"Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation." -Oliver Sacks, MD, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain During my sub-internship stint at the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in New York's Mount Sinai hospital as a visiting international medical student, I witnessed board-certified music ...

Like many Americans, Hector, a resident of Revere, Massachusetts, was overwhelmed by health care costs. He had insurance through his employer, but he could barely afford his $600 a month premiums, and he quickly learned that his coverage was not enough to keep his out-of-pocket costs manageable. Needing treatment for hearing, liver and heart conditions, Hector faced deductible costs from hospital care, $175 co-pays per visit with his specialist, and ongoing prescription costs of more than $100 ...

When my fellow Harvard Medical School classmates asked “what I was up to,” I called it my Rural Family Medicine Adventure Month. More formally, it was my extreme privilege and pleasure to learn Family Medicine across northern Maine and western Massachusetts as part of an independent study in rural primary care in June 2021. My travels brought me to the Jackman Community Health Center, the Northern Maine Medical Center, the Barre Family Health Center, the Behavioral Health Network Methadone Clinic, and the Community Health Center of Franklin County. I explored the ...

In many ways, medical school trains its pupils to be detectives, capable of discerning and interpreting even the most subtle physical signs of the human body. Yet, when patients are so generous as to entrust us with their stories, as illustrated by their verbal or body language, we often lack the skills – those akin to literary analyst – to elucidate motifs and themes that could both explain and perhaps facilitate the patient’s relationship to their health and the healthcare system. The ...

Historic factors driving health disparities among the diverse Latino population in the U.S. include social determinants of health that have created barriers in COVID-19 prevention. As COVID-19 disparities became evident, dedicated clinicians, scientists and public health professionals from around the country partnered under the umbrella of the

In the Show-Me State, a wave of rural hospital closures began in the 2010s and continued into the next decade, recently hitting Boonville, Missouri, ...

We can see structural determinants of health all around us, like when we see factories and truck routes constructed in low-income minority neighborhoods. We also see structural determinants when

As the largest system for primary care in the United States, federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) (and other community health centers) stand in a unique position to redress the

Drug-involved fatal poisonings for 2020 are expected to reach over