In 1992, ACT UP activists walked into the NIH demanding a seat at the table. By the time the NIH Revitalization Act passed, they had institutionalized something unprecedented: taxpayer oversight of taxpayer-funded research. Over two decades later, Mike Frick coordinated one of these boards and watched it work: researchers changed trial protocols because TB survivors told them to. But in 2025, that infrastructure collapsed in six months. This episode asks: when competence becomes power, what happens when the structures that protect us disappear?

If a globe shows a web of distances, then global health collapses these distances. The distance to there from here; from mystery to discovery; from injury to justice; from last century to next; from city to country; from you to me. Produced by the Center for Global Child Health Research, ONE future is an audio documentary series that pulls the listener into this network, one investigator at a time. From nutrition as a global health intervention to the still developing history of childhood TB. From Cape Town, South Africa to Papua, New Guinea to Lima, Peru.From Portland, Oregon—this is ONE future. Created by Andrew Stout. Executive producer: Lynne Swarbrick. Center Co-Directors: David Lewinsohn & Deborah Lewinsohn.