Progress, Potential, and Possibilities Podcast / Show

Send us Fan MailDr. Ashwin Vasan, MD, PhD is the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene ( https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/about/about-doh/the-commissioner.page ).Dr. Vasan is a primary care physician, epidemiologist and public health expert with nearly 20 years of experience working to improve physical and mental health, social welfare and public policy for marginalized populations here in New York City, nationally and globally. Since 2014 he has served on the faculty at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and he continues to see patients as a primary care internist in the Division of General Medicine at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Irving Medical Center.Dr. Vasan most recently served as the President and CEO of Fountain House, a national nonprofit fighting to improve health, increase opportunity, and end social and economic isolation for people most impacted by mental illness. During his tenure, he grew the organization from a New York-based community mental health organization to a national network across eight markets, and grew the budget by nearly $20 million annually. He helped navigate the organization through COVID-19 by driving new telehealth and digital mental health programs while its physical locations closed, as well as developing new community-based outreach and accompaniment programs. Further, Dr. Vasan led the creation of a national policy office in Washington, D.C., working to change national mental health policy on the issues of crisis response services and funding for and quality of community-based mental health services.From 2016 to 2019, Dr. Vasan served as the founding Executive Director of the Health Access Equity Unit at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which focused on the intersection of clinical and social services for the care of people involved in the justice system and other vulnerable populations — a first-of-its-kind government program in the nation. Under his leadership the team launched the NYC Health Justice Network — an innovative partnership between community-based primary care providers, criminal legal system reentry organizations, the Health Department and the Fund for Public Health — to embed tech-enabled, peer community health workers to promote health and wellness of people reentering the community from incarceration, and their families. Early in his career, Dr. Vasan spent nearly a decade at the intersection of global health, HIV and primary care, working with the nonprofit Partners In Health (PIH) in Rwanda, Lesotho and Boston, and at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Uganda and Geneva. At PIH, he led efforts to improve integrated primary care and HIV care delivery using WHO Integrated Management guidelines and training. Dr. Vasan worked as a Technical Officer under Dr. Jim Yong Kim on the WHO/UNAIDS "3by5 Initiative" to expand HIV treatment access in the developing world, focusing on pricing and access to HIV medications, and on health worker training and education.Dr. Vasan received his BA in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles; his ScM in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health; his MD from the University of Michigan; and his PhD in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine-primary care at New York Presbyterian Hospital.#NewYorkCity #AshwinVasan #Commissioner #PublicHealth #GlobalHealth #HIV #SocialDeterminantsOfHealth #MentalHealth #PaulFarmer #ColumbiaUniversity #Aging #Healthspan #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #ViralPodcast  #STEM #Innovation #TechnSupport the show

Send us Fan MailThe Davos Alzheimer's Collaborative ( DAC - https://www.davosalzheimerscollaborative.org/ ) is a pioneering worldwide initiative to cure Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, seeking to mirror the success of global efforts against infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Covid, and Malaria. Absent effective action at scale around the world, by 2050, more than 150 million families and half a billion people will be personally impacted by Alzheimer’s, creating a social, financial, economic, and global security disaster of historic proportions. DAC was launched in Davos in 2021 by the World Economic Forum and the Global CEO Initiative on Alzheimer's Disease. Dr. Tim MacLeod is the Director of the Systems Preparedness workstream of the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative (DAC) where he executes on a mission to facilitate the implementation of national, regional, and global commitments to provide access to future innovations in treatment, diagnosis, and care. Drawing on his background in implementation science and innovation consulting, Dr. MacLeod guides the development, execution, and dissemination of multi-site, real-world implementation studies that generate evidence about the facilitators and barriers to adopting and scaling novel technology in the ADRD space. Before joining DAC, Dr. MacLeod led the award-winning human-centered design studio Bridgeable as Managing Director, where he worked with Fortune 500 companies in the financial service and health spaces on significant innovation initiatives. Dr. MacLeod holds a Ph.D. in community psychology and has published widely on health innovation and implementation science. His research with the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s At Home/Chez Soi team scaled the Housing First model from 5 pilot sites to over 20 cities nationally through multi-level policy change. Dr. Vaibhav Narayan is Executive Vice President at the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative (DAC), which he joined after 13+ years at Johnson & Johnson (J&J) where he was Vice President of Digital Health Innovation and Head of Data Science for Neuroscience R&D. At J&J, Dr.  Narayan created and led programs that utilized multi-modal data from ‘genomics to digital’ to understand disease subtypes and develop AI/ML driven digital health solutions for prevention, early detection, disease course monitoring and prediction in Alzheimer’s and neuropsychiatric diseases. Dr. Narayan also previously served as Head, Discovery Informatics, Eli Lilly and Company, and as Director, Computational Sciences, Celera Genomics.  He also currently serves a role as Chief Industry Officer, UK Mental Health Mission, University of Oxford.Dr. Narayan obtained a PhD from Yale University in computational biology and an Executive MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.Important Episode Links The Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative Healthcare System Preparedness(DAC-SP) Early Detection Blueprint - https://www.dacblueprint.org/Alzheimer's Association International Conference 2024 - https://aaic.alz.org/#Alzheimers #Dementia #Davos #Neurology #Neuroscience #HealthyAging #BrainHealth  #TimMacLeod  #VaibhavNarayan #DavosAlzheimersCollaborative #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #ViralPodcast  #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #ResearchSupport the show

