UCSF/UC Law SF Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy Launches New Podcast on Health Inequity

The podcast Contraindicated is now available on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Stitcher.

A new podcast launched by UC Law SF looks at issues of health inequity – from the Britney Spears conservatorship to trauma at the border, to how implicit bias can affect mortality in Black mothers.

The limited-series podcast, called “Contraindicated,” has just launched and is a project of the UCSF/UC Law SF Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy. The Consortium, founded in 2008, brings together legal and health experts from UCSF, UC Law SF, and the community to study and address cutting-edge health equity issues of the day, including the school-to-prison pipeline and health care access.

The podcast is co-hosted by Sarah Hooper, Executive Director of the Consortium and Lecturer in Law at UC Law SF and Areca Smit, the Director of Communications for the California Preterm Birth Initiatives at UCSF, and features local and national experts in health, law, and policy.

Hooper said, “We’ve known about the existence of health inequities for a very long time, but the COVID pandemic and racial justice uprisings have raised them to the public consciousness. This is an important time to expand awareness of the fact that law and policy is a key driver of these inequities.”

She added, “The podcast shares the negative ways in which law and policy in the United States has made us sicker than peer nations. The good news is that poor health is not inevitable, and we have the power to change course.”

Learn more about the podcast here. Listen to the podcast here.