Episodes

A nurse in a Baltimore laundromat might be testing one of the most important ideas in American health care: what if care started before you ever needed the emergency room?

Organizations from NPR to the Milbank Memorial Fund are closely watching the Neighborhood Nursing program that the top-ranked Johns Hopkins School of Nursing has brought to some of Baltimore’s most challenging areas.  

“The only thing everyone has access to is calling 911 and going to an emergency room…the only thing we can all do should be something much more minor, where you can ask someone a question, get a house call or understand how your body works,” says Sarah Szanton, Ph.D., Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.

Neighborhood Nursing is designed to fill that gap, offering earlier, more accessible support before a crisis begins.

“The neighborhoods right near Johns Hopkins said, ‘We want to come to you. We want to make sure we trust you.’ So we started off in senior center lobbies, laundromats and libraries, and let people come to us,” Dean Szanton explains to hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter.

That trust-first approach is what makes the model work. Nurses and community health workers meet people where they are, helping address not just medical needs, but the everyday challenges that shape health, from access to food and transportation to navigating complex systems of care.

The goal is simple but powerful: connect earlier, intervene sooner and reduce the need for emergency care.

Kathleen Sebelius was in charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services when the Affordable Care Act became law. Now, she and a bipartisan group are putting their best thinking forward for how to fix rural health care. Their report from Aspen Institute’s Health Strategy Group calls the rural mortality gap a “moral failing and a crisis that cannot be ignored.”

Three of their big ideas are:

1. Update payment systems for rural health care because the country’s current financial model was not designed for them
2. Build rural economic development around health and health care
3. Create support for behavioral health in rural America  

She says the path forward depends on solutions that are designed with rural communities in mind from the start, supported by state leadership, and grounded in the realities of access, workforce, and infrastructure.

Many viewers know Becky Quick as the steady voice on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” where she explains what’s happening on Wall Street and interviews the world’s top business leaders. 

Now, she joins Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter to share a very different story, one she lived privately for years while navigating her daughter’s rare genetic diagnosis.

Quick’s message is simple, and urgent: “The faster you can get a diagnosis, the better… I would have pushed harder for genetic testing earlier. The faster you find out, the faster you can connect to a community… and understand what that range of outcomes might look like.”

She’s also leveraging her visibility to raise awareness of rare diseases. Quick leads CNBC’s “Cures” initiative, which provides insights into the biggest stories impacting the rare disease community and highlights the research being done that will change the way we think about modern medicine for everyone.

Medical experts know that fresh vegetables play a very beneficial role in health but if you can’t afford them, you’re mostly out of luck.

Fixing this situation is the latest passion of Mark Masselli, co-host of “Conversations on Health Care” and president, CEO, and founder of Moses/Weitzman Health System.

In this special episode, co-host Margaret Flinter asks Mark to explain the new initiative to tap hydroponic farming (growing year-round in water, without soil) for providing fresh food to families in economically challenged neighborhoods.

This is all growing as we celebrate Mark’s milestone birthday (he just turned 75!).

We’re taking the opportunity to also ask Mark to reflect on:

• The added benefits of community building in a stressful world
• “Conversations on Health Care” guests who inspired him and all of us
• The public policy changes he’s experienced and the critical role research will continue to play in policy creation

Over 1 million subscribers (and more online) read Dr. Dhruv Khullar’s insightful columns in The New Yorker and now our hosts are asking him the tough questions.

Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter ask him about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They note that just 8% of the public has faith in the agency’s vaccine guidelines and the search for a new director continues. Dr. Khullar says, “Parts of the government that have traditionally been apolitical or nonpartisan at least are increasingly becoming infected with politics.” He also explains that people identifying as Republicans haven’t gained faith in the CDC where Democrats have lost it. “Trust is broken in a moment, and it takes years, sometimes even decades, to restore.”

Dr. Khullar also shares his secrets for writing his columns. “I do often start with an idea that I want to convey, but a lot of the work … is, how do I tell this in a way that someone who might not be expert in this area or might not even be interested in this area happens to pick it up and want to read the whole thing?” 

There are nearly 4,000 mobile healthcare clinics in the U.S. and there’s no reason to stop at that number, according to Driving Health Forward. It’s a new and fast-growing national campaign of organizations and individuals dedicated to promoting healthcare system change to grow the mobile healthcare sector. 

Hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter discuss with guests Don Blanchon and Nicky Goren how policy, funding and infrastructure need to keep up.

“One of the special and unique things about mobile clinics is that they are highly tailored to what each community needs. Understanding and delivering what the community wants is key to a mobile clinic’s success,” says Goren, a strategic advisor to the campaign.

But despite strong outcomes and growing demand, the system around mobile care remains fragmented. The guests say: 

Funding is inconsistent. 

Regulations vary widely by state. 

Many programs struggle to sustain themselves long term, even when the positive results are clear.

“Mobile is a proven, high-quality solution to bringing care directly to people. But we still rely heavily on facility-based models that have been in place for decades, if not a century or more,” says Blanchon, who also serves as a strategic advisor to the initiative. 

Blanchon and Goren also point to a major inflection point. With new federal and state investments flowing through programs like the Rural Health Transformation Program, nearly every state is now exploring mobile care as part of its strategy. They say the opportunity is significant, but so is the risk if policy and funding models do not evolve alongside it.