Send us Fan MailDr. Andrea Choe, MD, Ph.D. is the CEO and Co-Founder of Holoclara ( https://www.holoclara.com/ ), a company focused on creating novel, safe, orally bioavailable worm-derived therapeutics with a focus on indications such as allergies and autoimmune disorders.While pursuing her doctorate at the California Institute of Technology, Dr. Choe uncovered a unique pheromone language shared by roundworms that may have evolved over hundreds of millions of years.Dr. Choe’s research, including her discovery of novel molecules derived from worms that blocked formation of disease in animal models of allergic and autoimmune disease, has led to advances in the fields of evolutionary biology and extreme biology. Her work has become the foundation of Holoclara’s technology and mission to pioneer a new class of therapeutics that can provide relief for millions of people living with chronic and debilitating diseases. Dr. Choe is a winner of the Emerging Women Founders in Biotech Award. She received her MD at USC Keck School of Medicine and her PhD at Caltech. #CaenorhabditisElegans #WormDerivedTherapeutics #AutoimmuneDisease #Allergies #Nematodes #AndreaChoe #Holoclara  #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #ViralPodcast  #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #ResearchSupport the show

Send us Fan MailDr. Abdulelah Alhawsawi, MD is the CEO of Novo Genomics ( https://novogenomics.sa/ ), a company located in KSA with a vision of being the regionally trusted, globally recognized biotech leader in the field of genomics & multiomics.Dr. Alhawsawi is the former Founding Director General of the Saudi Patient Safety Center ( SPSC - https://www.spsc.gov.sa/English/Pages/Home.aspx ), and MOH Advisor on Patient Safety and was involved in the core efforts establishing SPSC as a WHO Collaborating Center for patient safety policies and strategies (1 of only 5 WHOcc worldwide in this field). Dr. Alhawsawi is a consultant to several national and international quality and safety organizations and recently became a board member and Vice President of the Global Sepsis Alliance ( GSA - https://globalsepsisalliance.org/ ) as well as a Board member of Joint Commission Resources Board. He was part of the Expert Panel on the 3rd Global Patient Safety Challenge of the WHO and chaired the Organizing Committee for the 4th Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.Dr. Alhawsawi has helped introduce Patient Safety as a G20 priority in the 2020 G20 of Saudi Arabia. Currently, Dr. Alhawsawi is part of the WHO’s Global Patient Safety Action Plan Taskforce and is a Global Ambassador of the G20 Health & Development Partnership (  https://g20healthpartnership.com/dr-abdulelah-alhawsawi/ ).Dr. Alhawsawi holds a bachelor’s degree in Medicine from King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is Dual board certified in transplant and hepato-biliary surgery (American – Canadian), and he completed his training in Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York. He is a member of numerous medical societies and national quality committees.#AbdulelahAlhawsawi #PatientSafety #SaudiArabia #PreventableHarm #Sepsis #AntimicrobialResistance #HealthDiplomacy #ScienceDiplomacy #NovoGenomics #Genomics #Multiomics #PersonalizeMedicine #Agrigenomics #Premarital #Prenatal #NewbornCare#HereditaryDiseases #Oncology#GeneticsCounseling#ClinicalGeneticsSupport the show

Send us Fan MailDr. Vanúsia Nogueira, Ph.D. is Executive Director of The International Coffee Organization ( ICO - https://icocoffee.org/ ), an organization focused on strengthening the global coffee sector and promoting it’s sustainable expansion in a market-based environment for the benefit of all actors in the Global Coffee Value Chain.Dr. Nogueira comes from a family of coffee producers, and started her career at PwC Consulting, where she was a partner and worked for 15 years. She started working directly with coffee in 2002, always focusing on niche markets. Dr. Nogueira served as executive director at the Brazilian Specialty Coffee Association (BSCA) from 2007 through April 2022 and took over as Executive Director at the International Coffee Organization in May 2022. Dr. Nogueira holds a Ph.D. in Administration/Marketing from Rosario National University in Argentina, a BS in Systems Engineering and Administration from Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RJ) and MBAs and post-MBA focusing on Management, Marketing and Advanced Project Management from Fundação Getulio Vargas-Rio de Janeiro (FGV-RJ).The ICO was established in 1963 under the aegis of the United Nations and following the approval of the first International Coffee Agreement in 1962. And is the only intergovernmental organization for coffee, bringing together exporting and importing Governments. It currently represents 93% of world coffee production and 63% of world consumption.Important Link - The Center for Circular Economy in Coffee - https://www.circulareconomyincoffee.org/ #Coffee #InternationalCoffeeOrganization #CircularEconomy #ICO #Macroeconomics #CoffeeValueChain #VanusiaNogueira #MinasGerais #Brazil #Sustainability #Producers #Growers #UnitedNations #SpecialtyCoffee #Beverages #Tea #Cocoa #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #ViralPodcast  #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #ResearchSupport the show

