“To care for dependents, the carer must be cared for, both for the sake of her charge and for her own sake. Without such basic infrastructure, we have anxiety, confusion, and chaos. Contagion knows no independent individuals. Its boundaries are …
Category: Public Health & Policy
Translating social justice into meaningful change for underrepresented minorities in academic medicine
As communities of color continue to be disproportionately decimated by COVID-19 and the brutal impact of racism and other longstanding systemic inequalities, academic medicine finds itself at a critical inflection point in defining its role in addressi…
The failure of COVID-19 vaccine distribution confirms government incompetence
The COVID-19 vaccine has failed. I don’t mean that the vaccine itself doesn’t work—far from it. I mean the ineffective way such an important lifesaving, pandemic-ending vaccine is being rolled out. The slovenly effort is putting the lives of millions o…
Climate change, cardiac arrest, and the price of inaction [PODCAST]
“We have to start understanding these as the real costs of climate change. We are paying these costs now. In my state of Oregon, people are going to start getting sick and dying in the next few days of the wildfire smoke choking the air. When the…
Health care organizations: Clean up your house first, then you can tackle racism in patient care
The new American Medical Association policy recognizing racism as a public health threat and providing an anti-racist approach to equitable care will have no effectiveness unless health care organizations get their own houses in order and actively do a…
Talking politics in the exam room [PODCAST]
“The medical profession now understands that social determinants of health are probably the most important driver of a patient’s overall health, and these determinants are largely the result of political decisions. Clearly, we have a professional…
Why corruption is ruining your health care [PODCAST]
“Doctors help patients, and they love us for it. We fix bones, replace joints, cure killer infections, and control diabetes with insulin. We use painless scans for diagnosis. Liver, kidney, and heart transplants are now routine. Some patients get…
A call schedule to fix the Supreme Court
Though pushed to the back-burner by the never-ending orange election drama, the Supreme Court, with its significant conservative majority earned against the run of play, (to borrow a metaphor from sport) is one decision away from potential political ir…
Health care is making progress on the “social” in the biopsychosocial model
In his seminal 1977 Science magazine article, “The Need for a New Medical Model: A Challenge for Biomedicine,” Dr. George Engel outlined the biomedical model’s limitations and proposed a new model, which he termed the biopsychosocial …
How health insurance affects patients: That means the transgender community too
Coming into Columbia University as a pre-med first-year student, I expected to be studying anatomy, biology, psychology, and many other subjects. I would have never thought that I would encounter gender and sexuality studies. Interestingly, this led to…
