Rovina’s Choice, a New Yorker Documentary humanizing the destruction of USAID. With Dr. Atul Gawande and Dr. Jeremy Faust.
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Yesterday, Dr. Atul Gawande (Surgeon, book author, New Yorker staff writer, and former lead for global health at USAID) joined me to discuss his new short documentary Rovina’s Choice, a highly impactful film that humanizes the toll of the Trump administration’s tragic decision to destroy most of USAID—which, with the stroke of a pen, spelled the deaths of what will likely end up being millions of people around the world.
The Inside Medicine community has been fortunate to have Atul as a frequent guest this year. This conversation is probably our most detailed one yet. We cover what has happened over the last 10 months, some of which is covered in the film.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to have had this conversation, and the chance to share it with you, in hopes that you will share it with others.
Closed captions (㏄) for the above video and a transcript option (📄) can be found beneath the video playback control bar above. A summary with timecodes can be found below.
Just a quick reminder that this is all entirely free for everyone, thanks to the subset of people who upgrade to premium...
Summary & Highlights from the conversation with Atul Gawande on Rovina’s Choice and the destruction of USAID :
(aided by ChatGPT).
Setting the stage & Dr. Gawande’s role at USAID — 00:32
We introduce Dr. Atul Gawande as surgeon, writer, and former lead for global health aid at USAID during the Biden administration, noting that his role ended at 11:59 a.m. on the day of Trump’s second inauguration.Why Rovina’s Choice and why now — 01:20
We explain that nine months after the pause in aid became a full USAID shutdown and U.S. withdrawal from WHO, the administration insists “nobody’s hurt,” which motivates Dr. Gawande to go to Kenya with a film crew to see the real-world consequences on the ground.Oops. We had a live tech glitch. So, we pivoted to the trailer — 04:39
We hit a brief technical problems with Dr. Gawande’s video feed. We run the Rovina’s Choice preview while he reconnected. Thank you for your patience!Trailer reaction: a system collapsing fast — 05:45
We return from the preview and describe how the 20-minute film powerfully captures USAID’s long history of impact and how quickly the cuts have produced dramatic, “brisk” damage for people who depended on those systems.Making distant suffering
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This excerpt is provided for preview purposes. Full article content is available on the original publication.