Health Equity

Medical mythbuster Joel Bervell, MD, on how to teach kids about medicine and address misinformation

| 13 Min Read

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AMA Update

Medical mythbuster Joel Bervell, MD, on how to teach kids about medicine and address misinformation

Feb 3, 2025

Is social media useful in medicine? What is health misinformation? How is social media impacting health care? How to address medical misinformation online?

Science communicator and medical mythbuster, Joel Bervell, MD, discusses what motivated him to become a doctor and shares details for his new STEM show on YouTube "The Doctor Is In," which is designed to inspire young children to pursue careers in health care. Dr. Bervell also shares insights on how social media is changing medicine, and encourages other physicians to follow their passions in creating impactful content. American Medical Association Chief Experience Officer Todd Unger hosts.

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Speaker

  • Joel Bervell, MD, science communicator, medical mythbuster, host, "The Doctor Is In

Advancing public health

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Dr. Bervell: One day be able to say, "I also want to be like Dr. Joel," and actually be a doctor or a nurse or whatever they want to be within the STEM field. So this, I feel like has started from an early age. It's really about the animation for me and being able to allow students to be what they currently can't see. 

Unger: Hello and welcome to the AMA Update video and podcast. Today we're talking with an AMA member and social media influencer, Dr. Joel Burvell, about his latest project to educate kids about medicine and inspire them to become physicians. He's calling us today from Portland, Oregon. I'm Todd Unger, AMA's chief experience officer in Chicago. Dr. Burvell, welcome back. 

Dr. Bervell: Thanks for having me, Todd. Feels good to be back. 

Unger: Well, you describe yourself as a science communicator and medical mythbuster. You've got an online following of over 1.2 million people, and you host The Dose podcast with The Commonwealth Fund, and you just graduated from medical school. Kind of a slacker here. Dr. Bervell, how do you do all of this at the same time? 

Dr. Bervell: Honestly, I always say it's about finding your passions. I think all the things that I'm doing right now are in line. My social media, I talk about health equity, which is one of my passions. My podcast, I talk about health equity, and so that makes it really easy. 

And then the TV show that I'm working on right now. It's a digital TV show on YouTube, and it's all about inspiring the next generation of underrepresented kids in medicine. And so for me, it's all in line. A lot of the work that I'm doing is talking about medicine and figuring out how to translate it on a larger scale, which I think for me, just makes it a lot easier to make sure that I'm not burnt out, but really finding my purpose and walking my passion. 

Unger: Well, last time we spoke was about your social media presence and what you're doing there. And now you mentioned your new project that you just successfully funded on Kickstarter. We want to find out more about it. Tell us more. 

Dr. Bervell: Absolutely. So, super excited to announce that we launched a Kickstarter for an online digital TV show called The Doctor Is In. The whole purpose was to create short, 2-to-3-minute episodes online on YouTube that could inspire the next generation of students, where we talk about things like, why do people lose their teeth, why do we get hungry, why is it important to wash our hands. 

And of course, infusing some health equity topics, like how do skin conditions look like on darker skin tones versus lighter skin tones, and why does that matter. So introducing really crucial STEM topics to young kids. Our audience is going to be a target of basically 5 to 9 years old, introducing these concepts at an early age. 

We launched on Kickstarter last year with a goal of $60,000, and we met that goal, which was incredible. And then YouTube actually came on and said, we love the project that you're doing so much, we're donating an additional $50,000 to help you reach your goal of actually creating a full season. 

So next week, we'll actually be going into Virginia and filming the actual show, which I'm really excited for. But just to give you an idea of what it looks like, you can think about Blue's Clues meets Bill Nye, the Science Guy

So it's live action plus—So I'll be live action actually in person. But then Leland, who's a five-year-old who loves going to the doctor, is an animated character. And along with my magical medical supplies, Sammy the Stethoscope, Zeta the X-ray and Otto the Handbag, we talk about all those topics I mentioned previously. 

And so it's going to be a fun show that's really about getting kids inspired, getting them interested, and really creating and inspiring the next generation of health care professionals.

Unger: Now I know this is a project that you've been working on for a while. What was the actual inspiration behind it? 

Dr. Bervell: This has been on my mind for years, truly. Growing up, I loved animation. One of my favorite TV shows was called Static Shock, and it was about a superhero who by day, was a was a student, but by night, was Static Shock, going around saving the world. 

Definitely not a superhero, but I honestly saw myself a lot in his story. And I think for me, I was inspired to want to do more, be more, because of the animation that I saw. And so, I always told myself that I wanted to start some type of animated show for the next generation. 

I think animation has a special way of allowing it to touch people in ways to be able to let themselves see them in another character. What I hope is Leland is someone who people can project onto to say, I want to ask these same questions Leland is asking to Dr. Joel, and then one day be able to say, I also want to be like Dr. Joel and actually be a doctor or a nurse or whatever they want to be within the STEM field. 

So this, I feel like has started from an early age. It's really about the animation for me and being able to allow students to be what they currently can't see. 

Unger: Now you mentioned YouTube made a big donation. It's somewhat eclipsed the one that I made to your Kickstarter, but I'd like to think that I'm part of this. You've met your funding goal now. You mentioned you're about to go start shooting. 

I think I'm just ... I guess my question is, you've been kind of a one-man show on social to a certain extent. What's kind of the next evolution here in terms of working with a team to kind of bring this project to life? 

Dr. Bervell: Yeah, I think to a degree, actually, I haven't been quite a one-man show. I think my social media might show that. But I thankfully work with—I have a manager, I have an agent who really helped me. 

