The Steward Health Care system collapse has raised alarm bells and activated a crisis response from many levels of Massachusetts’ political and health care leadership. Through a still-evolving series of action steps, this crisis will eventually resolve. When the fire has been put out, however, an important lesson will remain: this crisis has its origins in the dangerous set of health care policies and decisions that got us to this point. As health care leaders ...

In the 17th annual Child Fatality Review Report, the DC Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) disclosed the death of a 9-year-old female involved in the foster care system from an asthma-related complication in 2021. While asthma is a serious pediatric condition, affecting roughly 6.5% of children aged 0-17, it is one that can be ...

As a specialty that manages complex chronic conditions and preventive care, primary care has been shown to reduce cardiovascular, cancer, and respiratory mortality and extend the lives of patients. Yet the field of primary care faces an unmanageable physician workload, lower average salaries than most other medical specialties, and ...

I was born and raised in Mebane—a small town in North Carolina that is now primarily white with a large percentage of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx individuals today. My childhood was spent between my father, Jesse’s, side of the family in the West End Community of Mebane and the Hawfields community of dairy farms where most of my mother, Mary’s, side of the family lived. My father worked on dairy farms after his left arm was cut off in a Mebane sawmill accident, while my mother worked in textile mills that caused carpal tunnel syndrome and mini-strokes. Outhouse ...

He is bedbound, unable to walk, unable to care for himself, unable to advocate for himself, and so confused that he cannot finish a thought, let alone a sentence. He has lost 90 pounds in the past year. He soils the bed multiple times per day. His legs and feet are so swollen and edematous that socks and shoes do not fit on his feet. The expectation is that he yells from his bed/cell if he needs something, has a problem, or even worse, he falls with the hope someone hears him in the hallway. There is no emergency call button or ...

Behind the wall of unemployment, I escape. I have a right to work. I have a Law Degree and a Life Coaching Certificate. How do I begin? How can I work professionally and who will employ me? Even though I see many barriers ahead, I say yes to every training opportunity that is offered to me. I speak up whenever I have the chance. I have completed intercultural dialogue training to become a facilitator in that area. I am also writing again with Fiction at the Friary. There is no barrier there. With speaking and writing, I ...

Jamal was a young, promising athlete whose coordination suddenly deteriorated, at only 12-years-old, with the onset of terrible headaches. Scans revealed a large brain mass, and he was referred to a regional academic medical center for what would be a complicated surgery. Moments before he was to be wheeled into the operating room, a nurse pulled Jamal’s mother, Lisa, aside to tell her apologetically that the procedure was cancelled. The medical center had learned that Jamal’s Tennessee Medicaid plan, TennCare, had been terminated, and he was uninsured. “I’m afraid you’ll need to take him ...

"Não há fronteiras para os que exploram… não deve haver para os que lutam”—there are no borders for those who explore… there should not be for those who fight. This powerful statement was the rallying cry of representatives from dozens of waste picker organizations to the 2nd Latin American Congress. The gathering, held in 2005 in São Leopoldo, Brazil, unified a collection of marginalized peoples into a single voice calling for an end to unjust borders. Physical borders erected around landfills that, for many, were their only source of income. Sociocultural borders ...

Meet Sandra. Sandra is a former resident of Columbia Heights, a neighborhood in Washington, D.C. that used to be an affordable area to live. She’s now one of the thousands that are left struggling to make ends meet as the cost of living in Columbia Heights continues to skyrocket well above the national average. Like many others, Sandra now finds that the neighborhood she once called home has significantly surpassed her budget. ...