These days, health is a lot more than Googling the latest medical breakthrough or seeing your doctor. Staying healthy when you are well and getting healthy when you are sick means knowing how to interact and navigate an incredibly complex healthcare system.
What's Health Got to Do with It? is a weekly talk program that examines the intersection of healthcare and daily life. It helps guide listeners through an increasingly convoluted medical bureaucracy.
Whether it's accessing treatment, sustaining good health, finding the right doctor, getting insurance coverage, or seeking a cure, literally, everyone has a compelling healthcare story, and What's Health Got to Do with It? will give voice to these stories, which extend beyond medical science and the healthcare system, and extend into our daily lives.
The hour-long program is interview-based, with listener engagement via calls, emails, and social media, which will allow for the host and production team to access and create a community that is locally (and sometimes beyond)-focused and solution-driven on healthcare problems. Each episode will be based on a topic or theme, which will be examined from multiple angles.
What's Health Got to Do with It? is hosted by Dr. Joe Sirven, an engaging practicing physician journalist who is an expert in all facets of healthcare.
Dr. Joe Sirven is a Cuban American, bilingual experienced medical journalist. He has served as the chief medical contributor for NBC Latino, the English language website for Latinos by NBC News. He has previously served as the Medical commentator for KJZZ Radio in Phoenix, the NPR affiliate for Phoenix Arizona, and continues to provide commentary for KTBS TV in Shreveport, Louisiana. He is the immediate previous editor-in-chief of epilepsy.com, the world's largest consumer website dedicated to seizures and epilepsy with more than a million web visits per month. He is currently editor-in-chief of the American Academy of Neurology's consumer publication Brain & Life en Español and on the editorial board of Brain & Life.
Dr. Sirven is a practicing neurologist who has published extensively on epilepsy and its treatment. He is passionate about medical education - he has edited seven textbooks and is Chair of Education for the American Academy of Neurology. He directs the Neurology course for Mayo Medical School, Florida campus, and for Dartmouth Medical School, Mayo Florida campus. He is also a professor at Arizona State University where he teaches Science of Health Care Delivery undergraduate and master's students at Arizona State.
What's Health Got to Do with It? is provided in part by the American Brain Foundation, Neurelis and Rethreaded Inc..
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What's Health Got to Do with It?As 2025 comes to a close, we reflect on the state of American health care and how decisions made in congressional chambers trickle down to exam rooms. -
What's Health Got to Do with It?Our panel of medical experts discuss the biggest health headlines of the month from federal changes in vaccine guidance to the effect of sleep on longevity to the reinvention of weight loss drugs. -
What's Health Got to Do with It?In a season that inspires hope, we unwrap stories of devotion — from a trailblazing children’s hospital to a patient encounter that shaped the career of a transplant nurse and inspired her advocacy work.
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What's Health Got to Do with It?On this week’s program, an Alzheimer’s diagnosis met with courage, curiosity and determination to change the “D” word. Then, after competing in multiple marathons and ironmans, a Navy veteran faces his toughest challenger yet — and every second counts. -
What's Health Got to Do with It?Dr. Joe Sirven and his panel of medical experts discuss this month's biggest health headlines, from a deadly listeria outbreak to the FDA’s removal of "black box" warnings on hormone replacement therapies. -
What's Health Got to Do with It?How music can reshape the brain in ways words cannot, and how art helped a Parkinson's patient steady her hands and connect to healing.
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What's Health Got to Do with It?When illness tests the body, can imagination heal the spirit? We discover a place where science connects to the soul. Then, surprising ways isolation affects the brain, and how gratitude and connection can restore it. -
What's Health Got to Do with It?A former NIH director discusses the urgent need to put public health above party lines. Then, a pancreatic cancer survivor reflects on his diagnosis and the complex Whipple procedure that saved his life. -
What's Health Got to Do with It?Headaches, blurred vision and high blood pressure — how a routine checkup became a race against time for an expectant mother. Then, the toll of gun violence on American children. -
What's Health Got to Do with It?Dr. Joe Sirven and his panel of medical experts discuss this month's biggest health care headlines, from shifting trends in obesity rates to inflammation’s effect on aging.