Send us Fan MailDr. Oren Milstein, Ph.D. is CEO and Board Member of StemRad ( https://stemrad.com/ ), a world leader in the provision of personal radiation protection solutions and is the first company to offer life-saving protection from penetrating ionizing radiation and is making the lives of first responders, military personnel, utility personnel, medical teams, and astronauts safer without compromising mission objectives. Comprised of radiation biology experts, nuclear physicists, designers, and engineers and backed by dozens of prominent doctors and scientists including three Nobel Laureates, StemRad provides cutting-edge technology to protect these heroes on Earth and beyond.Dr. Milstein co-founded StemRad in 2011, shortly after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan. He has been leading R&D efforts ever since and was appointed CEO in February of 2016. Dr. Milstein has more than 12 years of Life Sciences research experience; formerly, Dr. Milstein was an European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) fellow at NYU’s Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, where his research provided basic insights into the mechanism of T cell activation. Later in his career, as an NIH fellow at the Scripps Research Institute, he discovered a novel mechanism for iron deficiency anemia. Subsequently, Dr. Milstein focused his research on radiation-induced autoimmune hemolytic anemia. Dr. Milstein received his Ph.D. degree from The Weizmann Institute of Science in 2008, where he developed novel strategies for successful bone marrow transplantation into irradiated subjects. He received his B.Sc., Magna Cum Laude, from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His research has resulted in several peer-reviewed publications and patents.#OrenMilstein #StemRad #PersonalRadiationProtection #GammaRadiation #Fukushima #Chernobyl #Israel #Nagasaki #Hiroshima #NuclearAccidents #USANCA #CBRN #WMD #DTRA #BoneMarrow #NuclearWar #Putin #Iran #KimJungUn #NASA #LockheedMartin #NationalGuardSupport the show

Send us Fan MailDr. Jeffrey DellaVolpe, MD is Medical Director of the Adult Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) Program at Methodist Hospital, San Antonio, Texas. He is also the Medical Director of the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit at Methodist Healthcare System and the Texas IPS Critical Care Service Line ( https://texasips.com/jeffrey-dellavolpe-md/ ). He also serves as chair of the Joint Society of Critical Care Medicine/Extracorporeal Life Support Organization Task Force and has created a platform for ECMO training and ECMO transport ( https://ecmotransports.com/about/ ).ECMO is a form of extracorporeal life support, providing prolonged cardiac and respiratory support to persons whose heart and lungs are unable to provide an adequate amount of oxygen, gas exchange or blood supply (perfusion) to sustain life.Dr. DellaVolpe served as a Flight Surgeon with the 27th Special Operations Wing where he deployed twice in support of Operation Enduring Freedom – Trans Sahara. After completing his fellowship, he was assigned to the San Antonio Military Medical Center where he served as a critical care physician and a member of the 59th Medical Wing Critical Care Air Transport Team and Acute Lung Rescue Team.Dr. DellaVolpe is originally from Newport, RI. After receiving his bachelor’s degree at Dartmouth College, he went on to attend medical school at Tulane University School of Medicine. He then completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Tulane Medical Center and his fellowship in Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.Dr. DellaVolpe wrote The ECMO Book, published Elsevier Health Sciences, in 2023 ( https://www.us.elsevierhealth.com/the-ecmo-book-9780443111983.html ).#JeffreyDellaVolpe #MedicalDirector #ExtracorporealMembraneOxygenation #ECMO #MethodistHospital #SanAntonio #Texas #Cardiovascular #IntensiveCare #CriticalCare #LifeSupport #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #IraPastor #Podcast #Podcaster #ViralPodcast  #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #ResearchSupport the show

