“A New Era of Vaccinology”: Dr. Paul Offit on mRNA Technology’s role in Vaccine Development

Dr. Paul Offit

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M oderator : Welcome to Conversations on Health Care with Mark Masselli and
Margaret Flinter, a show where we speak to the top thought leaders
in health innovation, health policy, care delivery, and the great minds
who are shaping the hea lthcare of t he future.

This week Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Paul Offit, renowned
vaccine expert and member of the FDA’s COVID - 19 Vaccine Advisory
Panel . He talks about the dramatic impact of vaccine deployment in
the U.S. bringing down cases significantly. He al so talks about the
mRNA Science, decades in the making a nd the statistical im possibility
that the technology will “alter your DNA. ”

FactCheck.org ’s Lori Robertson checks in , Managing Editor looks at
misstatements spoken about health policy spoken in the pu blic
domain, separating the fake from the facts . And we end with a bright
idea that's improving health and well - being in everyday lives.

If you have comments, please e - mail us at [email protected] or find
us on Fac ebook , Twitter , or wherever you listen to podcast s . And you
can also hear us by asking Alexa to play the program. Now stay tuned
for our interview with Dr. Paul Offit here on Conversations on Health
Care.

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Mark Masselli: We’re speaking today with Dr . Paul Offit, Director of the Vaccine
Education Center, and Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of
Infectious Disease at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He is a
member of the FDA’s Vaccine Advisory Committee on COVID - 19 and
of the National Ins titute of Health ’s working group on vaccines.

Margaret Flinter: Dr. Offit is a founding advisory board member of the Autism Science
Foundation and the Foundation for Vaccine Research. And he is the
editor of the publication, Vaccines. Dr. Offit, we really want to
welcome you back to Conversations on Health Care, today.

Dr. Paul Offit: Thank you , h appy to be here.

Mark Masselli: Yeah. You know the G7 Nations meeting President Biden announced
that he was donating 500 million doses of the vaccine to developing
nations. But we also learned that our death total in 2021 eclipse d
2020 and yet here in the United States I think people feel, we've
turn ed the corner. What say you about where we stand on the
trajectory of the global pandemic?

Dr. Paul Offit: Well, on th e global pandemic, you've a 195 countries out there and
there are many of them whom have not given a single dose of
vaccines. So I think the global pandemic is going to be with us for a

Dr. Paul Offit

while. In the United States things are certainly better for three
reas ons, one is its summer and this is basically a winter virus, you can
see that last summer when the cases came down on before the
winter hit. We've obviously about the at least o r close to 60% of the
adult population that’s now fully vaccinated , and natural infection
also protects. And we've probably looking at antibody surveillance
studies about a 100 million people in this country who have already
been nat urally infected.

So you're probably at sort of herd immunity rates of around close to
65% to 70%. That may not be enough, you know these variants that
are circulating now, we're now like moving to variant #3 . T he first
virus that came into this country was variant #1, the second one that
started to takeover was the, what was called what at one point UK
var iant that’s now called the Alpha variant. And now there is a third
variant that’s coming up that’s more contagious, th e so called Delta
variant which was [inaudible 00:03:21] in India. If that’s true and
these viruses are more contagious, you need a higher percentage of
the population to be immune . S o we're not there yet. We'll see what
happens over the winter, but I suspect you will see a spike again this
coming winter.

Margaret Flinter: Well Dr. Offit, you know sometimes it seems like every day is a COVID
day, right and it’s been here for years and sometimes just the speed
of which we've moved through this pandemic, really astonishes me.
And one of those sign post is, how scarce vaccine supply was, just a
few short months ago, and now many places in United States are
really sitting with an excessive vaccine in their freezers and
refrigerators that may expire before they can actually give it to
people . A nd we see all sorts of incentives being used to get people to
come out and get the vaccine.

And you've sai d that vaccine resistance, the resistance of people to
get the vaccine is what really scares you. Information is out there,
strategies are out there, but still we've an enormous chunk of people
who just are saying they are not going to get the vaccine. Wha t do
you say to people at this point about that?

Dr. Paul Offit: Well, if it’s a matter of education we can educate. If it’s a matter of
access we can provide access. If it’s a matter of sort of inertia and
people just needed nudge, then incentives work. W hat worries me is
the fourth group. This is a group that is just not going to get
vaccinated. They believe that vaccines are more harmful than helpful.
They are cynical about the information that they hear. And so what do
you do then? What do you do then i f there is a critical percentage of
the population that’s choosing not to vaccinate, so much so that it
causes the virus to continue to spread, to mutate, to create variants .
W hat do you do?

