Archive

Perspectives in Primary Care features writing from practitioners, activists, and community members representing organizations, practices, and institutions across the United States and around the world.

A Model for Managing Outpatient COVID-19

On March 18, 2020, Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) opened its COVID-19 outpatient clinic (now referred to as the acute care clinic), with the goal to triage and provide care for patients with respiratory symptoms, ultimately reducing strain on our local emergency departments. CHA is an academic community healthcare system based in the Boston area and serves ...

Here’s Why Mental Healthcare Is So Unaffordable & How COVID-19 Might Help Change This

If you ask a patient to describe their experience finding a therapist or psychiatrist in the community, don’t be surprised if ‘expensive,’ ‘difficult,’ and ‘discouraging’ are some of the first words that come to mind. The decades-long separation of mental healthcare from physical health has left patients and clinicians alike with serious challenges navigating options for care. And the cost has been much more than just inconvenience—our poorly integrated system is responsible for

How Our Clinical Public Health Curriculum Equipped Us to Respond to COVID-19

The authors are fourth year medical students at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences who have been active participants in their medical school’s Clinical Public Health (CPH) curriculum. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the students applied their education to help launch and lead community response efforts, including creation of a

Incarceration is a Public Health Crisis, During COVID-19 and Beyond

The COVID-19 pandemic has made American inequality painfully clear. As case counts continue to rise across the country, some of the largest COVID-19 clusters in the US are in jails, prisons, and detention centers. As of November 2020, 38 different institutions have reported greater than 1,000 cases. One study estimates that rates of COVID-19 in US prisons are

Well-Being of LGBTQI+ People in the United States Today

More than 11 million lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) people live in the United States today, but we know far too little about their overall health and well-being. For LGBTQI+ people, we do know that some aspects of life are better than they once were. Whereas LGBTQI+ people were once viewed negatively by many ...

Diversifying the Healthcare Workforce is Key to Addressing Health Inequities

When we improve the health of the most marginalized, we improve the whole nation’s health. Brian Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, noted in the American Public Health Association (APHA) 2020 Annual Meeting, “the health of our communities must not be judged on how well the powerful and privileged are doing, but by the health and well-being of the most vulnerable ...