MCTV Network's Community Voices
Sep 18, 2026 · 28 min · 10 segments
US Common Ground is produced by Dr. Ziggy Kozicki through the facilities of the MCTV Network. In this episode Ziggy talks to Dr. Steven Berkshire about Healthcare.
Steven BerkshireGuestI'm just completing a study of public health agencies in Michigan, and I did research back in 2020 and 2021 during COVID, and now I'm doing a follow-up here in 2025, looking at how have public health agencies recovered or learned from that experience, and surprisingly, We're not prepared for the next one based on my research.
And some people might say, well, what does public health do? And I thought maybe I'd share the 10 essential public health services that we, and public health is kind of invisible because It only comes into usefulness when we see something take place that they couldn't prevent.
They diagnose and investigate health problems and health hazards in the community.
They develop policies and plans to support individual and community health efforts.
They link people to needed personal health services and ensure the provision of healthcare when otherwise unavailable.
They evaluate effectiveness, accessibility, and quality of personal and population health services.
And they do research for new insights and innovative solutions to health problems.
And these services provide a framework for public health to protect and to promote health of all people in all communities.
And one of the things that my research has shown is that after the COVID pandemic and epidemic in this country, we didn't really take the urging of public health officials to invest more in public health.
They're still trying to implement programs that they wanted to start even before COVID.
And many times they serve the underserved population, but they actually provide an umbrella for everybody.
And I'm glad you brought up public health, Steven, because sometimes we look at that big hospital system with the new hospital or the MRIs or whatever, we don't realize that the people that are trying to prevent illness and disease don't get a lot of recognition because when you prevent something and you never see it, you don't really appreciate it as much.
I'm just completing a study of public health agencies in Michigan, and I did research back in 2020 and 2021 during COVID, and now I'm doing a follow-up here in 2025, looking at how have public health agencies recovered or learned from that experience, and surprisingly, We're not prepared for the next one based on my research.
And some people might say, well, what does public health do? And I thought maybe I'd share the 10 essential public health services that we, and public health is kind of invisible because It only comes into usefulness when we see something take place that they couldn't prevent.
They diagnose and investigate health problems and health hazards in the community.
They develop policies and plans to support individual and community health efforts.
They link people to needed personal health services and ensure the provision of healthcare when otherwise unavailable.
They evaluate effectiveness, accessibility, and quality of personal and population health services.
And they do research for new insights and innovative solutions to health problems.
And these services provide a framework for public health to protect and to promote health of all people in all communities.
And one of the things that my research has shown is that after the COVID pandemic and epidemic in this country, we didn't really take the urging of public health officials to invest more in public health.
They're still trying to implement programs that they wanted to start even before COVID.
And many times they serve the underserved population, but they actually provide an umbrella for everybody.
And I'm glad you brought up public health, Steven, because sometimes we look at that big hospital system with the new hospital or the MRIs or whatever, we don't realize that the people that are trying to prevent illness and disease don't get a lot of recognition because when you prevent something and you never see it, you don't really appreciate it as much.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.