ethical worlds of people managing extraordinary hardship at a pivotal moment, when fentanyl arrived and thousands began dying annually. Brothers’s long-term ethnography yields critical insights. People seeking help strongly prefer women hit doctors, perceived as more careful and less likely to turn violent. But even as their expertise is valued, hit doctors are targets for abuse, and they suffer as the people they care for decline and die. That is the cost of trying to keep each other alive when formal systems of support have failed.Brothers joins host Emily Dufton to discuss the years of work behind her new book, the people she studied and the relationships she built with them. Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). Her new book, Addiction, Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs, was released in 2026.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What drives someone to challenge the status quo to prevent disaster? In The Preventioneers: Diseases, Disasters, and the Discoveries That Changed Our World with Barry R Davis  (JHU Press, 2026), Barry R. Davis chronicles the work of bold individuals who recognized the warning signs of catastrophe and intervened before tragedy could strike. With stories that include fire, disease, climate change, and public health, Davis illuminates the efforts of those who confronted indifference, ignorance, and inertia to shift society's focus from reaction to prevention.Through real-world case studies and historical research, The Preventioneers introduces readers to a diverse cast of problem-solvers who identified threats, persuaded skeptics, and devised practical solutions. In colonial Boston, a young Benjamin Franklin witnessed one of the city's most devastating fires. Haunted by that memory, Franklin grew into a lifelong advocate for fire prevention. Ignaz Semmelweis and Sara Josephine Baker fought to raise awareness of and prevent child and maternal mortality. Richard Doll's work to establish the link between smoking and lung cancer revealed the danger of what many viewed as a harmless activity. These inspiring stories exemplify the central message of the book: Prevention is a powerful form of civic action. Their work underscores how principles of prevention transcend fields, whether addressing maternal mortality, auto safety, cancer, or climate change.Davis underscores that successful prevention requires more than knowledge; it also demands courage, strategy, and relentless advocacy. In doing so, The Preventioneers introduces a framework for thinking about how societies can act early, save lives, and build a healthier, more resilient future. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Silence is frequently considered negative or harmful in both everyday life – for example, when we are silenced – as well as in psychiatry, where poverty of speech is a symptom of depression and pressure of speech is a symptom of mania. In Silence in Mood Disorders: A Philosophical Investigation (Routledge, 2027),  Dan Degerman argues for the need to consider silence in mental disorders in a nuanced way that recognizes different forms of silence and different, including positive, ways silences of speech and inner speech can be experienced. The poverty of speech in depression may lead to the fetishizing of silence-breaking that can cause more distress to a patient who simply does not have anything they want to say, while the pressure of speech in mania may involve disruption in a multicomponent capacity to reliably initiate and maintain silence that is usually habitual and occasionally deliberate. Degerman, who is a research fellow  at the University of Bristol on the Epistemic Injustice in Health Care Project, provides an analysis of different types of silence, discusses first-person experiences of being silent in depression and mania, and points to ways in which philosophers and clinicians can enrich their understandings and practices involving silences.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the absence of adequate federal safeguards against pollution and toxic chemicals, state policies are the strongest tools available to create safe, sustainable environments. The good news is, around the country, red states and blue states are taking up the charge. In California, state agencies are partnering with disadvantaged communities to measure air quality, reduce pollution, and advance environmental justice. In Texas, a state law requires every school to cut down on the use of dangerous pesticides, helping to keep kids safe. In New York, a network of clinics trains medical professionals in occupational health and children’s environmental health, ensuring that patients receive excellent care and specialists are ready to advocate for protective policies. The success of these programs is not haphazard; instead, effective approaches share key elements, including state-university-industry partnerships, collaboration across government agencies, and strong environmental health education. In A Healthy Union: How States Can Lead on Environmental Health (Island Press, 2025), Susan Kaplan highlights examples of groundbreaking state environmental health policies, exploring what has worked, what needs improvement, and how other areas of the country can build on these advances. Further, she shows how public health advocates can push forward new protections, creating safer environments for the next generation. Ultimately, Kaplan argues, we need a coordinated federal and state response to environmental health threats. Until then, innovative policy solutions can go a long way to improve the nation’s wellbeing, one state at a time.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.