Send us Fan MailDr. William Padula, PhD, MS, MSc, is Assistant Professor, Pharmaceutical & Health Economics and Fellow, Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, at the Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California ( https://healthpolicy.usc.edu/author/william-padula-phd/ ). His research explores the theoretical foundations of medical cost-effectiveness analysis, especially pertaining to issues around the value of vaccines, healthcare delivery and patient safety in hospitals for acquired conditions such as pressure injuries. He has received grant funding in the form of a Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the PhRMA Foundation Frontier Award. He has authored 100+ scientific papers, letters and book chapters that have been published in leading medical, economic, and health policy journals. Dr. Padula is also Co-Founder & Principal of Stage Analytics ( https://stageanalytics.com/william-v-padula-phd/ ), a consulting firm that is committed to providing the highest quality of scientific solutions to advance health care. Dr. Padula is an Associate Editor of Value in Health, and serves on the editorial boards of Applied Health Economics and Health Policy and Journal of Clinical Nursing. His work has been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Hill, Forbes and other media. He is a past recipient of the Award for Excellence in Health Economics and Outcomes Research from the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR); the Academy Health Outstanding Dissertation Award; and the Society for Advancement in Wound Care (SAWC) Young Investigator Award. He served as President for the U.S. National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel (NPIAP) from 2021-2022. He was also Commissioner for the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) Magnet® Recognition Program from 2016-2019. Dr. Padula has previously held appointments as an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, USA, and as a postdoctoral fellow at The University of Chicago. He was a visiting scholar at the University of York Centre for Health Economics in York, UK, the Oxford Institute for Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health in Oxford, UK, and the University of Technology Sydney in Sydney, Australia. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University, M.S. in Evaluative Clinical Science from Dartmouth College, M.S. in Data Analytics from University of Chicago, and Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Economics from University of Colorado. #HealthEconomics #USC #WoundCare #Pharmacy #PressureSores #Pharmaceuticals #WilliamPadula #HealthcareValue #Outcomes #WastefulSpending #Medicare #Medicaid #progresspotentialandpossibilities #IraPastor #podcast #podcaster #viralpodcast #STEM #Innovation #Technology #Science #Research Support the show

Send us Fan MailDr. Raj Yavatkar, Ph.D. is Chief Technology Officer at Juniper Networks ( https://www.juniper.net/us/en/the-feed/topics/raj-yavatkar.html ), where he has responsibility for charting the company’s technology strategy, leading and executing the company’s critical innovations and products for intelligent self-driving networks, security, Mobile Edge Cloud, network virtualization, packet-optical integration, and hybrid cloud. A technology and products pioneer throughout his career, Dr. Yavatkar has envisioned how emerging technologies can be applied to creatively solve enterprise and business problems ahead of competitors to help establish new product lines. Before joining Juniper, Dr. Yavatkar was at Google (GCP), where he led a large team of engineers to deliver cloud networking infrastructure and products for Google Cloud customers. Prior to that at VMware, he ideated a new product concept to address the private/hybrid cloud markets by defining VMware Cloud Foundation—an easy way to deploy and manage virtual clouds—leading a large product team to successfully deliver product to market. He started his career at Intel, rising to the position of Intel Fellow, a position he held for 10 years. During his various leadership roles there, Dr. Yavatkar was responsible for driving new product and R&D initiatives in many areas of software. He brings a wealth of experience in emerging technologies. He has been awarded more than 45 patents, published over 60 research papers, authored 5 Internet standards, and co-authored a book on internet quality of service. He is an IEEE Fellow and holds a PhD in Computer Science from Purdue University. Support the show

Send us Fan MailCary Claiborne is CEO of Adial Pharmaceuticals ( https://www.adial.com/ ), a clinical-stage biopharma company focused on developing therapies for the treatment of addiction and related diseases, specifically Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). In the U.S. alone, an estimated 35 million people suffer from AUD, resulting in significant health, social and financial costs. Current treatment options present significant barriers to patient adoption, including abstinence and side effects, which can lead to social stigmatization.Mr. Claiborne has over three decades of experience in leadership roles with clinical and commercial stage, publicly traded biopharmaceutical companies. Most recently, Mr. Claiborne served as Chief Financial Officer and director of Indivior PLC, a publicly traded specialty pharmaceutical company developing medicines to treat addiction and serious mental illnesses. He led Indivior’s spin-off from its then parent company, Reckitt Benckiser, to become an independent, publicly traded company. Prior to joining Indivior, Mr. Claiborne served as the CFO of Sucampo Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a global biopharmaceutical company, which was later sold to Mallinckrodt. Before joining Sucampo, Mr. Claiborne served as CFO and Corporate Secretary of Osiris Therapeutics, Inc. during the company’s initial public offering.Mr. Claiborne currently sits on the boards of NeuroSense Therapeutics, a clinical-stage drug development company that is advancing a treatment for people living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and CytRx Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing new cancer therapeutics. Mr. Claiborne graduated from Rutgers University with a B.A. in Business Administration and earned his M.B.A from Villanova University and was a National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Governance Fellow.Support the show