Dr. Paul Offit

I mean people will say, look it’s a personal choice, well it’s no t a
personal choice. Because it’s a choice you're making for other people,
people with whom you come in contact with. So what do you do
then ? And I think that’s what you're seeing down on the private
sectors which is mandates , c ertain businesses will say i f you want to
come back to work, get vaccinated.

Mark Masselli: Well, let’s pull away some of those and just pointing on the thread of
the question, pull away some of those glaring rumors, because we see
there are still people who are waiting. There are as you said a group
of individuals who said “N o, I'm not getting this vaccine whatever you
say. ” But maybe just respond to a couple of these rumors that are out
there of vaccines weren’t fully vetted, they were made too quickly.

Dr. Paul Offit: Well they cer tainly were made quickly, I mean this was a vaccine
really do is we' d this virus in hand that sequenced in January of 2020 .
And there were two large clinical trials that we're performing within
the 11 months, I mean that’s remarkable. But I think people ha ve this
misconception that critical timelines were skip ped or worse th at
safety guidelines were ignore d , that’s not true. Those trials, those
original trials of 30,000 to 40,000 people were the size of any typical
pediatric or adult vaccine trials . S imilar ly there was, the other thing
that wasn’t a different, was the safety follow - up. I mean any severe
safety issue that’s coming up with vaccines has come up within six
weeks of the vaccine. So the safety, follow up had to be t w o m onths
after the last dose .

T he real difference was length of follow - up for efficacy. So when we
approve d those say, two mRNA vaccines in December, we could say
that they were e ffect ive for a few months. But we didn’t know that
whether they were e ffect ive for a year or two years or th ree years,
but you're not going to do a three or four years studi es when 500,000
people just died that year to see whether it remained effective. And I
am sure it’s going to be you know e ffect ive for probably a few years.
That was really the only differenc e.

Mark Masselli: Well, speaking of the mRNA, also we've heard that vaccines alter your
DNA, particularly those two, the Pfizer and the Moderna one.

Dr. Paul Offit: Yeah I 'm not sure why people think that when their DNA is alter ed it’s
always for the worst , you know why can’t you develop x - ray vision, for
example if you're getting a vaccine. Right, it’s not possible . S o it’s
understandable how people could think this. Because it’s really, these
are our first genetic vaccines , m eaning you're not being given the
SARS - C o V - 2 to spike protein, you're being given the gene that codes
for the s pike protein and so your body makes the spike protein, and
then antibodies that protein.

But what happens when messenger RNA enters your cells and now a s

Dr. Paul Offit

part of the other 200 ,000 copies of messenger RNA that are also in
your cells making proteins and enzymes , is it will make that protein
for a couple of days , but the mRNA in order to alter your DNA would
have to get into nucleus, which means it would require a nuclear
access s ignal which it doesn’t have . A lso it’s mRNA, it’s not DNA , s o it
would have to be converted DNA which require s an enzyme called
reverse transcriptase which it also doesn’t have. And then even if it
was converted into DNA which it can’t be, it still has to be integrated
into DNA which requires an enzyme called Integrase, which it also
doesn’t have. So the chances of it altering your DNA aren’t small, they
are zero. You know you have a better chance of becoming Spiderman
if you're getting th ese vaccines -- al ter ing your DNA.

Margaret Flinter: I think maybe we should have neurology as a required course in high
school, going forward since we're going to be dealing with these
things for a while. But on a very serious note, Dr. Offit as happy as we
a re about some of the progress with vaccines, here in the United
States, in the northeast where we're based, the rest of the world
certainly is lagging so far behind in vaccinations. Sub - Saharan Africa, I
think people are saying not even 1% in many countries and I think I've
heard in Haiti, really for all of the volunteer organizations we've and
the health organizations, nothing has been delivered yet.

So good news that’s the Biden administration is g iving 500 million
doses to the global effort. But what ’ s the strategy fo r global
vaccination? I don’t recall anything like this ever in our lifetimes as we
think about it, is it COVAX is at the volunteerism of countries, what’s
the strategy for really getting vaccines across the globe, particularly in
countries that we know ha ve to depend on other people to get it to
them.

