NIH Pioneer Podcaster Hangs Up the Headphones
Episode # 56
Uploaded: March 10, 2011
Running Time: 5:38
SCHMALFELDT: From the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, this is CLINICAL CENTER RADIO.
I was taking the METRO to work one morning in early 2006, and something caught my eye. It seemed like everyone on the train was listening to an iPod or some other sort of MP3 player. For over a year at that point, I had been part of a crew doing weekly audio updates for the NIH Radio News service. As I looked at all these people with ear buds in their heads, I started thinking like the former private sector radio broadcaster I had been before coming to work for the government.
Here was a captive audience. And if 1 out of every 100 people on this train had an interest in medical research, we had a product ready made to deliver to them, to listen to at their own convenience, whenever and wherever they wanted.
And it was five years ago from today, March 10, 2006, that the first NIH Research Radio podcast hit the Internet.
(Sound clip from first podcast)
We used the podcast to talk about the importance of clinical trials in the search for new and better treatments for disease. And in my research on the subject, I found a clinical trial that fit a condition I've been diagnosed with since 2000. It wasn't at the NIH, but that didn't keep us from podcasting about my brain surgery for Parkinson's disease on NIH Research Radio.
(Sound clip from DBS Podcast)
Since late 2007, NIH Research Radio has been directed by the capable hands of Joe Balintfy and Wally Akinso. In September 2008, I reported to work at the NIH Clinical Center, where we began podcasting "Clinical Center Radio." Since 2006, podcasting has caught on like a grass fire on a dry, windy prairie. Everyone is doing it. And for the past five years, it has been my honor and pleasure to be the host of NIH Research Radio and Clinical Center Radio. And now, because of the advancement of my Parkinson's disease, I am retiring from the Federal Government as of March 12. I'm leaving Clinical Center Radio and all our podcasting properties, including the Clinical Center Grand Rounds podcast in the care of Nicole Martino. She'll do a great job.
One final sentiment I'd like to share. Clinical Research at any level is impossible without volunteers, regular folks who want to do what they can to help researchers and scientists scout for cures and new treatments. I hope if you have a medical condition, you will consider checking out clinicaltrials.gov. to see if there is an ongoing clinical trial that might fit your schedule. And we can always use healthy volunteers. If you'd like to know more about any of the 1,500 clinical trials and studies performed here, log on to http://clinicalcenter.nih.gov. From America's Clinical Research Hospital, this has been CLINICAL CENTER RADIO. In Bethesda, Maryland, I'm Bill Schmalfeldt at the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
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