
Health & Veritas
Howard Forman and Harlan Krumholz, two Yale physician-professors, discuss the latest news and ideas in healthcare and seek out the truth amid the noise.
Health & Veritas is produced with the Yale School of Management and the Yale School of Public Health. New episodes are available every Thursday.
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Howard P. Forman
Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Economics, Public Health, and Management; Co-founder, Pozen-Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Health Equity Leadership, MD/MBA Program, and MBA for Executives Program
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Professor Forman is a Professor of Diagnostic Radiology (and faculty director for Finance), Public Health (Health Policy), Economics and Management. Professor Forman directs the Health Care management program in the Yale School of Public Health and teaches healthcare economics in the Yale College Economics Department. He is the faculty founder and director of the MD/MBA program as well as the faculty director of the healthcare focus area in the School of Management’s MBA for Executives program. He is the co-founder and special advisor to the Pozen-Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Health Equity Leadership program. He co-hosts the Health & Veritas podcast with Dr. Harlan Krumholz.
As a practicing emergency/trauma radiologist, he is actively involved in patient care and issues related to financial administration, healthcare compliance, and contracting. His research has been focused on improving imaging services delivery through better access to information. He has worked as a health policy fellow in the U.S. Senate, on Medicare legislation.
During the COVID Pandemic, Professor Forman has actively tracked outbreaks at local, national, and international levels; expounding on mitigation strategies and engaging to dispel misinformation through social and print media. He has been a frequent guest commentator and expert on national video and audio platforms.

Harlan M. Krumholz
Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine and Professor in the Institute of Social Policy Studies, of Investigative Medicine, and of Public Health (Health Policy); and Director of the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation
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Harlan Krumholz is a cardiologist and scientist at Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital. He is the Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine, and Professor in the Institute of Social Policy Studies, of Investigative Medicine, and of Public Health (Health Policy), and the Director of the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation. He is a leading expert in the science to improve the quality and efficiency of care, eliminate disparities and promote equity, improve integrity and transparency in medical research, engage patients in their care, and avoid wasteful practices. Recent efforts are focused on harnessing the digital transformation in healthcare to accelerate knowledge generation and facilitate the delivery of care aligned with each patient’s needs and preferences.
Dr. Krumholz is director of the Yale New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE), an organization dedicated to improving health and health care through research, tools, and practices that produce discovery, heighten accountability and promote better public health and clinical care. He co-founded and co-leads the Yale University Open Data Access (YODA) Project, designed to increase access to clinical research data and promote their use to generate new knowledge. He also co-founded and co-leads medRxiv, a non-profit preprint server for the medical and health sciences. He was a founding faculty co-director of the Yale Center for Research Computing.
Dr. Krumholz has been honored by membership in the National Academy of Medicine, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He was named a Distinguished Scientist of the American Heart Association and received their Award of Meritorious Achievement and their Clinical Research Prize. He served as a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Krumholz received the Friendship Award from the People’s Republic of China in recognition of his collaborative efforts to develop a national cardiovascular research network and was named by the Chinese Society of Cardiology as a Top-10 Distinguished International Cardiologist for his contributions to the development of cardiovascular medicine in China. He founded the American Heart Association’s Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Council and co-founded their annual conference. He was the founding editor of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes; founding editor of CardioExchange, a social media site of the publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine; and editor of Journal Watch Cardiology of the New England Journal of Medicine. He was a founding Governor of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
Episodes

Michael Sherling: Building a Better Electronic Health Record
Howie and Harlan are joined by Michael Sherling, a dermatologist and a founder of Modernizing Medicine, which aims to save doctors time with an intelligent, specialty-specific electronic health record. Harlan provides updates on COVID-19 variants and vaccines, and on the acquisition of CareBridge, which provides value-based home care for Medicaid patients. Howie explains why cases of pertussis—whooping cough—are increasing.

The Physician Shortage and Other News
Howie and Harlan discuss health and healthcare issues in the headlines, including a powerful—but dangerous—new gene therapy, racial disparities in excess deaths during the COVID pandemic, and the limited insurance coverage for highly effective new obesity drugs.

Max Laurans: An Entrepreneurial Life in Medicine
Howie and Harlan are joined by Max Laurans, a Yale neurosurgeon and hospital administrator, and a founder of the healthcare staffing company Nomad Health. Harlan discusses the problem of doctors giving too much weight to suggestions from AI; Howie celebrates a milestone in the campaign to eliminate trachoma, a common cause of preventable blindness in the developing world.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy: Crises and Common Ground
Howie and Harlan welcome Vivek Murthy, the 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States and a graduate of the Yale School of Medicine and the Yale School of Management. They talk about his campaigns to tackle parental stress, gun violence, and the dangers of social media, and the importance of communicating across political divides.

Boosters, Brain Age, and Other News
Howie and Harlan discuss recent headlines, including the latest round of COVID and flu vaccines, a lousy report card for the U.S. healthcare system, and a rare case of swine flu. Plus: Howie investigates a mysteriously escalating pharmacy bill.

Ania Jastreboff: The Transformative Obesity Drugs
Howie and Harlan are joined by Ania Jastreboff, a Yale endocrinologist and an expert on obesity medication, to talk about the remarkable range of diseases treated by drugs like Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Wegovy. Harlan discusses new Apple devices with the ability to detect sleep apnea and aid in hearing; Howie reports on outbreaks of polio in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Gaza.

Margaret McGovern: Building an Integrated Health System
Howie and Harlan are joined by Margaret McGovern, deputy dean for clinical affairs at the Yale School of Medicine, CEO of Yale Medicine, and chief physician executive of the Yale New Haven Health System. They discuss her path from the lab to healthcare leadership, and her efforts to better align Yale's medical school and its health system. Harlan reflects on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks; Howie provides an update on the bird flu outbreak.

Lee Schwamm: Smarter Healthcare Systems With AI
Howie and Harlan are joined by Lee Schwamm, associate dean for digital strategy and transformation for Yale School of Medicine and chief digital health officer for Yale New Haven Health System, to discuss how AI and other digital tools can be part of fixing a broken healthcare system. Harlan reports on lightly regulated compounding pharmacies producing anti-obesity drugs; Howie gives an update on efforts by the FDA and CDC to fight bird flu.

Joshua Sharfstein: Policy and Health
Howie and Harlan are joined by Joshua Sharfstein, a longtime public health official in federal, state, and local government, to discuss the state of the opioid epidemic, lessons from the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, and our readiness for a bird flu outbreak. Harlan reports on the summer surge in COVID-19; Howie remembers his mentor Gail Wilensky, a health economist who directed Medicaid and Medicare programs and led many other organizations over a 50-year career.

Kate Goodrich: A Better Model for Care
Howie and Harlan are joined by Kate Goodrich, chief medical officer for Humana and a former Medicare staffer, to discuss the improvements in care and outcomes that result when providers are paid for each patient, not each service. Harlan looks at the challenge of payment for AI-based diagnostic tools; Howie asks if free tuition at Johns Hopkins medical school will address the real problems in medical education.