Public Health Insight

How often do public health organizations decide what a community needs — without actually asking them? This episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast sees Gordon sit down with Alexandra Piatkowski, epidemiologist and founder & CEO of Piat Public Health, to unpack one of public health's most foundational — and often misused — tools: the community needs assessment.

They explore why existing quantitative data is never enough on its own, how health equity moves from buzzword to practice, and what it really takes to do a needs assessment well when budgets are tight and funders want results fast.

References for Our Discussion
◼️Piat Public Health

Guest
◼️Alexandra Piatkowski, MPH, PMP

Host & Executive Producer
◼️ Gordon Thane, BMSc, MPH, PMP®

Production Notes

◼️ Music from Johnny Harris x Tom Fox: The Music Room

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What does it take to hit the ground running after grad school? For Alexandra Piatkowski, the answer started long before graduation — by deliberately building real-world experience while still a student.

In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, Gordon sits down with the founder of Piat Public Health to trace a career that blends epidemiology, health policy, and project management into something entirely her own. Alexandra shares how stacking hands-on experience during school set her up to thrive and how that momentum carried her all the way to co-leading the development of Canada's first accredited geriatric emergency department. 

References for Our Discussion
◼️Piat Public Health

Guest
◼️Alexandra Piatkowski, MPH, PMP

Host & Executive Producer
◼️ Gordon Thane, BMSc, MPH, PMP®

Production Notes

◼️ Music from Johnny Harris x Tom Fox: The Music Room

Leave Us Some Feedback
If you enjoy our podcasts, be sure to subscribe and leave us a rating on Apple Podcast or Spotify, and spread the word to your friends to help us get discovered by more people. You can also interact directly with the podcast episodes on Spotify using the new “comment” feature! We’d love to hear what you think.

Send us a Text Message to let us know what you think.

Prevention is the most powerful public health tool we have and yet the hardest to fund. Dr. Hope Ferdowsian of Phoenix Zones Initiative explains how her organization is changing that: informing global health strategies, training cross-sector professionals, and advancing a justice-centered framework called Just One Health that targets root causes, not symptoms. She also shares a bold 10-year vision — where well-being replaces GDP, animals gain rights recognition, and prevention is the default. 

References for Our Discussion
◼️Phoenix Zones Website

Guest
◼️Hope Ferdowsian, Co-Founder and President of Phoenix Zones Initiative

Host
◼️ Purva Mehta, BMSc, MSc

Producer
◼️Gordon Thane, BMSc, MPH, PMP®

Production Notes
◼️ Music from Johnny Harris x Tom Fox: The Music Room

Leave Us Some Feedback
If you enjoy our podcasts, be sure to subscribe and leave us a rating on Apple Podcast or Spotify, and spread the word to your friends to help us get discovered by more people. You can also interact directly with the podcast episodes on Spotify using the new “comment” feature! We’d love to hear what you think.

Send us a Text Message to let us know what you think.

Animal abuse is a predictor child abuse. Slaughterhouse locations correlate with violent crime. Over three-quarters of emerging infectious diseases trace back to how we treat animals and ecosystems. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, Dr. Hope Ferdowsian connects these patterns to a single root cause: systems built on hierarchies that reduce living beings to their financial worth. She challenges public health to stop treating symptoms, expand its moral circle beyond humans, and finally address the conditions that create disease, violence, and exploitation in the first place.

References for Our Discussion
◼️Phoenix Zones Website

Guest
◼️Hope Ferdowsian, Co-Founder and President of Phoenix Zones Initiative

Host
◼️ Purva Mehta, BMSc, MSc

Producer
◼️Gordon Thane, BMSc, MPH, PMP®

Production Notes

◼️ Music from Johnny Harris x Tom Fox: The Music Room

Leave Us Some Feedback
If you enjoy our podcasts, be sure to subscribe and leave us a rating on Apple Podcast or Spotify, and spread the word to your friends to help us get discovered by more people. You can also interact directly with the podcast episodes on Spotify using the new “comment” feature! We’d love to hear what you think.

Send us a Text Message to let us know what you think.

Healing people requires healing animals and the systems we share. Dr. Hope Ferdowsian traces that conviction from a sheep named Crystal on an Oklahoma farm to sanctuary chimpanzees with PTSD, to asylum seekers she's evaluated across borders. The through-line isn't a coincidence — it's a career built on understanding humanity through animals, following suffering wherever it leads, and finding resilience on the other side.

References for Our Discussion
◼️Phoenix Zones Website

Guest
◼️Hope Ferdowsian, Co-Founder and President of Phoenix Zones Initiative

Host
◼️ Purva Mehta, BMSc, MSc

Executive Producer
◼️Gordon Thane, BMSc, MPH, PMP®

Production Notes

◼️ Music from Johnny Harris x Tom Fox: The Music Room

Leave Us Some Feedback
If you enjoy our podcasts, be sure to subscribe and leave us a rating on Apple Podcast or Spotify, and spread the word to your friends to help us get discovered by more people. You can also interact directly with the podcast episodes on Spotify using the new “comment” feature! We’d love to hear what you think.

Send us a Text Message to let us know what you think.