Episodes

Aug. 6, 2020

Can Science Speak "Person"?: A Quandary for Dr. Catharine Young

On today’s show, returning champion Dr. Catharine Young, former Senior Director of Science Policy at the Biden Cancer Initiative, and current Executive Director at the SHEPHERD foundation. A human of many hats, she’s also a TED Fellow, Presidential Leadership Scholar, and Doctor of Philosophy with …
Aug. 4, 2020

Stop Innovating and Do Something: TJ Sharpe

On today's show, friend, colleague, fellow young adult cancer survivor, advocate, speaker, blogger, and Stage IV melanoma bald guy, TJ Sharpe. He just celebrated his 8-year cancerversary and — spoiler alert — is still here alive, kicking, and staying just angry enough to keep poking a stick at the …
July 30, 2020

John Gorman: Medicare 101 and Racial Disparities in Healthcare

On today’s show, John Gorman, Founder of the Gorman Health Group, member of the Board of Directors of Henry Ford Health System’s Health Alliance Plan, and the Chairman at Nightingale Partners LLC which — to paraphrase — make things suck a whole less for underserved and economically disadvantaged co…
July 28, 2020

The Accidental Patient Radvocate: Christine Hodgdon

Christine Hodgdon is a globe-trotting, human Fodor conservation biologist turned patient “radvocate” (that would be my neologism for radical advocate) by way of her enduring the loss of her father to rare cancer at the same time of her own Dx of Stage IV Metastatic Cancer AND Thyroid Cancer. Gesund…
July 23, 2020

Find Your Pack: Trevor Maxwell on Creating Man Up to Cancer

On today's show, we welcome Trevor Maxwell. Trevor is a husband, a writer, and a father to two teenage daughters. Two years ago, he was diagnosed with stage four metastatic colon cancer. He is a powerhouse advocate who never envisioned becoming an advocate. But that's how it works, right? You recog…
July 21, 2020

You’ll Pay for This: Julie Croner on the Value of the Patient Experience

On today's show, we welcome Julie Croner, Vice President of the Patient Leader Network at WEGO Health. Julie is a rare disease activist who has been educating and empowering patients for more than a decade with tools to better advocate for themselves and others. She and I met a while ago at one of …
July 16, 2020

Advocates Are Not Born. They Are Made: Lilly Stairs and the "Donut Hole of Patient Access"

Lilly Stairs is the Founder of Patient Authentic, which is exactly as it sounds: a bully pulpit that takes (1) the chocolate that is the health tech sector and (2) the peanut butter that are the nonprofits, and makes the Reeses Peanut Butter cup of social change that puts the patient at the forefro…
July 14, 2020

"Such a Beautiful Thing": Susannah Fox on How 21st Century Patients Find Their Tribes

On today's show, my good friend, long-time partner-in-crime advocate, and Princess Leia Jedi Master of Health Tech, Susannah Fox, who I consider to be one of the most insightful, introspective and influential unicorn, renaissance human beings around. Susannah was the Chief Technology Officer for th…
July 7, 2020

Overhead: Dan Pallotta on How Great Nonprofits Actually Work

On today's show, we welcome one of the most influential human beings of my career: Dan Pallotta, champion of charity and the entire nonprofit business sector. Dan's take on how we as a culture think about charity the wrong way planted a bedrock philosophy in my head for how I was going to grow and …
June 30, 2020

Fertility Questions? Alice Crisci Has FertilityAnswers

Alice Crisci is a cancer survivor, entrepreneur and activist. She founded MedAnswers to speed consumer access to specialty medicine. Her company's first app product, FertilityAnswers, is the only social network for fertility. FertilityAnswers connects users struggling to conceive with multi-discip…
June 25, 2020

Sarcoma: Sara's Cure and the Race Against Time, Pt 2

In 2016, Sara Woods was diagnosed with Clear Cell Sarcoma, a very rare form of Sarcoma, which is in itself a rare form of cancer. Today in 2020, Sara is 17 years old. (Part 2 of 2)
June 23, 2020

Sarcoma: Sara's Cure and the Race Against Time, Pt 1

In 2016, Sara Woods was diagnosed with Clear Cell Sarcoma, a very rare form of Sarcoma, which is in itself a rare form of cancer. Today in 2020, Sara is 17 years old.
June 16, 2020

