Complicating The Narrative

This is a revisit of an episode originally published in September 2025.

How can we capture complex social phenomena impacting health in research?

Dr. Maria Glymour, Professor and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health, has focused her research on the social factors influencing dementia and cognitive function in old age.

Salma and Maria analyze the dementia research landscape and discuss the key elements of the research process to capture complex social phenomena affecting health outcomes. From asking the right questions, to identifying appropriate methods and data, thinking about who the evidence will be useful for, and understanding the potential influences of funders, the conversation explores how research can help change policies. Maria breaks down the differences between causal inference, descriptive research, and associational research, using examples from her own work. She illustrates how these methodological distinctions depend on the questions that want to be answered and the intended audience.

Maria also reflects on some of the main questions for PhD applicants to ask themselves and emphasizes the need for applicants to highlight the specific passions that make their applications unique. As she puts it: “How much of your essay do you think anyone else could write?”

Listen to discover how you can apply these principles to your own work and make a meaningful impact in health scholarship, regardless of the step you are at in your career.

Useful resources:

Berkman, Lisa F., Ichiro Kawachi, and M. Maria Glymour (eds), Social Epidemiology, 2 edn (New York, 2014; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Mar. 2015), https://doi.org/10.1093/med/978019537....

Glymour, M. What to look for in an epidemiology PhD program: 1. top priorities. LinkedIn. Published October 12, 2017. Accessed August 28, 2025. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-l...

Glymour, M. What to look for in an epidemiology PhD program: 2. Epi in a Medical School or a School of Public Health? LinkedIn. Published October 20, 2017. Accessed August 28, 2025. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-l...

Glymour, M. What to look for in a PhD program: 3. Will an interdisciplinary program make you an intellectual leader or an isolated dilettante? LinkedIn. Published November 11, 2017. Accessed August 28, 2025. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-l...

Glymour, M. Epidemiology and why I love it: some advice for people considering graduate school. LinkedIn. Published August 5, 2018. Accessed August 28, 2025. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/epidem...

Glymour, M. Public Health Graduate Programs: What To Look For. Published October 9, 2023. Accessed August 28, 2025. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/public...

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla
Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras and Zachary Linhares
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri
Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2...

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

How can we support people age safely and with dignity in their own homes? 

Dr. Susy Stark, is a Professor at the Washington University in St Louis School of Public Health. As an occupational therapist and community-based researcher, her work focuses on helping adults with chronic conditions and functional decline age successfully in place by using tailored environmental support and self-management strategies to prevent falls.  

In this episode, Dr. Stark joins Salma to speak about the overlooked role of the home environment in shaping health outcomes for older adults. Drawing on decades of clinical experience and research, Susy explains why falls are not inevitable consequences of aging, but largely preventable events shaped by the interaction between bodies, environments, and behavior. The conversation unpacks the demographic shift from an aging “pyramid” to an aging “column,” the misalignment between how homes are built and how people age, and why nearly half of all falls occur inside the home. 

At the center of the discussion is the Home Hazard Removal Program (HARP), an evidence-based intervention that pairs individualized home assessments with shared decision-making and hands-on implementation. Susy describes how modest environmental changes like improved lighting, handrails, and non-slip surfaces, can reduce fall rates by 38% while generating a positive return on investment for the health system. 

Beyond intervention design, the episode explores why community-based care remains underfunded in the U.S., what it takes to translate evidence into policy, and why aging should be understood not as a niche issue, but as a collective future we are all moving toward and must all help address comprehensively.  

A conversation about prevention, autonomy, and why supporting older adults is not just compassionate, it is essential for the sustainability of our health systems. 

Useful resources: 

Stark S, Keglovits M, Somerville E, et al. Home Hazard Removal to Reduce Falls Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Netw Open. 2021;4(8):e2122044. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.22044 

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla 
Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras  
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri  
Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/  

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

How does research actually shape policy and when is evidence "good enough" to act on? 

