What does it take to make health care work for everyone? In this episode of Policy Punchline, former CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure joins Princeton students Alice McCarthy ’27 and Aiko Offner ’27 to reflect on her years leading the agency that runs Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and HealthCare.gov for more than 160 million Americans.
We explore how the U.S. achieved historic coverage gains under the Affordable Care Act and why maintaining that progress has proved so fragile. Brooks-LaSure reflects on the constant tension between innovation and cost control, the bureaucratic frictions that still leave millions without care, and the deeper question of who should bear responsibility for the social conditions that shape health. She offers a frank look at the limits of reform in a system constrained by politics, paperwork, and inequity, before turning to America’s maternal health crisis and her drive to embed equity at the core of CMS policy amid efforts to roll back years of progress.
This interview, conducted by Princeton students Alice McCarthy ’27 and Aiko Offner ’27, is part of the Policy Punchline podcast series. Supported by Princeton’s Julius Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance, the series aims to foster dialogue on critical public-policy issues, connecting listeners with leading experts from around the world.
Join us as Chiquita Brooks-LaSure offers a rare inside look at how America’s health-care system really works and what it would take to make it fairer, simpler, and more humane.
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What does it take to make health care work for everyone? In this episode of Policy Punchline, former CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure joins Princeton students Alice McCarthy ’27 and Aiko Offner ’27 to reflect on her years leading the agency that runs Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and HealthCare.gov for more than 160 million Americans.
We explore how the U.S. achieved historic coverage gains under the Affordable Care Act and why maintaining that progress has proved so fragile. Brooks-LaSure reflects on the constant tension between innovation and cost control, the bureaucratic frictions that still leave millions without care, and the deeper question of who should bear responsibility for the social conditions that shape health. She offers a frank look at the limits of reform in a system constrained by politics, paperwork, and inequity, before turning to America’s maternal health crisis and her drive to embed equity at the core of CMS policy amid efforts to roll back years of progress.
This interview, conducted by Princeton students Alice McCarthy ’27 and Aiko Offner ’27, is part of the Policy Punchline podcast series. Supported by Princeton’s Julius Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance, the series aims to foster dialogue on critical public-policy issues, connecting listeners with leading experts from around the world.
Join us as Chiquita Brooks-LaSure offers a rare inside look at how America’s health-care system really works and what it would take to make it fairer, simpler, and more humane.
Tiffany Vora: Science Communication in the Post-COVID Era
Policy Punchline
56 minutes 36 seconds
3 years ago
Tiffany Vora: Science Communication in the Post-COVID Era
(Disclaimer: This episode was originally recorded in July 2021.)
Dr. Tiffany Vora is an educator, researcher, and entrepreneur who is the chair of medicine and digital biology at Singularity University. She does a huge amount of work in science communication, advising startup founders, and science writing. She studied molecular biology and chemistry at NYU and a PhD from Princeton.
In “Science Communication in the Post-COVID era”, we talk about the pace of change in science communication. Given the timing of the interview, we also discuss in detail how the pandemic and being in the virtual/digital space has changed science communication. Dr. Vora believes that many brilliant scientific minds haven’t been trained in science communication, and that there is potential for so much progress in science communication if the gap between knowledge creation and distribution is bridged. Similarly, there is a lot of misinformation out there, and deciding which sources to trustworthy and getting the public to trust them can also be a challenge, especially when a lot of science has inherent uncertainty.
On the education front, Dr. Vora has worked a lot with women and people of color. She believes that in every child there is a scientist and engineer, building and breaking things, asking questions, that the traditional educational system beats out of them and extinguishes their spark of curiosity. Finding a balance between ‘experiential learning’, which Dr. Vora believes can happen in a classroom, too, has a fundamentally different purpose than, say, watching Khan Academy for ‘knowledge acquisition’. Coming out of the pandemic, she hopes many hybrid models will start to embrace both types of learning. And it’s not as if scientific learning for children is gated by high barriers to entry like cost. She gives an example of a cheap microscope or Google Cardboard. While they might not be cutting-edge technology, they work and fulfill their role of instilling a sense of curiosity and excitement.
We hope you enjoy listening to an episode on how similarities like those found between Minecraft and CAD are the ones we need to take the most advantage of to inspire future generations of scientists and engineers, and the future of science communication in the post-pandemic era.
Policy Punchline
What does it take to make health care work for everyone? In this episode of Policy Punchline, former CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure joins Princeton students Alice McCarthy ’27 and Aiko Offner ’27 to reflect on her years leading the agency that runs Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and HealthCare.gov for more than 160 million Americans.
We explore how the U.S. achieved historic coverage gains under the Affordable Care Act and why maintaining that progress has proved so fragile. Brooks-LaSure reflects on the constant tension between innovation and cost control, the bureaucratic frictions that still leave millions without care, and the deeper question of who should bear responsibility for the social conditions that shape health. She offers a frank look at the limits of reform in a system constrained by politics, paperwork, and inequity, before turning to America’s maternal health crisis and her drive to embed equity at the core of CMS policy amid efforts to roll back years of progress.
This interview, conducted by Princeton students Alice McCarthy ’27 and Aiko Offner ’27, is part of the Policy Punchline podcast series. Supported by Princeton’s Julius Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance, the series aims to foster dialogue on critical public-policy issues, connecting listeners with leading experts from around the world.
Join us as Chiquita Brooks-LaSure offers a rare inside look at how America’s health-care system really works and what it would take to make it fairer, simpler, and more humane.
