HealthMatters podcast host Karen Jacobs (Sargent’79) (right) interviews occupational therapy and aging expert Anne Escher (Sargent’08) (left), a Sargent clinical assistant professor.

Wellness

New Sargent College Podcast Examines School’s Far-Reaching Influence

HealthMatters is designed to showcase cutting-edge research by faculty, students, and alumni

As a longtime Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences faculty member, Karen Jacobs is well-versed in the groundbreaking research and clinical work being done by the school’s faculty, staff, and students, from dyslexia to cerebral palsy to occupational therapy students’ pro bono work with prison inmates. But the clinical professor of occupational therapy wanted to bring that work to a broader public audience, so she took matters into her own hands.

As the college’s new associate dean for digital learning and innovation, Jacobs (Sargent’79) has created a new, 20-minute podcast, HealthMatters@BUSargent, designed to provide a window into the college’s rich intellectual life. As host, she interviews faculty, students, and alumni about a wide range of issues, from nutrition to the latest thinking about everyday health problems like back pain and joint pain. 

“It’s about everybody’s work and for listeners to really understand what our college is like,” Jacobs says. “I think Sargent College is the best-kept secret on campus. It’s a gem.”

Jacobs had originally planned to produce episodes twice a month, but the response has been so great and has generated so many ideas that she’s found enough material to release a new podcast weekly. In addition to groundbreaking research in the fields of occupational and physical therapy, speech, language, and hearing sciences, and nutrition, Sargent is a hub of discussion and research on health outcome disparities related to gender, wealth, and zip code, as well as the chronic challenges that come with aging and with developmental issues in children. 

“When people think about healthcare, they are usually concerned with challenges of acute care associated with resolution of disease or injury. But each of us readily recognizes that our own health status is determined by many large and long-standing issues,” says Christopher A. Moore, dean of Sargent College. “Dean Jacobs’ podcast highlights Sargent’s foundational work in discovering the mechanics and structures underlying these conditions, and the exciting progress we are making in resolving them.”

The podcast’s inaugural episode featured a conversation with fast-rising star in the field of speech language pathology Tyler Perrachione, a Sargent assistant professor and director of the Communication Neuroscience Research Laboratory, and Gabrielle-Ann Torre, a postdoctoral fellow in the speech, language, and hearing sciences department and in Perrachione’s lab, about uncovering the myth of dyslexia. Perrachione describes his National Institutes of Health–funded research as seeking to better understand the origins of dyslexia and the role of evolution in brain development.

“Reading is technology humans have invented really over the last hundreds of thousands of years; it hasn’t had time for evolution to select for brains with good readers or poor readers,” he says. “Can we see something in the structure of the brain that tells us who will and will not struggle with reading development?”

Collaboration with Unleashed PR

Another episode, featuring Shelley M. Brown (SPH’07), a Sargent clinical assistant professor of health sciences, highlighted the college’s International Service Learning Program, which offers dozens of Sargent students the opportunity to travel to developing countries to better understand some of the healthcare challenges they face.  

“You’re learning and absorbing as much as you can in two weeks, living in someone’s home, often in the heat,” says Brown, who cofounded the program in 2011. “I think you cannot leave a trip like that and not have a different perspective on what it’s like to be a human living in that environment and navigating the world.”

Among upcoming podcast guests are Kathryn Webster, a Sargent clinical assistant professor of physical therapy and athletic training, who studies chronic ankle instability and effective interventions; Clare Murphy (Sargent’19), a Sargent nutritionist and disordered eating specialist; and Anne Escher (Sargent’08), a Sargent clinical assistant professor of occupational therapy, who helped her students launch an occupational therapy program for inmates and corrections officers at a Massachusetts correctional facility. 

An accomplished occupational therapist specializing in ergonomics, Jacobs says that in planning the podcast, she reached out to students from Unleashed PR, the College of Communication student-run public relations agency, for help with editing and producing the show.

Melis Basaran (COM’22), Yuemeng (Nicole) Chen (COM’22), and Yuele Li (COM’20) oversee the weekly production and push the podcast out on various platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Li says the Unleashed team taught themselves how to podcast and that Jacobs was the first professor to reach out and request their help. “It’s harder than I imagined,” Li says of creating a podcast series.

“I am absolutely delighted by the quality of the work they’ve been doing,” Jacobs says.

Jacobs also recruited Marial Williams (Sargent’21), a graduate student studying occupational therapy, to compose the podcast’s opening music. Violinist Williams hopes to help treat musicians with injuries, disabilities, or chronic pain. She says the podcast offers the chance to step back and examine Sargent’s larger role and meaning.

“Sargent is full of diversely talented individuals, and there is so much potential to be uncovered,” Williams says. “We are all so focused on our degrees, doing our research, and looking forward toward our individual goals that sometimes we don’t get to fully appreciate all that Sargent and the people in Sargent have to offer. I think this podcast gives us the chance to do that.”

HealthMatters isn’t Jacobs’ first foray into podcasting. Since 2018, she has hosted Lifestyle by Design, a spin-off from a cable access show she hosted for years in Brookline that focuses on everyday health and well-being.

She says she plans on eventually broadening the scope of the new podcast, using it as a catalyst to foster collaboration between Sargent and other colleges on campus. But for now, she says the goal is simply to get the word out.

“We’re a small little school compared with the rest of BU,” Jacobs says. “But we have so much going on here, and it’s making a difference.”

Have an idea for a HealthMatters@BUSargent podcast? Email Karen Jacobs at kjacobs@bu.edu.