In this episode, Salma Abdalla is joined by Dr Kathryn Backholer, Professor of Public Health Policy and co-director of the Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition (GLOBE) at Deakin University in Australia. Kathryn’s work focuses on building evidence that decision-makers can use, starting with policy problems that need solving and working backward to generate the right kind of data. 

The conversation explores what it takes for research to move from journals into real policy action. Drawing on Kathryn’s work monitoring how gambling, alcohol, and junk food companies target young people online, they examine the tension between rigor and timeliness, the role of well-timed pilot studies, and why waiting for “perfect” evidence can sometimes mean missing critical policy windows. 

The episode is anchored in a live policy moment: Australia’s recent decision to delay social media access for people under 16. Kathryn discusses how evidence informed this world-first policy, what it can — and cannot — address, and how her team is now evaluating its effectiveness and unintended consequences. 

This episode is a candid look at the research-to-policy pipeline, the trade-offs involved in population-level decision-making, and what public health researchers can learn about designing work that is both rigorous and consequential. 

 

 Useful resources:  

Livingstone H. Australia has banned social media for kids under 16. How does it work? BBC News. January 22, 2026. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo

Backholer K, Pathirana NL. #DigitalYouth. Deakin University; 2024. https://iht.deakin.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/153/2024/06/Digital-Youth-brief-Final-2.pdf 

 

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla 
Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras 
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri 
Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/ 

 

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

Does public health belong to people with a specific perspective, or is it—as the term implies—for the public at large? 

Today’s episode is different. Dean Sandro Galea, Dean and Distinguished Professor at WashU School of Public Health, returns to the podcast to discuss the Purple Public Health Project (PPHP), a new initiative he is launching with Salma. The PPHP aims to start a conversation about how public health thinks, acts, and communicates so we can reach people of all stripes, ideologies, and perspectives. Using concrete examples, they discuss whether public health should be grounded in science or values, or both. They also explore what each one of them thinks success would look like.  

Join Salma and Dean Galea as they commit to this process of thinking rigorously in public about public health and contribute to shifting the thinking of the field. 

Useful resources:  

Abdalla S, Galea S. Introducing the Purple Public Health Project. Complicating the Narrative. January 24, 2026. https://salmaabdalla.substack.com/p/introducing-the-purple-public-health

Healthier Futures Lab. www.healthierfutureslab.org 

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla 
Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras 
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri 
Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/ 

 

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

In global health, evidence, authority, and distance are often deeply entangled. 

Dr. Seye Abimbola is Professor of Health Systems at the School of Public Health, University of Sydney. He is a leading voice in debates on decolonizing global health, with scholarship focused on health systems governance and epistemic injustice. He is also the founding editor-in-chief of BMJ Global Health and the author of The Foreign Gaze (2024). 

In this episode, Seye joins Salma to discuss his collection of essays interrogating the epistemological foundations of the field currently known as global health—and to reflect on what it might mean to reshape that field. Together, they examine who gets to define global health problems and solutions, noting how the field is often shaped by distant, powerful actors rather than those closest to the contexts in which interventions are meant to work. 

They also explore how knowledge is generated and valued in global health, questioning the routine elevation of randomized controlled trials as the gold standard for complex social interventions, unpacking why author affiliations can obscure deeper issues of “gaze” versus “pose,” and discussing how local practices are frequently overlooked or rendered illegible as evidence.

Throughout the episode, Seye and Salma invite listeners to reflect on positionality, take complexity seriously, and imagine what the “field formerly known as global health” could become. 

 

Useful resources:  

Abimbola S. The Foreign Gaze: Essays on Global Health. IRD éditions; 2024. 

Abimbola, S. (2011). Seye Abimbola: David Cameron, homosexuality, and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. The BMJ Opinion. https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2011/12/08/seye-abimbola-david-cameron-homosexuality-and-hivaids-in-sub-saharan-africa/ 

Abimbola, S. (2019). The foreign gaze: Authorship in academic global health. BMJ Global Health, 4(5), e002068. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2019-002068  

 

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla 
Editor: Catalina Melendez Contreras 
Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri 
Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/ 

 

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.