A look ahead at the COVID-19 pandemic with Dr. Ashish Jha
Air Dates: September 13-19, 2021
When schools finished the academic year earlier this summer, they looked forward to the fall with the first cautious optimism anyone had felt in years. But Dr. Ashish Jha has offered level-headed wisdom that the pandemic simply is not over.
Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH, is a physician, health policy researcher, and the Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. Before joining Brown, he was the K.T. Li Professor of Global Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. An internationally respected and consulted pandemic expert, Jha strongly believes that communication with the public is an essential part of public health, and never more important than during a public-health emergency like COVID-19. He appears regularly on national news network shows, is active on social media, and is the authoritative voice on the 鈥淐OVID: What Comes Next鈥 podcast, available from The Providence Journal and the USA TODAY Network. In addition to his duties at Brown, maintains a clinical practice at the Providence VA Medical Center.
On this episode of 鈥淪tory in the Public Square,鈥 Jha discusses the Delta variant of the coronavirus, the uptick in vaccination rates in high-transmission areas, breakthrough coronavirus infections among vaccinated individuals, and the durability of the COVID-19 vaccines available today.
鈥Story in the Public Square鈥 continues to broadcast each week on public television stations across the United States. In Rhode Island and southeastern New England, the show is broadcast on Rhode Island PBS on Sundays at 11 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m., 4:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. ET, and Sundays at 2:30 p.m., 10:30 p.m. and 2:30 a.m. ET on SiriusXM鈥檚 popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. 鈥淪tory in the Public Square鈥 is a partnership between the Pell Center and The Providence Journal. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.