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Show notes
Yale School of Public Health Dean Megan Ranney explains why it's important to frame firearm injury as a public health problem - and how it can help us move beyond political divides and create new opportunities for gun-violence prevention. Plus, surprising research on aging, what's on tap for the future of drinking water, and what happens when we start using artificial intelligence at work.
Beyond Blue is produced by Yale's Office of Public Affairs and Communications. Portions of the podcast are recorded at the Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning.
Transcript
Dan Corcoran: Dr. Megan Ranney's life changed almost two decades ago. It was a warm July night, and she was working as an attending physician at an ER in Rhode Island.
Megan Ranney: You always expect that there's going to be a fair amount of violence coming through the doors of the emergency department.
Dan Corcoran: And that night was no different.
Megan Ranney: And we got a call from EMS saying that they were coming in with a GSW or gunshot wound.
Dan Corcoran: Ranney had treated firearm injuries before, but when EMS got there, this patient wasn't responding. They couldn't save him.
Megan Ranney: Long story short, what turned out was that it was not a typical community violence gunshot wound, but rather a young who had man shot himself, with a family member's firearm in a moment of desperation and hopelessness.
Dan Corcoran: After the death, Ranney started thinking a lot about how they could have prevented that suicide by firearm. Specifically, she asked herself why the public health tools used to prevent cancer, heart attacks, or car crashes weren't being applied to firearm injury too.
Megan Ranney: That case changed the course of my life and was really the moment where I started dedicate an increasing proportion of my time to trying to understand and then address the American epidemic of firearm injury.
Dan Corcoran: I'm Dan Corcoran and this is Beyond Blue, stories worth sharing from Yale for you. Coming up, some things that might surprise you. What if getting older doesn't always mean slowing down? New research finds that many older adults actually get better with age. We'll look at what might be behind it. What's in your drinking water? Fluoride can help protect our teeth, but too much isn't good for us. So how much is too much? And AI might make you better at your job today, but could relying on it make you worse at your job tomorrow? But first, what happens when we look at firearm injury as a public health problem? Yale School of Public Health Dean Megan Ranney is here to talk about it.
In 2024, nearly 44 thousand people died from a firearm injury in the US. That's according to the CDC. This data is too often obscured by political arguments and partisan divides, but Ranney says we need to stop thinking about firearm injury as a political issue. Instead, we need to think about it as a public health issue.
Megan Ranney: What makes something a public health problem is the idea that it affects a community or a population.
Dan Corcoran: That means thinking about bigger systems or structures that can help or harm a population. But firearm injury hasn't really been thought of as a public health issue until very recently, and Ranney says there are a few reasons for that.
Megan Ranney: First, from 1996 until 2020, there was effectively no money appropriated by the federal government to spend on firearm injury as a health problem. In fact, in 1996, there was this thing called the Dickey amendment that was passed that explicitly, took money away from the CDC that it had been spending on firearm injury prevention.
Dan Corcoran: Another reason? Well, it challenges people to think outside their usual boxes.
Megan Ranney: My guess is you've never thought of it as a health or public health problem. You've thought of it as a divide between give everyone a gun or take everyone's gun away. You can see how the public health approach doesn't fit into those neat boxes. In fact, sidesteps them altogether, that kind of nuance is not always the thing, that gets elevated by the media or by the forces that be in today's society.
Dan Corcoran: In practice, this public health approach is really four basic steps.
Megan Ranney: First, you measure how common a health problem is.
Dan Corcoran: Second, Ranney says, you figure out what puts someone at risk of that health problem or what protects them from it. Third, you develop and evaluate potential interventions based on that information, so things you can do to reduce risk or improve protection.
Megan Ranney: The evaluation part is super important because you don't wanna develop something, spend a lot of time and money putting it in place, and then find out it doesn't work or worse does harm.
Dan Corcoran: Fourth, you scale up what works. And that four step approach has been used in public health over and over again, from decreasing car crash deaths to reducing deaths from HIV and AIDS. Ranney says it can be used to address firearm injury too.
Megan Ranney: And the beautiful thing about the public health approach is it creates a whole set of different types of interventions that go far beyond just legislation or policing. They're interventions that involve individuals, families, health care providers, and society at large, and really provides us with a path forward to get out of this epidemic in a way that doesn't force us to take sides.
Dan Corcoran: In fact, Ranney says this approach can actually help people find common ground around firearms.
Megan Ranney: By framing firearm injury as a health problem, it grounds it in something that we all care about. No one wants themselves, a family member, or a friend to be shot.
Dan Corcoran: On top of that, the public health approach is rooted in listening and collaboration.
Megan Ranney: So, we work with anyone regardless of who they are or where they come from to advance their health. That approach helps us to sidestep some of those political barriers to creating change.
Dan Corcoran: Thanks to Dean Megan Ranney for that conversation.
Now let's get even smarter with three quick stories worth sharing with someone you know. Let's start with something that might change how we think about getting older. Some people assume aging means a steady decline, but researchers say that might not be true. They followed Americans sixty five and older for more than a decade and found that nearly half actually improved in their physical abilities, their cognitive abilities, or both when compared with the participants' own scores from years earlier.
One finding really stood out. People with more positive views about aging were significantly more likely to improve than those who expected decline. So maybe healthy aging isn't just about our bodies, it's about our expectations too.
Okay. Now let's talk about your drinking water because it's been back in the spotlight. One big reason why is fluoride. It's a naturally occurring mineral that ends up in drinking water through natural processes like the weathering of rocks plus human activities like manufacturing. It's also deliberately added to public water supply systems in the US. But there's a new debate over whether fluoride should be added to drinking water. Yes. It can strengthen our bones and teeth enamel, that helps prevent cavities.
But too much fluoride can cause harm. Yale epidemiologist Nicole Deziel says
Nicole Deziel: Finding the right amount that's driven by the evidence where the benefits, outweigh the risks is kind of key.
Dan Corcoran: And finally, what actually happens when we start using artificial intelligence at work? Well, it turns out the answer depends on how much we already know. Researchers found that people who are less experienced at spotting mistakes are more likely to rely on AI. And the more they rely on it, the fewer opportunities they have to build their own skills. And that creates a cycle where they become even more dependent on AI over time. Researchers also found that people who use AI thoughtfully tend to get the best results.
For example, checking its work instead of simply accepting it. So, our ability to think critically may become even more valuable as AI becomes an even bigger of part everyday work.
That's it for Beyond Blue. I'm Dan Corcoran. Thanks for listening.
