The Dose

Uterine fibroids may affect up to 80 percent of women in their lifetime, but they remain under-researched, underfunded, and routinely dismissed. Lupita Nyong'o is working to change that.
"I could not believe that women were partially or wholly losing their reproductive organs because of this noncancerous tumor situation."
On this episode, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Academy Award–winning actor and activist Lupita Nyong'o about her own diagnosis, and her decision to share an MRI of her body while launching the Make Fibroids Count campaign with the Foundation for Women's Health.
"I realized without research we can't get any further," Nyong'o says. "We need to understand more in order to be able to equip the doctors who can then equip the patients."
Show Notes:
Lupita Nyong'o
Make Fibroids Count (through the Foundation for Women's Health)
The White Dress Project
The Fibroid Foundation

A new movement in the United States is taking shape in maternal care, one that seeks to restore trust, center women, and protect lives.
On this episode of The Dose podcast, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with author and advocate Elaine Welteroth about her own struggle finding patient-centered care during pregnancy and how the organization she founded, birthFUND, is funding midwifery care, supporting new mothers, and reimagining what safe, empowering birth can look like in America.

Across Oklahoma, a community-powered doula network is reshaping what equitable maternal care looks like.
On this episode of The Dose, Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Omare Jimmerson of the Oklahoma Birth Equity Initiative about how culturally rooted doulas, smart policies, and practical supports—from rides to diapers—are helping hundreds of families thrive each year.

AI therapy for children with anxiety, mental health training for staff at nonprofits that work with young people, and an "art pharmacy" that prescribes free museum tickets to kids — these are just some of the things Dr. Kevin Simon and his team are doing to help meet the mental health care needs of Boston's children.
Simon, the city's first chief behavioral health officer, talks to host Dr. Joel Bervell on the new episode of The Dose, which centers on America's youth mental health crisis and the innovative things states and cities are doing for struggling children.

"The proportion of energy and resources that goes into getting paid instead of taking care of patients is out of whack."
That's Dr. Mai Pham's assessment of how we pay for health care in the United States — where all too often the imperative is volume over value, and billing over better care. In the latest episode of The Dose podcast, host Dr. Joel Bervell talks with Dr. Pham about how we can do better and deliver on the promise of equitable, person-centered care.