Dr. Paul Offit: Right, I mean, I think there is going to have to be , you should know
sort of an international strategy to try and do , because we can’t do it.
I mean there is no doubt that you can make enough vaccine. I mean
say something like the mRNA vaccines, remember those are given at
microgram doses, that’s a million for the gram, you can make
kilograms of mRNA which is thousands of grams, that’s a 9 log
difference, that’s a billion fold difference. So yo u can make billions of
doses of mRNA vaccine. But that’s not the hard part. I think the hard
part is going to be getting it into people’s arms and that’s expensive
and difficult a nd there is also not an infrastructure at all for that in the
developing worl d. It took also a while in this country to put in to place
a n infrastructure for mass vaccination in adults.

I t’s going to take a lot of money and a tremendous effort to do that.
But it is, I mean you know we can argue that it’s an altruistic thing for
us t o do to give vaccines to the developing world, it’s really not. We
need the world to be vaccinated. Remember, we, every year in the

Dr. Paul Offit

United States children get a polio vaccine, wh y we haven't had polio
in this country since the 1970s. The reason we give it is because polio
still exists in the world. And therefore because international travel is
common, we're always at - risk . S o we need to get the world
vaccinated. We're going to have to have a highly vaccinated
population in the United States until we get con trol of this virus in the
world and that’s going to be years if not decades.

Mark Masselli: We're speaking today with Dr. Paul Offit, the member of the FDA ’ s
COVID Vaccine Advisory Committee and Director of the Vaccine
Education Center at the Children’s Ho spital of Philadelphia. You know
just pulling the thread on where we have to get a lo t of people or the
vast majority of people vaccinated, young people are now eligible, 12
and up for the vaccine, but only 15% of kids of that age group have
gotten vaccina ted. And you know just trying to understand how
important this is and I'm sure parents worry about their children
getting vaccinated. When might we see that we move away from the
EUA status to sort of a permanent status?

I'm wondering also about the likeli hood of a booster shot being
required. You know a booster shot if it’s going to be acquired a year
out, and you said earlier, you thought it had a longer shelf life than a
year, but the logistics on that are going to be complicated. We're
going to be in De cember when we're one year out, where health
workers got vaccinated that’s usually a time where people think, they
get, annually get an additional shot. So maybe on both of those young
people in terms of what’s happening there and then maybe on the
EUA and the booster as well

Dr. Paul Offit: So I think we need a vaccine for children. It’s estimated that about
four million children have been infected with this virus, about 40,000
ha d been hospitalized, at least 300 have died, this particular
inflammatory syn drome, multisystem inflammatory disease in
children is pretty frightening. I mean it’s a multisystem vasculitis, I
mean that’s one of the heinous nature of this virus is it cause s you to
react you on blood vessel.

So we need a vaccine for children out, the numbers a re all going down
now. So I think people are taking you know it’s good. Now I think the
benefits really are much less than they would have been, you know
I've been hearing things about you know side effects that are
worrisome and s o maybe I don’t need a vaccine. I think that’s false
thinking , you're going to see this how well we're doing once winter
hits. And I think that when winter hits you're going to see a spike
again, and you're going to continue to see spikes in the winter until
we get on to p of this pandemic.

In terms of children not getting the vaccine they need, I think you
know it’s understandable, we ask parents to inject or ask them to

Dr. Paul Offit

allow for injection of a biological into their children -- don’t really
understand very well, and righ t now we're not seeing a lot of the
disease. So they are thinking you know what, I'll just take a pass, but
in terms of when you ’ll see the EUA being converted to a Licensure,
the FDA is looking for six months of follow - up, so that could really
happen by t he end of Augus , t by you know at least for those over 18
years of age. And so the Pfizer product really over 16 --

Margaret Flinter: Dr. Offit, look back on th ese last six months and you talked about,
how yeah you've learned to get the vaccine out there af ter you know
sort of trial and errors in the beginning. But it’s pretty impressive
across the country, what happened in terms of mass vaccine clinics,
unlike anything else, if you put your full attention to, they got pretty
smooth, after a while where you' re able to see lots of people pretty
satisfying.

Now we're talking about dismantling all of them. And I've to ask from
a public health perspective, is this a good idea, not just for COVID, but
here is what I think we learned. We learned that when you make
something that is necessary for the public health available at no cost
to people, without having to produce an insurance card, without
having to look at your co - insurance rate, without having to produce
evidence that you ’ re a citizen of the United States o r you're here
legally , y ou can actually get the job done. And my question to you'd
be from a public health perspective, shouldn’t we believe some of this
infrastructure and place and shouldn’t this be the new normal if we
need to do a public health interve ntion across the country rather than
dismantling it all and having to relearn this all over again ?

