Public Health & Policy

I hate to say this, but I fear it is over. For our entire relationship, I have looked to the CDC to guide and educate me. I have put my faith in their recommendations. I have defended their stances on everything from obesity to Lyme disease to influenza across decades. I have done so because they never let me down. Until now. I am not sure that the powers that be at ...

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Black people are dying at disproportionate rates from the pandemic.  For decades, racial disparities in health care have resulted in poor outcomes even before COVID-19. Individual risk factors for poor health are more pronounced in Black people and racial minorities. However, these individual risk factors may not account for all outcomes. There are also additional factors at the community ...

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"Advocacy by moms is not new, but advocacy by physicians has been less common. Moms have been fierce advocates on a variety of causes ranging from Mothers Against Drunk Driving to Moms Demand Action, the anti-gun violence mom activist group led by Shannon Watts that has now helped launch moms into public office. As physician moms navigating a global pandemic, we are invested in ...

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Why should we reform the health care system to a physician-led approach? How will that look like? Would a Medicare for all system cure what ails the system? What are some obstacles to implementation? Ken Terry is a journalist. He shares his story and discusses his book, Physician-Led Health Care Reform: A New Approach to ...

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I recently finished my geriatric psychiatry rotation. As a medical student and aspiring psychiatrist, I had the opportunity to participate in the care of those suffering from acute psychosis, depression, bipolar disorder, depression, and more — many of whom were dealing with suicidal ideation. While an engaging experience, I am worried. The climate crisis puts these patients at great risk. I’m a novice to climate advocacy. I’ve long considered myself to be someone ...

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Vote. These four letters reflect one of the most powerful actions in human history – the act of choosing who represents you and your beliefs. As an immigrant child and naturalized citizen, I was not born with the right to vote in the United States of America. Yet, I remember the day I first voted. As I walked into the polling site, I remembered how my grandmother in India offered ...

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Somewhere in Wuhan, China, a bat was eaten — and the world as we knew it was over. (Note to self: Never have your bat below medium, and avoid bat tartare like the plague.) Kids stayed home. So did their parents. They started talking to each other, instead of watching their phones while rushing from soccer games to ballet rehearsals via McDonald's. Sports got suspended, and millions of rabid sports fans remembered ...

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Before he was another Black man shot by police, Jacob Blake could have been my patient. In Waterbury, Connecticut, where I practice as an internist, his shooting has left me to consider the health effects of the exposure of violence on his sons, who watched in horror from the back seat of the car as their father was shot eight times in the back by a white officer of the ...

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Academic medicine generally encompasses a tripartite mission of research discovery, clinical innovation, and the next generation of physicians and scientists' education. It is the ethics and social justice principles, practices, policies, and innovation that advance research and education in the health sciences, ultimately improving the health and well-being of all. This is its socially responsible mission. Yet, it seems chief diversity officers, equity practitioners, and scholars everywhere have ...

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If a core goal of our nation is to have the healthiest population possible, then we need to rethink, regroup, and restore our commitment to health practices and processes that are aligned with this mission. We are currently investing our precious social and economic capital into a health care system that is wildly inefficient, too expensive, confusing, and failing most of us. As costs continue to spiral upward, the patient ...

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Care. I do not believe we have ever heard more about care at a presidential nominating convention than in this year's Democrat convention. "Patriotism," "justice," "bravery," "strength"?  For sure.  But "care"? Scarcely a word. Yet we now hear that the role of the president is to "care about and for the people" he governs. Socrates spoke of the task of a ruler to care for his subjects as the shepherd who cares ...

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"Single payer is the solution. And the time for it is now. A single-payer system would guarantee health care coverage immediately to every American. So whether a loved one gets sick from COVID, has a heart attack, or gets in a car accident, she will receive the care she needs without it causing financial hardship. A single-payer system will eliminate employer health insurance ...

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After three months of physical therapy, her doctor told her that it was time to get an MRI. She had already paid off her annual deductible, meaning the imaging test would “only” cost her the $150 co-pay. An imaging center near where she worked charged $1,500 for the test. Just two miles away, another facility would have just charged only $900 for the same test. She arranged to go to ...

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A few months ago, I signed up for a virtual conference for women in medicine. Its a group of women, over 10,000 of us, who have watched me and supported me through the past two years of my career. Two years of struggle. Two years of personal and professional pain. Two years of opportunity for growth, and two years of numerous setbacks that were only overcome with all of their ...

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Very few people sit down and think about their mindset. And even fewer doctors or health care workers contemplate mindset. But if there were ever a time in human history to think about our minds and how we use them to process what is happening around us, it is now. As an unexpected gift from the pandemic, I was given months to take an inward look at my mindset and ...

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It has been eight years since I registered patients to vote in the Bronx. I remember the clinic, nestled in a busy commercial neighborhood with its modest windowfront facade. Inside, the flyer was posted everywhere. Among quilts of signs and reminders, it vied for attention with its large block letter logo, “I VOTE, I COUNT.” In the waiting room, our team approached patients to ask, “Are you registered to vote?”. I ...

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A recent edition of Pediatrics has some disturbing research: “Trends in Capability of Hospitals to Provide Definitive Acute Care for Children: 2008 to 2016.” What the paper really does is document what many of us who work in referral hospitals have noted for some time: More and more community hospitals are transferring children who appear in their emergency departments to other, larger facilities instead of admitting them to ...

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If the Democrats capture the White House, keep the House, and take over the Senate, the Biden health care outline stands a good chance of being enacted. The Biden health care proposal directly takes on the big things that haven't worked in Obamacare. Here are the things that are most broken in Obamacare:

• The individual health insurance premiums and deductibles are, and have from the beginning of the program, Read more...

I can’t sleep, or maybe it’s that I got up too early. It’s 3 a.m. and a good 1 to 2 hours before I usually get up. California is literally burning. We have no rain in sight. Colorado is burning as well, although they may have snow soon. Do you remember last year when Australia was up in flames and koalas were dying? Did you wonder what the Australians were ...

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