Health Policy (Audio)

Privacy-preserving computation can help hospitals and researchers use sensitive health data without exposing it. Farinaz Koushanfar, Ph.D., UC San Diego, explains how secure computation and distributed learning make it possible to collaborate on medical data while protecting patient privacy. Koushanfar examines secure multi-party computation, zero-knowledge proofs, and federated and split learning, helping clarify how health systems can work together despite data silos, incompatibility, security threats, and re-identification risk. This work helps explain how medical AI can learn from private data more safely and points toward more secure, robust, and trustworthy healthcare systems. Series: "Exploring Ethics" [Health and Medicine] [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 41367]

As part of the 2025 Developmental Disabilities Conference, Amged Soliman from the National Council on Disability provides an update on health disparities. Series: "Developmental Disabilities Update" [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 40603]

As part of the 2024 Developmental Disabilities Conference, three leaders of the disability community - Max Barrows, Matteo Musso, and Elizabeth Grigsby - provide insights into the barriers faced by people with disabilities to access healthcare. They review programmatic, communication and physical barriers and offer their ideas for solutions. Series: "Developmental Disabilities Update" [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 39740]

UC Santa Cruz developed a computational tool known as UShER that enables real-time SARS-CoV-2 tracking and helps researchers identify new lineages of the virus. The easy-to-use tool and online server creates an evolutionary tree that helps scientists understand genomic mutations by creating new branches, showing the relationships between virus samples and the order in which mutations happened along various lineages as the virus evolves. Series: "UC Santa Cruz News" [Public Affairs] [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 39241]

Since the mid 1970s, California policy makers have attempted to address the ever-growing problem of homelessness and incarceration of people with serious mental illness. Despite these efforts, the numbers of people who are homeless and incarcerated with mental illness have reached unprecedented highs. In this program, Dr. Joel Braslow, professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and History at UCLA, lays out why this historically informed perspective is crucial to understanding why we have failed to solve the fundamental problems of caring for our most vulnerable citizens. This program is a presentation of UC Center Sacramentro. Series: "UC Center Sacramento" [Public Affairs] [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 38662]

What's California doing to address the issue of chronic homelessness? Some say nothing while others point to many efforts at the local and state levels. In this discussion, Dr. Margot Kushel, State Senator John Laird, and Dr. Toby Ewing explore the ways in which California is addressing the problem of the chronically unsheltered, what barriers remain, and how innovative solutions might restore some of the sheen to the state's golden reputation. Series: "UC Center Sacramento" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 38782]

The world has lived through 2+ years of the COVID-19 pandemic, heightening the awareness of the links between health and other aspects of life including education and the economy. Future pandemics are a real risk but there are a number of other threats to human health and well-being as well. These include climate change, the rise of obesity, inverted population pyramids, inter-state conflict, rising inequalities, antimicrobial resistance. Counterbalancing these threats are the opportunities that may come through the health sector and broader innovation. Using a comprehensive future health scenario framework, Christopher Murray, professor and chair of Health Metrics Sciences, University of Washington and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, explores the range of future trajectories that may unfold in the 21st century. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Health and Medicine] [Business] [Show ID: 38271]

Disability rights activist Judy Heumann has been fighting for inclusion for over six decades, in ways that transformed legal and societal understandings of equality. Her life-long experience has included co-founding the organization Disabled in Action, working on Capitol Hill to shape landmark disability rights laws, co-organizing the extraordinary protest and advocacy efforts that spurred the implementation of Section 504, and advising presidential administrations and the World Bank on disability issues. In this conversational program, Heumann focuses on those aspects of her journey that are most salient to the perils and possibilities of the present. Heumann sees in this moment a fragile and imperfect democracy, but one that is nonetheless worth investing in. She also sees deep structures of exclusion, vigorously defended but also vulnerable to political pressure and moral suasion. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Health and Medicine] [Humanities] [Show ID: 37730]

Marion Nestle, Ph.D., MPH, reflects on her late-in-life career as a world-renowned food politics expert, public health advocate, and a founder of the field of food studies after facing decades of low expectations. She discusses her new memoir, "Slow Cooked," that tells her personal story, including her rise from bench scientist to the pinnacles of academia, while overcoming the barriers and biases facing women of her generation and finding her life's purpose after age 50. Series: "Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies" [Health and Medicine] [Humanities] [Science] [Business] [Show ID: 38620]

The Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) began in 1991 sponsored by the World Bank and the World Health Organization to fill a critical gap in global health information. It has grown steadily to become an active collaboration of more than 8,000 scientists, researchers and policy-makers from 156 countries working together to quantify health at the national and subnational level. In this program, Christopher J.L. Murray, Professor and Chair of Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington and Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), discusses what we've learned over the last 30 years studying global health. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 38270]