Dr. Paul Offit: No, I think that’s right and in many ways that comes to boosters
especially for adults. I mean th e re really is an infrastructure for
vaccinat ing children which is the pediatrician’s office. For adults not
so much, so adults don’t go to doctor, you can’t be actually among
that crowd, but so how do you do that? You have to have it in the way
we've it now, pharmacies etc. And I mean it’s really go ing to come
down to how, whether we need booster doses and if so, how
frequently. I do think that if you look at for example the cellular
immune response after the second dose of mRNA vaccines , y ou have
a really high frequency of cells like memory B cells you know which
are the cells that make antibodies or memory T helper cells which are
the cells that help these cells make antibodies, that usually predicts
fairly longer lived immunity.

If I ha d to make a guess on this I shouldn’t since I see you recording
t his. But if I had to make a guess, I would say that, we would probably
need a booster every few years for this, assuming that a variant is not
created that’s completely resistant to immunity from nat ural infection
and mutation, in which case then you rea lly are not talking about a

Dr. Paul Offit

booster, you're talking about a second vaccine. But you're right, I
think we need an infrastructure in place for adults to vaccinate. We're
going to be dealing with this virus for a while. I think we're certainly
going to need b oosters at some point. And so to dismantle it we do
that at our own peri l .

Mark Masselli: Dr. Offit, you're advising the FDA on the COVID vaccine but they
recently got a lot of attention for another breaking health new story,
the approval of the first Alzh eimer drug in two decades, turned out
it’s quite expensive, it’s controversial , it produce d some lack luster
results, but obviously not enough to dissuade the FDA to move
forward, tell us about th e process, how it was orchestrated at the FDA
and what you e xpect to see from this green light grant the company
making the product Biogen, and others who are in the pipeline
developing similar types of medications.

Dr. Paul Offit: Some I’m on the vaccine, not the drugs. So I can comment
comfortably on the vaccines where you know these products are held
through high standard because they are given the healthy, for the
most part to he althy children or healthy people. The drug side is
different, I don’t, I know what you know from reading in the
newspaper that that app roval was a surprise for the Alzheimer’s drug,
like it certainly was what the advisory panel had recommended. But I
think three people in that panel, actually just resign ed because they
disagree with that decision, but again this is not my --

Margaret Flin ter: Well, we appreciate your clarity about that. Maybe I can just ask you
sort of the million dollar question I guess. This is your area, is there
likely to be, we think there is perhaps pandemics in our future, not
COVID pandemics , but pandemics that we can’t yet imagine. Wh at
should the preparation be and I'm reminded of this because I was
recently in an emergency preparedness meeting and l ooking at our
plan which was all written during anthrax , right 2002, 2003 and
everything that we put in place.

Again from your sort of broad perspective and we'll just say about the
United States for now , r ecommendations for what we do to be
prepared for the next pandemic, mas s vaccine clinic s aside, we’re
seeing investments in public health and like , you're in a teachi ng
organization , t here is training issues. If you've a few thoughts to share
with us, as a country how do we prepare for whatever is coming next
in the form of pandemics?

Dr. Paul Offit: Well I think it’s safe to say there will be another pandemic and like ly
in our lifetime. And you had a, you know the SARS1 raise d its head in
2003, you've had MERS in 2012, this is the third now pandemic raise d
its head in 2019. We live in close association with animals, I mean a
bat virus became essentially a human virus. A Influenza was a bird
virus, that became a human virus. HIV, Human Immunodeficiency

Dr. Paul Offit

Virus was a s i mian virus it be came a human virus. So you can assume
there is going to be mutations that allow these viruses to again enter
the human population.

I think wh at we, if we haven't learned our lessons from this pandemic,
we'll never learn the lesson. I mean this pandemic brought the world
economically to its knees . A nd I think at the very least, the first thing
that has to happen is there has to be an internation al consortium with
all countries participating that the minute that a virus like this raises
its head, that you know about it. You know we shouldn’t ha ve ha d to
be depende nt on a whistleblower in Wuhan to tell us that there was a
virus that was circulating there, that was killing people. I mean I think
the Chinese government is culpable in that regard.

And so that is like step 1, and then once you know that, you can have
an international team of scientist s that you know quickly identify the
virus, sequence the virus, come up with strategies for how to make a
vaccine, do the research in place and the researcher is [inaudible
00:19:05] vast international research infrastructure. It’s the mas s
production infrastructure that’s not in place. The hardest part of
m aking vaccines as they say, is making vaccines, I mean mass
production isn't easy, mass administration isn't easy and that’s what
we need to learn, I think from this pandemic.

