Public Health Insight

How did sanitation become one of public health's greatest triumphs, while being its oldest unfinished problem? 
In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, host Gordon Thane traces the story from Victorian Britain's overcrowded streets to Edwin Chadwick's groundbreaking 1842 report, which reframed disease as a product of "removable circumstances" rather than individual fate. We revisit the Great Stink of 1858, when London's sewage crisis finally reached Parliament, where swift action followed. Then we confront a sobering reality: 3.4 billion people still lack safely managed sanitation today.

Sources for Content

Chadwick, Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain
UK Parliament — 1842 Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population
UK Parliament — The 1848 Public Health Act
London Museum — The Great Stink of 1858
Science Museum — Flushed Away: Sewers Through History
Royal Museums Greenwich — Dickens and The Great Stink of 1858
WHO/UNICEF JMP — Progress on Household Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene 2000–2024
UNICEF — Fast Facts: 1 in 4 People Globally Still Lack Access to Safe Drinking Water
WHO — Sanitation Fact Sheet
Britannica — Sir Edwin Chadwick
EBSCO — Edwin Chadwick
Vaishali — Edwin Chadwick: A Pioneer of Public Health Reform and His Relevance to Modern Public Health Practice

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

Production Notes

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

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Teaching is one of the most underrated ways to advance public health. In this episode, Gordon reflects on his first semester teaching Health Promotion in Western University's MPH program and what the experience revealed about the field itself. From designing a course to classroom moments that genuinely surprised him, Gordon shares the thinking behind his approach and the lessons that stayed with him. Because public health advances not only through programs and policy but through the people we prepare to do the work. The challenges of tomorrow aren't waiting. Neither should the classroom.

Host & 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.

What really happens when a reviewer opens your MPH application? Host Gordon Thane has been on the other side of the table and what he saw might surprise you. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, he breaks down the most common mistakes applicants make: ignoring instructions, leaning on weak references, writing generic statements that sound like everyone else, and confusing healthcare with public health. More importantly, he shares what actually makes a file stand out. If you're applying, reapplying, or just curious how admissions really works — this one's essential listening.

Host & 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.

By the end of your practicum, you'll land in one of three boxes — and you don't get to pick which one.. or do you?  
In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, host Gordon Thane draws on his own journey to show why the students who thrive aren't the ones who wait for direction. From an unpaid MPH practicum placement to now being on the advisory board of that same organization member; he explores: 
how to tailor your practicum experience to the next job opportunity you’d like to pursue, and 
why the learning contract you signed may be out of date by the time you start day one, and 
how to build three references who'd hire you again tomorrow. 

Host & 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.

You can disagree on policy. You can't disagree on facts. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, Dr. Brian Castucci unpacks what it really means when science bends to political power, whether silencing dangerous voices is ever justified, why public health is losing the war it should be winning - culminating in an uncomfortable truth: if you can't stand the people you're trying to reach, you've already lost. 

References for Our Discussion
◼️About Brian C. Castrucci
◼️A New AI Platform to Strengthen Health Communication and Combat False Narratives
◼️Science to People: VeriSci

Guest
◼️Dr. Brian Castrucci, DrPH

Host & 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.