The CDC issued six health alerts in all of 2025, down from dozens in a normal year (whatever that means anymore).

Measles, a disease we basically eliminated 26 years ago, is closing in on 1000 cases, with children hospitalized for brain swelling. And the people now running our top health agencies are the same people who spent years questioning the science those agencies existed to defend.

But the good news is people are building new things. States are forming their own health alliances. Scientists are organizing to fight misinformation where it lives. And one epidemiologist in Texas turned a six-week email experiment in March, 2020 into one of the most trusted public health resources on the planet.

So what can I do about the collapse of trusted public health communication?

Today's guest is Dr. Katelyn Jetelina.

Katelyn is an epidemiologist, a mom, a wife, a data scientist, and the founder of the incredibly popular and free Your Local Epidemiologist newsletter.

She started it from her kitchen table, and it now reaches something like 310,000 subscribers in 130 plus countries. She's one of the Time 100 most influential people in health, former advisor to the White House and the CDC, and she now leads Project Stethoscope as well.

We talk about how Katelyn built YLE, why the old model of top down public health communication was always broken and is now definitely broken, and what Project Stethoscope and Phoenix are actually doing about it.

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INI Book Club:

All The Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer
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