Mark Masselli: Did we see any silver linings in the pandemic in terms of the cha nges
in the delivery system, certainly the advent of Telehealth , really w as a
force multiplier in terms of spreading that and hopefully getting
access to many more people. But anything else that from your
vantage point that you saw that help ed improve the overall delivery
system ?

Dr. Paul Offit: Well just for my vantage point, I think we've entered a new era of
vaccinology. I mean previously you know we gave the protein or
attenuated form of the virus or killed form of the virus. Now we give
the gene that c odes virus, or in the case would be vector virus is you
gave a replication to effective virus which carries in the gene that you
a re interested in. That’s interesting to see to what extent that will
apply then to other diseases for which we've had difficul ty making a
vaccine like HIV or universal flu vaccine, or malaria vaccine so that’s
number one.

Number two, and this is more of a personal thing . I think you know
normally when you do trial s as was done for the mRNA vaccines, they
often aren’t done in preg nant wom e n which is too bad because
pregnant women obviously are more likely to be hospitalized and
mechanically ventilated if they gets SARS - CoV - 2 infection tha n a
women of the same age who is not pregnant, so they benefit from
this vaccine. What the CDC did initially was instead of doing what they
always do, which is to say, this vaccine is contraindicated for pregnant

Dr. Paul Offit

women because you know they don’t have data, they said a pregnant
women could reasonably choose to get the vaccine and then tens of
thousa nds of women did do that . A nd you had clear data now that as
compare d to women who were pregnant, that didn’t get the vaccine,
there is no difference in maternal or fetal outcome, so that’s good.
And so I think that now you've a tremendous safety portfolio with this
vaccine in pregnant women and for other vaccines that will be in the
future for pregnant women like [inaudible 00:21:07] vaccine, or Strep
vaccine, or meningococcal vaccine . S o I think that’s one advantage
here .

Margaret Flinter: Well that’s grea t and that’s actually positive news, we're happy to
share through the show. We've been speaking today with Dr. Paul
Offit, he is a member of the FDA ’ s COVID Vaccine Advisory
Committee, and Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the
Children’s Hospital at Philadelphia. Learning more about his important
work by going to www.paul - offit.com or follow him on Twitter
@DrPaulOffit. Dr. Offit, thank you as always for your clear, concise
voice on science , on vaccine sci ence specifically, for your career long
contributions to this field and for joining us today on Conversations
on Health Care.

Dr. Paul Offit: Thank you.

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Mark Masselli: At Conversations on Health Care we want our audience to be truly in
the know whe n it comes to the facts about healthcare reform and
policy. Lori Robertson is an award winning journalist and Managing
Editor of FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer advocate
for voters that aim to reduce the level of deception in U.S. Politics .
Lori, what have you got for us this week?

Lori Robertson: Let’s take a look at the COVID - 19 variants and vaccination. So far
COVID - 19 vaccines have been effective against variants of the
coronavirus. Scientists are monitoring the situation carefully with
updated or new vaccines a possibility in the future, if need be. The
fact that variants of the original SARS - C o V - 2 virus have emerged is not
surprising, viruses mutate randomly as they replicate and make errors
as the genome is copied again and again.

A v ariant is a distinct virus typically with several mutations. M ost
mutations don’t change the virus ’ s biology or how the body’s immune
system respon ds . But sometimes mutations can result in a
competitive advantage for the virus and its ability to replicate or
transmit for instance, or in how effectively immunity from a previous
infection or a vaccine is able to fight the virus. The good news is that
so far the authorized vaccines in the U.S. have been largely effective
against the variants that have most con cerned scientist s .

Dr. Paul Offit

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is using three
classifications for variants. There are five variants of concern that ’s
CDC is middle level for variants for which there is evidence of
increased transmissibility, more severe disease, or reduced
effectiveness of treatment or vaccines. There are no variants in the
CDC ’ s top classification level, a variant of high consequence. While the
authorized COVID - 19 vaccines in the United States from Pfizer
BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson were designed to protect
against the original SARS - C o V - 2 virus that’s not the virus the vaccines
ultimately have confronted. Still they worked extremely well as shown
in the clinical trials. In real world studies have shown they continue to
work w ell against those variants of concern.