COVID-19 and Corporate Leadership: Bruce Cozadd, CEO of Jazz Pharmaceuticals

On today’s show, you’re going to hear from my friend and colleague Bruce Cozadd, Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Jazz Pharmaceuticals. And NO — this was not a conversation about the glamorous Pharmaceutical Industy and all its unique facets — shall we say — worthy of endless discussion. I wanted to…
June 11, 2020

COVID-19 Explainer: Telehealth vs. Infectious Diseases

Dr. Bob Bollinger is the Raj and Kamla Gupta Professor of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) School of Medicine, and he holds joint appointments in International Health at the Johns Hopkins (JH) Bloomberg School of Public Health, and in Community Public Health at the JH Schoo…
June 9, 2020

The Magic Bullet: Dr. Saralyn Mark on COVID-19, Women's Health, and the Immune System

Dr. Saralyn Mark, first and foremost, is a Leader of the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA). She served as the Senior Policy Advisor to the White House Office of Science and Technology during the Obama administration working on the Ebola outbreak in 2014. At the Department of Health and Hu…
June 4, 2020

COVID-19 Explainer: Epidemiologist Dr. Matt Lamb Returns

Matthew Lamb, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor or Epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center. He focuses on infectious disease prevention, treatment, and scale-up. His research focuses on identifying best practices in public health approaches to HIV prevention, service delivery, and treatmen…
June 2, 2020

Stupid Hemophilia: Cancer, Rare Disease, and Steve Guttenberg?

Andrew and I had the pleasure to welcome in-studio Patrick James Lynch, a true renaissance man of many hats who was born of his condition — for a DOUBLE INTERVIEW. If I were to fully divulge all that is Patrick James Lynch, this intro would be longer than the episode.  So in brief, he is one of w…
May 26, 2020

Physician Burnout Explainer: Author Greg Hammer MD on Mindfulness in a Crisis

Dr. Greg Hammer is pediatric intensive care physician, pediatric anesthesiologist and author of the new book “GAIN Without Pain The Happiness Handbook for Health Care Professionals,” which speaks to the philosophies of mindfulness to reduce or mitigate physician burnout — and if there were ever a t…
May 21, 2020

COVID-19 and Lung Cancer: Stigma, Advocacy, and the Latest Research

Matthew and Andrew welcome cancer survivors Nina Beaty, Creator, The EmPat Cancer Project, and Katie Brown, Vice President of Support and Survivorship Programs at The LUNGevity Foundation, to opine on the current status of lung cancer in America and around the world. Issues of stigma, the increasin…
May 19, 2020

This Is Only A Test, Part Two: The Glamorous and Exotic World of Clinical Trials

Peter MacDowell is the Clinical Director of Rochester Dermatologic Surgery and former Co-Director of Clinical Trials Office at the Wilmot Cancer Institute. If that last name sounds familiar, well that’s because Peter is the brother of Andrew MacDowell, my Co-Founder, and COO here at OffScrip Media.…
May 12, 2020

This Is Only A Test, Part One: The Glamorous and Exotic World of Clinical Trials

How does one "Schoolhouse Rock" the interesting world of Clinical Trials? On the show, Matthew and his Co-Founder/COO Andrew MacDowell are joined by Medaptive Health’s co-founders Eric Kroll and Jeremy Block to help break down and de-jargon what exactly is going on in the world of trials, patient a…
May 5, 2020

Relentless: John Tesh on Music, Cancer, Grit, and Faith

Six music Emmys, two Grammy nominations, four gold records, seven Public Television specials and 8 million records sold. After more than three decades as an international entertainer, John Tesh is a living legend. In his new book, "Relentless: Unleashing a Life of Purpose, Grit, and Faith," Tesh de…
May 1, 2020

Dry Mouth Sucks: Matt and Friends Gather to Endorse Moisyn (Sponsored Content)

In this sponsored episode, Matthew sits down with his friends to talk all about the glamorous issue of Xerostomia, otherwise known as "Dry Mouth." This is a problem for millions of Americans, but no one talks about it. Why do...
April 28, 2020

Pay the Patients: It's Time to Compen$ate Patients for Their Experience

Too often, patients are blatantly taken advantage of by Industry who profit off of our stories and our experience dealing with a disease we didn't ask to have. If our experience is so critical to Industry's bottom line, there...