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

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 ...

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 ...

Race has long been at the core of oral health research. In 1851, The Lancet published a seminal article arguing that “civilized men” and “barbarous races” could be distinguished from each other only by examining the shape of their teeth and dental arches. Since then, race has served two main purposes in oral health research and practice: To recommend specific dental procedures based on racial ...

As COVID-19 cases surge nationwide, routine and regular testing of asymptomatic people is being provided on an ad-hoc basis, without clear guidance from expert recommendations. In addition to personal protective equipment (PPE) and physical distancing, routine testing is being performed in many settings based on the observation that infected patients are contagious,

The COVID-19 pandemic presents American Indian and Alaska Native communities with the biggest public health crisis since the 1918 influenza pandemic. Tribal communities have experienced many major pandemics since European contact, some unintentionally spread, and some, like smallpox, intentionally used to wipe out our people. Because of this shared history, tribal communities in the United States have taken a hard line to protect tribal members and reservation residents from COVID-19. At

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to be felt across the United States, and this includes the ways in which we interact with the healthcare system. As the mother of a daughter with complex medical needs and a diabetic patient myself—what many would refer to as “super-users” of the medical system—we had to quickly adjust and adapt to the ways we’d need to manage our health conditions throughout the pandemic, as COVID has not stopped our need for ongoing care management. So, when I was asked to serve as faculty for the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the systemic limitations of the American health system when confronted with the unexpected emergence of major disease, and underserved communities are often those most affected. A possible solution to address these disparities: mobile clinics. Mobile clinics are vehicles customized with medical equipment and staffed with medical providers and other health ...

Addiction is a chronic medical condition that carries significantly elevated risk of morbidity and mortality, as the sequelae of substance use disorders (SUD) can be severe and life-altering. While evidence-based treatments for SUD exist, many people face barriers to accessing care. For example, of the approximately 20 million people living with addiction in the United States in 2019, only 12.2% received ...