For instance in Qatar, researchers used national databases on
vaccinations, testing and clinical characteristics to estimate the Pfizer
vaccine effectiveness against any infection of the B117 variant at
89.5% that’s t he variant that first emerged in the United Kingdom and
is the most common variant in the U.S. according to the CDC.
Effectiveness against any infection of the B1351 variant, first
identified in South Africa was 75%. But effectiveness against severe
critic al or fatal disease from any variant was an estimated 97.4%.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine ’ s clinical trial data also give an
indication of its effectiveness against variants of concern, since it
included study sites in South Africa and Brazil where such v ariants
were identified. W hile the vaccines efficacy in preventing moderate to
severe disease was lower in those countries than in the United States
in the trial, the effectiveness against severe or critical COVID - 19 was
more than 80% in all three location s. And that’s my fact check for this
week, I'm Lori Robertson, Managing Editor of FactCheck.org.

Margaret Flinter: FactCheck.org is committed to factual accuracy from the country's
major political players and is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy
Cen ter at the University of Pennsylvania. If you have a fact that you'd
like checked e - mail us at www.chcradio.com , we'll have
FactCheck.org's Lori Robertson check it out for you here on
Conversations on Health Care.

[ Music ]

Margaret Flinter: Each week Conversations highlights a bright idea about how to make
wellness a part of our communities and everyday lives. Healthcare
providers are forever on the lookout for that magic elixir that can cure
a host of chronic ills in one step. And in the case of obesity,
depression, anxiety, and stress, that elixir could be turns out, a
number of steps, as in taking a hike. A large study conducted by
several institutions, including the University of Michigan and Edgehill
University in the UK, looked at the medicinal benefits derived from
regular group hikes conducted in nature.

Dr. Paul Offit

Dr. Sara Warber : This study had enough people in it and following them overtime. That
we could see that these two different types of health for our mental
well - being, they are operating independently, that means that if we
go out in nature for a walk, we're getting an additional boost to our
mental well - being.

Margaret Flinter: Researchers evaluated some 2,000 participants in a program called
Walking for Health i n England, which sponsored some 3,000 walks per
week across the country.

Dr. Sara Warber: Well this is a national study in the UK, there was investment in these
walking groups, in trai ning leaders to take people on walks, finding
trails that were good for people to do even if they had health
problems.

Margaret Flinter: Dr. Sara Warber, professor of Family Medicine at the University of
Michigan School of Medicine said th e study showed a dramatic
improvement in the mental well - being of participants, especiall y
those who had recently experienced something stressful like the loss
of a loved one or a serious illness.

Dr. Sara Warber: Depression was reduced, perceived stress was reduced, and it
certainly relates to most of our lives. And that people had , they
expe rience d more positive feelings, or positive emotions. And there
has been really lovely research that’s shown th at when we have
positive emotions, we actually have better health in the long run . And
we have less negative emotions when we’re out in nature an d when
we're out in nature in a group.

So we did have controls and that’s another thing that makes a study
powerful, is that our control group were people who, at one time,
intended to be part of walking groups, agreed to be followed, b ut
they never took u p the practice. And s o, we were able to match our
walking group participants with people who were just basically just
like them, but who didn’t walk - in groups, and so we could see how
they differed over time .

Margaret Flinter: The participants almost unive rsally reported reduced stress and
depression, after participating in group nature heights and the effect
was cumulative over time . Dr. Warber says it seems to be the
combination of breathing in fresh air surrounded by nature during
moderate exercise and t he group dynamic a dds a social benefit. Other
studies have shown a link between mood and exercise, but Dr.
Warber says this is the first study that revealed the added benefits of
group hikes in nature and significant mitigation of depression.

Dr. Sara Warb er: Because we were really interested in whether , if you are more
stressed, would you get some better benefits from being in nature .
A nd in fact, that did pan out. So, if you’re going through stress, if

Dr. Paul Offit

you're having a hard time, getting out in nature, get ting out in nature
with a group or with others, has real benefit in reducing your stress.

Margaret Flinter: Walk for Health, a simple guided group nature hike program which
incentivizes folks suffering from depression and anxiety to step into
the fresh air with others , to talk out their thoughts while taking a hike,
improving their mood, reducing their depression, increasing their
overall health at the same time, now that’s a bright idea.

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Mark Masselli: You've been listening to Conversations on Heal th Care. I'm Mark
Masselli.

Margaret Flinter: And I'm Margaret Flinter.

Mark Masselli: Peace and Health

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M oderator : Conversations on Health Care is recorded at WESU at Wesleyan
University, streaming live at ww w.chcradio.com , iTunes, or wherever
you listen to podcasts. If you have comments, please e - mail us at
[email protected] or find us on Facebook or Twitter. We love
hearing from you. This show is brought to you by the Community
Health Center .

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