On Monday, Dr. Wen spoke at the Sixth Annual Lundberg Institute Lecture, “Public Health and Physician Activism: Lessons from Baltimore,” in San Francisco, California. The Lundberg Institute is a non-profit dedicated to creating a better patient-physician relationship by providing resources to promote evidence-informed health care that focus on patient centeredness. The Lundberg Institute intends for physicians to improve their skills in listening, oral and written communications, information technology, shared decision-making, and transparency in order to patients to receive the best care.

Last week, the Baltimore City Health Department launched the city’s new Youth Health and Wellness Strategy, a comprehensive citywide 5-year plan for achieving Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies, Healthy Communities and Healthy Systems, Baltimore City will continue to tackle systemic issues of poverty, trauma, and structural racism that Baltimore City’s 150,000 youth face.

On Thursday evening, BCHD hosted a community conversation at Dunbar High School with Baltimore City Public Schools and partners across the city where we provided an overview of what this strategy means communities and how we can work together to improve the lives of Baltimore's youth.

Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen joins Marc Steiner in-studio. 

It is a cold, wet, dreary Saturday morning on the first day of October. It's the kind of morning most people would rather spend stretched out in bed, or maybe sipping a cup of coffee and daydreaming about nothing much in particular. But at 9 a.m., inside the Baltimore War Memorial, Baltimore City Health Commissioner Leana Wen is addressing a crowd of about 50 people at something called "Solutions Summit: Behavioral Health Forum." Organized by the nonprofit Open Society Institute, the event is a way for citizens to come together and work toward solutions to the city's lingering structural problems.

This morning, she's talking about addiction deaths, and how they have increased in part due to fentanyl, an opioid that can be added to any number of drugs. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is up to 100 times more powerful than morphine and 30 to 50 times more powerful than heroin.

Wen speaks with passion and authority, and the room is silent as she makes her case about the urgency of this situation.

"The number of people dying…has increased by tenfold—not 10 percent—10 times in the last two years because this medication fentanyl has gotten mixed with heroin, with cocaine, and people don't know that it's there," Wen says. "There is so much work ahead of us but now we have to focus on saving lives."