UConn Health is venturing into the podcast frontier, with the debut of the UConn Health Pulse Podcast on Thursday, Feb. 6. 

In the premiere episode, “Eggs: OK or No Way,” Brad Biskup, physician assistant from the Pat and Jim Calhoun Cardiology Center’s Lifestyle Medicine Program, breaks down the evolving correlation between dietary cholesterol, blood cholesterol, and heart disease risk.

“We’re hoping to present a level of informative dialogue that we often can’t really get into through our existing communication channels,” says producer Chris DeFrancesco ’95 (CLAS) from University Relations. “We are fortunate to have access to many of medicine’s brightest minds here at UConn Health – Who better to share their expertise about topical health subjects?”

The intended audiences are both within the UConn Health community and beyond, with a goal of providing health information on a broad range of topics to the public. DeFrancesco and Carolyn Pennington from Multimedia Services will serve as the primary hosts of the podcast. Both worked in broadcast journalism before joining UConn Health.

“Our intent is to cover topics of interest and showcase our experts in doing so,” DeFrancesco says. “Carolyn and I will do the interviews together whenever we can, and there occasionally will be other voices too, such as Courtney Chandler from the dental school. We’re aiming for one episode a month to start, and perhaps eventually, more frequently than that.”

Podcasts, which can be downloaded or streamed from a number of platforms to multiple devices, have been growing in popularity as a medium for news and information as well as in-depth storytelling. More than 62 million Americans are weekly podcast listeners, according to a 2019 report by Edison Research, with the number growing every year for the past decade. The success of the UConn 360 Podcast, which debuted from Storrs two years ago, helped pave the way for the concept at UConn Health.

Dr. Andy Agwunobi, CEO and executive vice president for health affairs, formally announced the new podcast in the UConn Health Pulse newsletter for faculty, staff and students, encouraging all to “take a few moments to give it a listen, support this new venture, and perhaps discover some things you didn’t know about your colleagues and what they do.” 

To learn more about, subscribe to, or share the UConn Health Pulse Podcast, visit uconnhealthpulse.podbean.com.