It all started innocuously enough in the week leading up to Christmas in 2019 with a runny nose, a cough, and some fussiness. All pretty standard for our one-year-old daughter, who spends time with other kids at daycare sharing germs more readily than toys. Over the next few days, however, the cough got worse and the fussiness increased. We were still thinking it was just a cold until the lethargy hit. She wasn’t eating or drinking well, she had spiked a fever that wouldn’t level out, and seeing our normally active child—a girl who wasn’t even still when she slept—lying down listlessly ...

The Steward Health Care system collapse has raised alarm bells and activated a crisis response from many levels of Massachusetts’ political and health care leadership. Through a still-evolving series of action steps, this crisis will eventually resolve. When the fire has been put out, however, an important lesson will remain: this crisis has its origins in the dangerous set of health care policies and decisions that got us to this point. As health care leaders ...

In the 17th annual Child Fatality Review Report, the DC Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) disclosed the death of a 9-year-old female involved in the foster care system from an asthma-related complication in 2021. While asthma is a serious pediatric condition, affecting roughly 6.5% of children aged 0-17, it is one that can be ...

The obesity prevalence among U.S. adults has increased at an alarming rate in the past several decades, reaching 42 percent in 2018 or about 110 million people based on census data. By 2035, the prevalence of obesity in the U.S. is expected to reach 58 percent, with the total ...

A hospital is often seen as a sanctuary—a bubble of refuge for local and migrant populations alike. However, in order for a hospital to provide care, it needs to rely on a health care system that governs daily operational functions and establishes rules and regulations to care. As an Egyptian-American licensed physician assistant (PA) in the United States currently conducting a clinical trial and an educational research curriculum in Bahrain, I have had a chance to reflect on the major differences, successes, and downfalls of ...

I am grateful to Dr. Rebekah Rollston, the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of the Primary Care Review, for building a platform to amplify voices in primary care scholarship, advocacy, and stories. Under Dr. Rollston’s skilled leadership, what started as an online blog in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic became a robust publication of nearly 200 articles read more than 230,000 times by medical professionals, students, and community members around the world. The

Decolonization is a broad term referring to attempting to undo or rectify the consequences of colonialism. The repercussions of colonialism are widespread, influencing many, if not all, facets of life in countries of the Global South. As a result, there are numerous possible strategies to accomplish the goal of decolonization across various disciplines. In mental health disciplines, discussions about decolonization are "en vogue” in academia. Yet despite an abundance of research, translating this knowledge into ...

As a specialty that manages complex chronic conditions and preventive care, primary care has been shown to reduce cardiovascular, cancer, and respiratory mortality and extend the lives of patients. Yet the field of primary care faces an unmanageable physician workload, lower average salaries than most other medical specialties, and ...

“I just know I need to leave the job,” Bruna (whose name has been changed to protect privacy) said through the Zoom screen as she finished telling our group about the increased demands, stagnant wages, and disrespect she was experiencing from her employer. “I was just diagnosed with high blood pressure—I never had this before! If I stay, this job will just keep harming my health,” she concluded. One by one, we went around our circle, providing her with similar experiences and words of encouragement and appreciation for sharing her story. One group member agreed to help her compose a ...