-
An Underrated Barrier to Healthcare: It's Not Just About Cost
“Thank you for calling our free clinic. How can I help you?” I have spent countless hours listening to the pleas of people in desperate need of... -
A Guide to Geriatric Psychiatry Referral for Health Care Professionals and Caregivers
Our aging global population has the potential to enrich our communities, strengthen intergenerational relationships, and help preserve our cultural... -
Room to Breathe: Making the Health Case for Green Spaces
The intentional implementation of green spaces originated in elite classes of society when intricate gardens used for strolling and hunting exhibited...
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.
Birth Equity Requires Hard Truths and New Leadership
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States is finally experiencing a cultural shift in consciousness and awareness of racial disparities. And meanwhile, the maternal health community’s reckoning with racism is accelerating. Black women in the United States die from pregnancy-related complications at
Education
Primary Care
Health Equity
Health Policy
Social Determinants of Health
Public Health
Activism
Why Harvard Medical School Could Be a Perfect Place to Train Family Medicine Physicians
In 1965, Harvard Medical School (HMS) had a thriving Family Medicine & Primary Care Residency—a visionary program that was strongly rooted in serving the vulnerable populations surrounding the HMS campus. Resident physicians trained to provide outpatient primary care across the life spectrum, working in partnership with Boston Children’s Hospital, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, and Boston Lying-In Hospital (the latter two of which are Brigham & Women’s predecessor institutions). ...
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 ...
Primary Care
Health Systems Transformation
COVID-19
Behavioral Health / Mental Health
Value in Health Care
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 ...
