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 Telehealth Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

Merv is my 94-year-old patient living in Washington, D.C. in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, attempting to continue his treatments for diabetes, hypertension, and leukemia. He’s at significantly increased risk for severe COVID infection, though fortunately, due to Medicare’s

Hospital Visitor Policies in the Context of COVID-19: Ensuring Support & Promoting Health Equity for Laboring Patients

After working the night shift, Mandy, now five months pregnant, travels close to two hours on public transportation to make it to her prenatal appointments. The day before, I send her a text message with a reminder and ask whether she plans to get the gumbo special of the day or a grilled cheese with tomato from the hospital’s surprisingly delicious cafeteria. As a first-year medical student, I am participating in a program that trains me to provide additional support to a pregnant patient who I’m partnered ...

Focusing Upstream: Imagining Post-COVID Times

As the daily death toll for COVID-19 continues to climb across the United States, it may be difficult to consider post-pandemic times. Yet despite the messy

Birth Equity Requires Hard Truths and New Leadership

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States is finally experiencing a cultural shift in consciousness and awareness of racial disparities. And meanwhile, the maternal health community’s reckoning with racism is accelerating. Black women in the United States die from pregnancy-related complications at

Training a Contact Tracing Workforce on Navajo Nation

COVID-19 reached the Navajo Nation in March 2020 and spread quickly, recording some of the highest rates in the country. Leveraging more than a decade ...

The Impact of Neighborhoods on Racial & Ethnic Inequities in COVID-19

As 2021 opens with US COVID-19 cases soaring, racial/ethnic inequities persisting, and

Why Harvard Medical School Could Be a Perfect Place to Train Family Medicine Physicians

In 1965, Harvard Medical School (HMS) had a thriving Family Medicine & Primary Care Residency—a visionary program that was strongly rooted in serving the vulnerable populations surrounding the HMS campus. Resident physicians trained to provide outpatient primary care across the life spectrum, working in partnership with Boston Children’s Hospital, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, and Boston Lying-In Hospital (the latter two of which are Brigham & Women’s predecessor institutions). ...