"Não há fronteiras para os que exploram… não deve haver para os que lutam”—there are no borders for those who explore… there should not be for those who fight. This powerful statement was the rallying cry of representatives from dozens of waste picker organizations to the 2nd Latin American Congress. The gathering, held in 2005 in São Leopoldo, Brazil, unified a collection of marginalized peoples into a single voice calling for an end to unjust borders. Physical borders erected around landfills that, for many, were their only source of income. Sociocultural borders ...

Beautiful Rosebud, South Dakota, is the home of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, or the Sicangu Oyate. In 2012, the Sicangu Oyate was one of the first communities to ask teaching hospitals to send physicians to work in the local Indian Health Service (IHS) facility, nearly 70 years after physicians from teaching hospitals started working with the Veterans Health Administration. The

I called a third time. her voice sounds like a whisper hanging from a wire or a storyline lost in space. Worry not of death itself but her fragile husband and three kids Despite everything she is eager to talk and between the cough and fatigue Shared details, dates, places she speaks about her experience at the hospital and is ...

Meet Sandra. Sandra is a former resident of Columbia Heights, a neighborhood in Washington, D.C. that used to be an affordable area to live. She’s now one of the thousands that are left struggling to make ends meet as the cost of living in Columbia Heights continues to skyrocket well above the national average. Like many others, Sandra now finds that the neighborhood she once called home has significantly surpassed her budget. ...

Closed. Out of Business. We are temporarily closed due to COVID. These signs have become a common sight in the windows of grocery stores scattered throughout the United States. Throughout the pandemic, the number of communities that have become food deserts, as well as the number of households that have become food insecure, has increased substantially. While volunteering at a local food pantry during the pandemic, I talked to a regular named Carmen, and she described her ...

“I did whatever I needed to for my child to get the proper services… you are the professionals, but I’m the mom.” She’s the mom. It’s these humbling moments that Mary, a panelist at the

I entered the Brighton Marine Public Health Center in Massachusetts in December 1981, where hundreds of Indochinese refugees were being medically screened after the fall of Saigon. I’ll never forget my first patient—a middle-aged Cambodian woman with major hearing loss. During the exam, she told me that her hearing loss began after being beaten unconscious by the Khmer Rouge soldiers and left for dead on a pile of the bodies of her relatives. At the time, I knew nothing about the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. I had no training on the impact of extreme violence on ...

What good is art when the viewer is blind to the colors you draw in? Communication is an art that health care professionals are taught early in their medical education. We’re not only taught what to ask, but how to ask it. Beyond avoiding errors and misunderstandings, good communication builds the trusting relationships that are at the core of health care. It can be said that while medical knowledge constitutes the “health” aspect, it is communication that contributes to the ...

Imagine you’re a primary care provider at our clinic in Malden, Massachusetts. A patient quickly rattles off a list of concerns during your latest telehealth visit with her. Before you can ask any clarifying questions, you wait for the Brazilian Portuguese medical interpreter to interpret her concerns into English. You ask some questions, then wait again for the ...