For 24 years, Elizabeth Tracey has been the voice, producer and writer of Johns Hopkins’ Health Newsfeed. The nationally and internationally syndicated radio spot and podcast spotlights the latest, most promising medical research and innovations — from the connection between air pollution and life expectancy to fecal screening tests for colon cancer.

Where do you get your ideas and sources?

I’m on the embargo lists for all of the peer-reviewed medical journals. These are the bastion of evidence-based medicine. I sift through, and then I reach out to the appropriate Johns Hopkins expert, and I say, “Hey, look at this study. What are your thoughts on it? How does it fit into what we know? How will it hopefully change clinical practice?” If the study originated at Johns Hopkins, I interview a study author. Then I create a one-minute spot that is broadcast nationally on CBS Radio and a lot of other outlets nationally and internationally.

How do you decide which topics are worth featuring?

I look at the most prominent journals because it’s hard to get published in those journals. They have a very high standard, relative to peer review and to the full standard of medical research, which is the placebo-controlled, double-blind randomized trial. I also look at how many participants they had in the trial —
the higher the number of people who were in it, the more powerful that data, ostensibly, are.

Can you walk us through a recent podcast?

I just interviewed Johns Hopkins neurologist Ted Dawson about a study from China published in JAMA Neurology looking at the power of skin biopsy to diagnose prion disease. Prions are misfolded proteins — crazy little subviral particles that cause fatal, transmissible brain diseases — and it can be really difficult to diagnose prion disease. This study demonstrated that prions are actually found in the skin, which to me was really a curiosity. So I reached out to Ted to see what he thought, and it turns out that more common neurologic conditions can also be diagnosed with a skin biopsy. In Parkinson’s, for example, we see a misfolded protein known as alpha-synuclein.

How do you translate complex medical topics for a general audience?

A lot of people are really interested in the distillation of medicine into something that is understandable. The question that I always ask myself when I’m creating a script is, “Am I still being absolutely faithful to the communication of the truth?” These topics can have very minute points that get into medical speak, so I try to create the most simple message I can and communicate it in a truthful way that is useful for people, as opposed to the kind of sound and fury that we all are bombarded with in the media all the time. 

Listen to Johns Hopkins’ Health Newsfeed wherever you get your podcasts.