Throughout the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified many existing inequities in health care and throughout society. CommunityHealth, a free health clinic in Chicago, saw its patients face these ...

It’s an overcast Tuesday morning in Scranton, Pennsylvania, as Mary walks into the outpatient clinic for her groceries. The warm air in the lobby feels like a pleasant welcome from the blistery snow outside, but it’s the words spaghetti squash and salmon—two of her favorite items the pharmacy provides—written on the whiteboard that make her smile. The dietician at the ...

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and trauma needs in the Arab region The unprecedented political violence that swept the Arab region in the last century, from the Nakba of the Palestinain people to the wars in Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, have ...

A little thought exercise Think of the simplest pieces of health information that we know, rely upon, and understand in society. Smoking causes lung cancer, insulin resistance precedes type-2 diabetes, lead bears a detrimental impact on child health. Because of applied public health, surveillance programs, population health metrics, and increased data ...

In the spring of 2020, as the pandemic bore down on our country, I was appointed to the COVID-19 Vaccine Advisory Group to help guide the executive branch on communication, distribution, and equity issues relating to the distribution of vaccines. My role as the President and CEO of the state’s ...

Every day in the hospital, and during every visit to the clinic or emergency room, we pay scrupulous attention to your vital signs: heart rate, temperature, respiratory rate, and blood pressure. These numbers are the bedrock of understanding what is happening with a patient’s health. We should add another number to this group: the Adverse Childhood Event (ACE) score. The significance of Adverse Childhood Event (ACE) scores The ACE score was developed in California ...

Housing and food insecurity have always existed in Massachusetts, but the pandemic has exacerbated these issues. Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), an academic community health system serving Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston’s metro-north region, has witnessed this firsthand and is addressing the nutritional and housing needs of patients by connecting them to community-based support through the MassHealth Flexible Services Program. The

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

As the largest system for primary care in the United States, federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) (and other community health centers) stand in a unique position to redress the