Maybe one day, our universal health care system represented the values of Canadians, but certainly not anymore. American friends, you may know us for our drinking age and “free health care.” Still, unfortunately, our health care system no l…
Category: Public Health & Policy
3 shocking health care statistics for 2023
As the New Year begins, a trio of health care statistics cast an intense and unflattering light on a nation in crisis. These figures, all of them unimaginable just a generation ago, set the stage for a financial reckoning in 2023 and beyond. Shocking s…
Primary care colonialism: the impact of profit-driven health care on communities
An excerpt from On Medicine as Colonialism. For about seventeen years, from 1991 until 2008, I lived in little Scituate, Rhode Island, where I practiced family medicine, and for about eleven of those seventeen years, I practiced out of the basement of …
The future of health care is virtual: a nurse’s perspective
This time, it’s my family. My work takes me all over the U.S., consulting on the implementation of virtual care to get the most appropriate level of care to the patients who need it. I work with teams to develop better workflows and to get more e…
The future of health care is virtual: a nurse’s perspective
This time, it’s my family. My work takes me all over the U.S., consulting on the implementation of virtual care to get the most appropriate level of care to the patients who need it. I work with teams to develop better workflows and to get more e…
It’s time to ditch cultural competence
A pregnant Somali woman was determined to have a vaginal delivery. Unfortunately, labor wasn’t progressing as expected, and the health care team recommended a c-section. The patient declined the recommendation and said it’s in God’s h…
Gun crisis in America: Youth fatalities on the rise
In 2020, firearm fatalities displaced motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death of U.S. youth (ages 1 to 19). We long ago dramatically reduced infectious deaths (though vaccine hesitancy threatens to upend this victory), and the “big …
Faced with yet another variant, epidemiologists must act more like silicon valley start-ups
With yet another highly contagious COVID variant sweeping the East Coast, it’s never been more clear that we need a systems approach to reforming epidemiology in the U.S. Several legislative approaches, including the PREVENT Pandemics Act and pu…
New York nurses strike for dignity and respect on the frontlines
As a PA, I’ve worked in some of the city’s busiest emergency departments. While they differ in practice styles, patient population, and architecture, they all have one thing in common: the nurses are overworked. As thousands of them go on s…
Saving mothers: How technology can aid in the fight against preventable maternal deaths
Maternal morbidity and mortality rates in the United States are among the highest in the developed world—impacting roughly 50,000 women each year and taking the lives of 700 mothers annually. Three in five of these deaths are preventable, according to …
