A Public Health Perspective on COVID-19 with Megan Ranney
Air Dates: September 28-October 4, 2020
COVID-19 has put America’s top doctors on the frontlines of a battle to save lives. Dr. Megan Ranney spends her days at the front, working in an urban emergency room where her training in public health and emergency medicine give her unique insights about the pandemic and the nation’s response.
Ranney is a practicing emergency physician and researcher, focusing on the intersection between digital health, violence prevention, and public health. She is the current Warren Alpert Endowed Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Rhode Island Hospital/Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Ranney is also the founding Director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health and Chief Research Officer for the American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine, the country’s only non-profit committed to using the public health approach to reduce firearm injury. She a founding partner of GetUsPPE.org, dedicated to matching donors to health systems in need of protective equipment. She completed her internship and residency in Emergency Medicine, Master of Public Health, and fellowship in Injury Prevention Research at Brown University.
On this episode of “Story in the Public Square,” Ranney describes the virtual forums where she and other doctors shared their experiences and best-practices for treating COVID-19 in the early weeks of the pandemic. She says, “[COVID-19] is utterly different from any other illness that we’ve seen, and it is disorienting to be trying to practice and to present our patients with decisions, to present families with guidance when we’re still lacking so much of that basic medical evidence.”
“Story in the Public Square” broadcasts each week on public television stations across the United States. A full listing of the national television distribution is available at this link. 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. & 6:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 3:30 a.m. & 11:30 p.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a partnership between the Pell Center and The Providence Journal. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.