Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, is President Emeritus and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), an organization that Dr. Berwick co-founded and led as President and CEO for 19 years. He is one of the nation’s leading authorities on healthcare quality and improvement. In July 2010, President Obama appointed Dr. Berwick to the position of Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which he held until December 2011. A pediatrician by training, ...

The United States remains in the throes of an escalating drug overdose crisis. Data show that overdoses increased yet again in 2019, and are now soaring amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which ...

It’s a calm sunny day as I sit with John McCulloch in front of his store in Teec Nos Pos, Arizona. The store has served his community since 1905. The English name Teec Nos Pos is derived from the Navajo T'iisnasbas, a name inspired by a grove of trees growing in a circle in the area. As we sit and talk, community members file in and out of the store. They’re greeted with large florescent posters asking customers to wear a mask while in the store, to stay home if they feel sick, and to respect the maximum occupancy level of eight people in the store at one time. ...

Climate change is a threat multiplier. This is a fact I know to be true. I also know that our most vulnerable populations, particularly environmental justice communities—people of color and/or low socioeconomic status—are suffering and will continue to suffer first and worst from the adverse effects of climate change. Case in point? Extreme heat. After reading the Killer Heat Report, most people probably used ...

Due to early misconceptions that COVID-19 didn’t lead to severe disease or death in children, US state surveillance dashboards were not set up to track the course of the pandemic among age-specific groups. Over time, state reporting for children has gradually improved, and The COVKID Project has been synthesizing and sharing data for children and teens since late April 2020. Although 49 of 50 states now report COVID-19 case counts by age (with New York being the exception), only 2 ...

It’s the middle of the month, and rent is almost due again. An estimated 30-40 million people are at risk of eviction in the next several months—and

He’s young. Just 49 years old. A long life ahead of him. He was hospitalized a week ago and doing okay initially on the medical floor. After his saturations were consistently in the 80s on the highest level of supplemental oxygen, he needed to be intubated. We asked him if he wanted to call his family before intubation, just like we do with all our COVID patients… because we know it might be the last time. He declined, said he’s not in touch with his family and has no friends to call. He was adamant that he didn’t want his estranged parents or brother contacted for updates while ...

We’ve all seen the headlines—primary care practices are in trouble: “America’s looming primary care crisis,” “Fewer than 10% of primary care practices have stabilized operations amid COVID-19 pandemic,” and “

From the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was clear that America’s deep-rooted inequities would play a central, and likely devastating, role in the magnitude and distribution of the burden of disease. In early March, former New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett and I outlined these inequities and called for a human rights-based response focused on ...