Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice and community engagement, and communications professionals Stephanie Desmon and Lindsay Smith Rogers host the podcast “Public Health On Call,” produced through Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health. Rogers recently answered our questions about the podcast, which marked its fifth year in March.

How do you choose topics?

The news drives a lot of what we do. But we’ve picked up topics from questions that listeners have emailed us or that other folks have asked. At first the only topic was the coronavirus. I think the podcast’s first year was so successful because we were putting out information [about COVID-19] that no one else was putting out at the time. And it’s grown from there. We’ve covered topics like measles, cannabis policy, mammograms — on and on.

How are you able to get such great guests?

Over the last few decades, Dr. Sharfstein has worked with just about everyone in public health. For instance, we had an idea for an episode on the huge staff cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services. We discussed it at 10:30 a.m., and by 2 p.m. I was recording an interview with David Fleming, who was deputy director for science and public health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the early 2000s and has had a long career in public health.

So many unscripted podcasts run long. What do you see as the ideal length?

Sometimes we’ll do a special episode that’s long, but mainly we stick as close to 15 minutes as we can. There’s a weekly meeting where we bring together the multimedia team, the co-hosts, all of us, and we plan the week’s episodes — up to four each week. All told, with mixing and promotion, probably five or six hours goes into every 15-minute episode.

What do you know about the podcast’s audience?

We know our listenership is strong. Since we launched, we’ve had more than 100,000 unique listeners and almost 11.5 million downloads. And right now, between Apple and Spotify, the podcast has almost 40,000 subscribers.

What draws listeners to “Public Health on Call?”

I think people have a lot of questions about public health. What’s safe? How concerned should I be about bird flu? It’s worth mentioning that our coverage of public health isn’t limited to just people from Johns Hopkins. We’re really talking about public health writ large.

Listen to “Public Health on Call” wherever you get your podcasts.