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Wellness for Everybody—in Every Body
In recent years, several qualitative studies have given us field notes of patients describing their experiences having larger bodies and interacting... -
Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists: A Pharmacy Perspective on Insurance Coverage and Medication Access
Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists, more commonly referred to as GLP-1s, have undoubtedly garnered much fanfare the past five years. This... -
My Journey with GLP-1 Weight Loss Drugs: Managing PCOS, Celiac Disease, and Metabolic Health
In my thirties, my body began to “betray” me. After years of running marathons, working out, and eating well, I found myself struggling with...
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.
The Changing Landscape of Medical Education Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
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 ...
Medicare-for-All in the COVID Era: A Path to Healing
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 ...
The Common Cause for Healthcare and Education
Over the past few decades in the field of education, we have engaged in expensive, energetic and well-intentioned reform to our systems of schooling. These changes, including accountability, curriculum and instruction, have been aimed at achieving a very ambitious goal, summed up in the titles of our two most recent federal policy initiatives: “No Child Left Behind” and “Every Student Succeeds.” Sadly, the results of these reforms at the local, state and federal levels have been modest. There have been pockets of success in individual schools and ...
What Americans Can Do to Address Systemic Racism and Achieve Health Equity
I can’t breathe! This has become an all too familiar cry for many African Americans who everyday struggle to breathe in a society suffocated by systemic racism and entrenched inequities. They struggle to live in a society that has intentionally erected barrier after barrier intended to weaken their bodies and hasten their deaths. What we have is the perfect storm for a disaster—a serious health crisis, an inequitable method of health delivery, millions of uninsured and under-insured people, an uneven and politically charged approach to dealing with the pandemic, police brutality, and other ...
Coronavirus Pandemic Highlights the Need for Health Disparities Training as a Fundamental Part of Medical Education
If there is any silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that we now have the opportunity to address ongoing societal failures that have been thrown into stark relief by this crisis. Perhaps chief among them is our complacency toward deeply entrenched racial and socioeconomic health disparities, which have become even more deadly in the face of COVID-19. There is ample evidence in states across the country, including Michigan, Louisiana, and North Carolina, that disproportionately high rates of chronic diseases like hypertension, asthma, and diabetes among people of ...
The Coronavirus Does Discriminate: How Social Conditions are Shaping the COVID-19 Pandemic
Part of this developing crisis is very well known: On December 31, 2019, Chinese officials reported a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan and identified the novel coronavirus as the causative agent on January 7, 2020. This novel coronavirus spread rapidly, and on March 11, 2020, the
The Forgotten Specialty: Primary Care
As the COVID pandemic devastates the United States, comorbidity has been identified as one of the key factors that increases risk for serious complications. Chronic disease burden in the US, including hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, chronic lung disease, and arthritis, is 28%, compared to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 17.5%. Furthermore,
Health Equity Through the Lenses of Intersectionality and Allostatic Load
Although the term health equity is widely used, a common understanding of this term is lacking. Viewing health equity through the lenses of allostatic load and intersectionality could help. This blog post considers three case scenarios, all of which are composites of actual cases that have occurred within the United States, to explore ideas of health equity related to intersectionality and the concept of allostatic load. Case 1 A young, black woman was admitted to Labor & Delivery and progressing well in her own labor. Shortly after ...
