What if we let the data guide West Coast healthcare? Could we better address our mental health and addiction crisis? In this episode, data scientist Abie Flaxman breaks down the top health issues for working-age adults on the West Coast—and why our health systems keep missing the mark.
You might think cancer or heart disease top the charts. But in Washington, Oregon, and California, the leading killers of working-age adults are drug overdose and suicide. In this revealing episode, Greg Amrofell talks with Dr. Abie Flaxman—one of the architects of the Global Burden of Disease—about what’s really harming West Coast health. From despair-driven deaths to broken public health infrastructure, the episode explores what data reveals, what state leaders can do, and why we can’t count on federal help. It's not just a health crisis. It's a crisis of policy, prevention, and purpose.
Highlights
- Why drug overdoses and suicides top the charts for working-age West Coasters
- How public health data from IHME can guide smarter state policies
- The hidden burden of Alzheimer's in Washington and California
- Why the Affordable Care Act mattered—and why it wasn't enough
- How state-level healthcare experiments can lead national reform
- What happens when the federal government guts public health budgets
- Why universities may need to take matters into their own hands to defend science
Guest Bio:
Dr. Abraham D. Flaxman is an Associate Professor of Global Health and Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). He specializes in developing computational methods to measure health metrics and evaluate health interventions. Dr. Flaxman earned his BS in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his PhD in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization from Carnegie Mellon University.
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What is Pacific Time: The "What if...?" of West Coast Independence?
What if the West Coast could chart its own course? What if our innovations, values, and creative energy weren’t diluted by national politics? What if West Coast sovereignty was a dream and a strategy?
Welcome to Pacific Time, where host Greg Amrofell—a relentless provocateur who has lived his whole life up and down the West Coast—invites you to imagine bold solutions. We explore how to make the West Coast better if it's undistilled by the faltering American experiment..
Each episode features meaningful conversations with thought leaders, innovators, policymakers, and visionaries. We’ll tackle the big questions of sovereignty, and self-determination, imagining and sharpening the West Coast’s cultural identity, economic potential, and environmental leadership.
Pacific Time is for the intellectually curious, the disillusioned optimists, and the dreamers who refuse to accept that status quo in America is the best we can do on the West Coast. Here, we cut through the partisan noise and welcome transformative ideas from a broad spectrum of iconoclasts. We ask how we can work together to elevate the West Coast and get past the narratives that marginalize us “Out West” on the “Left Coast.”
It’s time to reimagine what’s possible. Let’s ask, “What if…” and find out.