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.

Medication Abortion – Prioritizing Access in 2021 & Onward

Medication abortion is a common and important part of primary care…and access to safe abortion care will likely soon be made either harder or easier, depending on the state in which you live. The example of SB 8 in Texas is the most extreme currently, where no one can access an abortion in Texas if they are more than ...

Reflections on Tribal Primary Care in America

California of the pioneers, peopled by progressives of campsites with bear lockers of pines and berries of easy cilantro in markets of walnut milk of ocean vistas and Apple of fires in the woods. Our tribal health community “We want you to trust us with your primary health care,” I tell the 60-year-old patient whose body mass index (BMI) is just past obese. He is a native man who studied the classics in college and has been working on a book for 25 years. He lives with two sons ...

Reframing the Debate: Health Care Access Requires Affordable Care, Not Just Coverage

Like many Americans, Hector, a resident of Revere, Massachusetts, was overwhelmed by health care costs. He had insurance through his employer, but he could barely afford his $600 a month premiums, and he quickly learned that his coverage was not enough to keep his out-of-pocket costs manageable. Needing treatment for hearing, liver and heart conditions, Hector faced deductible costs from hospital care, $175 co-pays per visit with his specialist, and ongoing prescription costs of more than $100 ...

Exploring Work That Scratches the Soul: Reflection on a Rural Health Independent Study

When my fellow Harvard Medical School classmates asked “what I was up to,” I called it my Rural Family Medicine Adventure Month. More formally, it was my extreme privilege and pleasure to learn Family Medicine across northern Maine and western Massachusetts as part of an independent study in rural primary care in June 2021. My travels brought me to the Jackman Community Health Center, the Northern Maine Medical Center, the Barre Family Health Center, the Behavioral Health Network Methadone Clinic, and the Community Health Center of Franklin County. I explored the ...

Restructuring the Power Dynamic: How a Patient’s Narrative Can Help Us Understand the Role of Trauma in the Clinical Encounter

In many ways, medical school trains its pupils to be detectives, capable of discerning and interpreting even the most subtle physical signs of the human body. Yet, when patients are so generous as to entrust us with their stories, as illustrated by their verbal or body language, we often lack the skills – those akin to literary analyst – to elucidate motifs and themes that could both explain and perhaps facilitate the patient’s relationship to their health and the healthcare system. The ...

The Art of Meeting People Where They Are: A Community Partnership Approach for COVID Equity

Historic factors driving health disparities among the diverse Latino population in the U.S. include social determinants of health that have created barriers in COVID-19 prevention. As COVID-19 disparities became evident, dedicated clinicians, scientists and public health professionals from around the country partnered under the umbrella of the

Making Do In Missouri: A Rural OB/Gyn’s Efforts to Improve Access to Care

In the Show-Me State, a wave of rural hospital closures began in the 2010s and continued into the next decade, recently hitting Boonville, Missouri, ...

Decentralizing Knowledge in Public Health Education, One Course at a Time

We can see structural determinants of health all around us, like when we see factories and truck routes constructed in low-income minority neighborhoods. We also see structural determinants when

Health Equity & Reproductive Justice: Transforming Perinatal Care Now

Drug-involved fatal poisonings for 2020 are expected to reach over
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