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 Road to Recovery: Women’s Health and Substance Use Disorder

The residents of Charlestown, Massachusetts have been sharply impacted by the devastating opioid crisis. According to the Boston Globe, Charlestown has seen annual rates of drug-related deaths reach a high of 22% more than Boston. Intravenous drug-related infections in Charlestown reached six times higher than the city average, the greatest impact out of any other Boston neighborhood (MacQuarrie 2015). Medication for Addiction Treatment (MAT) is a treatment model for patients suffering from opioid use disorder (OUD). To assist community health centers in communities like Charlestown with ...

An Unexpected Privilege: Caring for Those with Substance Use Disorder

Seated in a state of the art, royal blue auditorium, Jimmy Kamel folds his hands and softly conveys, “my ultimate goal is to continue giving quality care to a population that some people felt weren’t particularly welcome at Fenway Health.” After seven years of clinical training as a Nurse Practitioner (NP), the foundation of Kamel’s work is driven by the need to support a widely underserved population. Kamel’s work is made possible by Medication for Addiction Treatment (MAT), a program designed to strengthen clinician support of patients with Substance Use Disorder (SUD). Kamel and his ...

Moving Upstream: Addressing Social Determinants of Health

The Primary Care Improvement Network (PCIN) is a membership-based network focused on supporting practice transformation, quality improvement, leadership skills, and the dissemination and spread of best practices. The program brings together important primary care stakeholders to address ongoing health care challenges. The goal of the program is to develop high-performing interdisciplinary teams to engage the PCIN themes of 2019-2020, which include effective implementation of telemedicine and effectively address health-related social needs. In the Primary Care sphere, there ...

Bridging Silos Between Unaffiliated Providers

A global community of innovators passionately gathered to discuss innovative solutions to some of the most pressing problems in health care at the MIT-Harvard Medical School Healthcare Innovation Bootcamp. Through interactive learning sessions, boot campers became active learners, practicing a variety of new skills related to entrepreneurship and innovation to learn about the areas of opportunity in healthcare. Of the many experts, Jay Desai, Co-founder of

Achievement in Family Medicine Student Spotlight: Ashley Shaw

Name: Ashley Shaw HMS graduation year: 2019 Residency: Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA What are you most proud of? I am most proud of contributing to the nurturing of a more robust and interdisciplinary community of students armed with the skills to become leaders in the primary care of tomorrow. I feel so grateful to have benefitted personally and professionally from that community as well. How were you involved in primary care at ...