And with this show, actually right now, I have a whole team called Ad Astra Media. And so, they've done this work for a long time by putting out comic books that are about some representation, have worked with NASA and a lot of other STEM organizations to try and get representation into comic books, digital media and animation. 

I first got connected to Dr. Jose Morey, who founded Ad Astra Media, and actually is a radiologist, and so also within medicine. I think that's what attracted me to them, as well. The fact that they have people that are within medicine that are still doing these creative works. 

But I think working with a team on this project has been incredible, because I think when you're alone or just social media specifically, when I'm only making videos, I don't get to often see the other ways that I could be expanding. But working with Ad Astra Media has shown me just how far we can take this from even beyond online, to creating partners in unlikely spaces. 

So I've loved working with a team, specifically people that understand this kind of landscape of both being and practicing in medicine, while at the same time, making sure that they're inspiring the next generation, having a mission, having a mission-filled organization that really wants to make a difference for the future generation. 

Unger: I love that you're building your own franchise. It's your own, you know, property to a certain extent, and it sounds like you've really got a great team. Meanwhile, you're also continuing to share medical myth busting videos on your social media channels. What are the big issues that you're focused on lately, and how come? 

Dr. Bervell: Yeah. I've continued to really talk about race-based medicine. And so, the way that we have these medical algorithms in health care that continue to use race in ways that maybe sometimes don't make sense. 

And so, I've continued to uncover different ways, whether it's UTI calculators that continue to use this, or even prenatal testing that continues to use it. I think those have been two of my new videos that resonated a lot with people. 

I also have been trying to really amplify the stories of individuals who've talked about their own experiences at the doctor, so that physicians who follow me, or even medical students, understand kind of the fear that some patients may have when going to the doctor. 

One of the ones I recently shared was about a mother who took her daughter to the hospital because she felt like she was showing signs of puberty at an age that was too young. In medicine, unfortunately, it's thought that Black girls and Latina girls go through puberty earlier. 

And so, when this mother took her daughter to the doctors, they said it was actually normal. And this mother had to fight, actually, to say, "I don't think this is normal for my daughter. Is it possible to get an additional test?" 

It turned out she did have other things going on, and so it was a good thing that she actually stepped forward. But it was a little warning in my video that I talked to medical professionals to be cautious about how much weight we assign to race and race-based medicine when deciding to see a patient or go down further testing for a specific patient. 

So continuing to talk about issues like that, amplifying stories, and making sure that especially in these next four years, where it's important to really make sure that we're talking about diversity, equity, inclusion, that there's a place online where people can reach that information. 

Unger: Now, Dr, Bervell, you've been creating these videos for years now, and I'm curious, over the course of this period, what has changed? Obviously, medical misinformation, disinformation, the rise of that. What are the other kind of key trends that you're noticing? 

Dr. Bervell: Yeah. Medical misinformation, disinformation is rising. I think there's been a mainstreaming of it, as well. And so we think about things like vaccines and vaccine hesitancy that's continued to get worse over time. 

I think social media can provide some ways to fix that. Any parent, if you ask them why they're hesitant about these types of things, they'll say, I want to keep my kids safe. And so I think that means there's an information gap for parents understanding why vaccines are safe. 

I think when it comes to race-based medicine, things have changed. Things like the eGFR equation, which originally used race, no longer includes it. Pulse oximeters, which are devices that go on your finger, measure your blood oxygen saturation, have been known to not work well in darker skin tones. 

Just this year, in January 2025, the FDA has released some draft guidance on how pulse oximeter makers and also physicians that use them, should think about them if they have these disparities. And there's other conversations going on like this, as well. 

So thankfully, over the past five years, there's been some changes, both from the kind of race-based medicine aspect to medical devices, to the ways that people are using social media in order to discuss changes in medicine. But there's still a long way to go. 

Unger: Now you've got big plans and big things in the works for the coming year. Any advice to the rest of physicians out there who may not have their own animated series about to appear? 

Dr. Bervell: Yeah. I mean, for me, I've just been following my passions. I've been looking at spaces that I wish included, for example, an animated TV show. I wish I had an animated TV show I could have watched that was medically-related when growing up. 

So for physicians that are maybe trying to figure out if they want to get into social media or not, I always say, figure out the things that you wish you had when you were growing up, and there's no reason why you can't create it. 

And to your point before, work with teams to do that, I absolutely would not have been able to do an animated TV show if it wasn't for my incredible team. They're working night and day around the clock. I never even knew how to do a storyboard or any of that. And so, finding a team to make that vision come to life is huge, as well. 

And thankfully, there's a lot of people out there that want to amplify important missions, especially when it comes to medicine. And so, it's just finding the right people that are out there, making sure you're sharing what those goals are, so that the right people can come along, find you and help you get to that end goal. 

Unger: Well, we're really excited for you, Dr. Bervell, thank you so much for joining us. Can't wait to see the premiere of The Doctor Is In on America's largest streaming channel. Did you know that? Even bigger than Netflix. That's YouTube. So we'll talk to you again once the series is on. 

If you found this discussion valuable, you can support more programming like it by becoming an AMA member at ama-assn.org/join. That wraps up today's episode. We'll be back soon with another AMA Update. Be sure to subscribe for new episodes and find all our videos and podcasts at ama-assn.org/podcasts. Thanks for joining us today. Please take care. 


Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this podcast are those of the participants and/or do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the AMA.

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