A while back I was invited to attend a panel discussion on primary care at an area medical school. For 45 minutes the other two primary care doctors and I shared a lighthearted conversation about why we love primary care, interspersing various plugs for why the students should consider the field for themselves. After several stories about the satisfaction we derive from our jobs and the joys in the relationships we form with our patients, a student raised their hand to ask a question about how the current political climate was affecting our practice. “I’ll take this ...

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States faced an epidemic of drug overdose, topping half a million deaths over the last decade. COVID-19—both the virus itself and some of the strategies and policies implemented in response to ...

The COVID-19 crisis continues to expose deep vulnerabilities in the U.S. healthcare system—from the dearth of personal protective equipment to the lack of surge capacity to fragile hospital financials. And yet many of the most concerning issues laid bare are ones that originate outside the system. Some have called this coronavirus the “great equalizer,” as all of us—in every corner of the country—are at risk. But although pathogens might not discriminate, our society certainly does. And with each passing day, patterns in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality are revealing the ...

COVID-19 has exacerbated long-standing health disparities that continue to affect Latino families, and further, the pandemic has revealed that many Latino families are struggling to put food on the table. Food insecurity affects 37 million Americans, including 11.2 million children—and this is especially urgent within the Latino community. Prior to COVID-19,

During the initial rapid spread of the coronavirus in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Dental Association (ADA) released urgent guidance for dental providers to cease all non-emergency dental care by late March 2020. For many weeks, ...

As many Family Medicine colleagues across the United States complete residency, I find myself looking back to those challenging yet invigorating years. Residency training certainly solidified my clinical skills, from diabetes to pregnancy labor management, but also heightened my interest in social issues. Training in Western North Carolina meant working in a non-Medicaid expansion state where Black babies were three times more likely to die within their first year of life than white babies and where those struggling with opioid addiction were often marginalized. Each day seemingly brought ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has cast health inequities into stark relief, though this hasn’t surprised those of us already immersed in the care of homeless persons. Barbara McInnis, a beloved nurse at the Pine Street Inn in 1985 (for whom the Barbara McInnis House for medical respite was named ...

March 12 & 13, 2020. Just three months ago, yet it seems like eons. All my meetings were abruptly canceled so I could attend urgent education team meetings to discuss how to proceed with our medical school curriculum in the setting of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many medical schools across the United States, we suspended in-person pre-clerkship lectures and small groups, clinical clerkships and electives and rapidly transitioned to online learning. Faculty, many of whom were digital immigrants (myself included), found themselves forced to use the very technology they had ...

As physicians in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Cambridge Health Alliance, a safety-net hospital in the Boston area, our patients regularly fall victim to the intersection of the social determinants of health and the failures of our dysfunctional healthcare financing system. We frequently treat patients whose health problems have been thrust upon them by structural forces: a Black man spiraling into ketoacidosis because he couldn’t pay for insulin at ...