Policy

Unmasking the brutal reality of gun violence in America: a call to action for unity and meaningful change

Policy

May 22, 2023

On the night of April 28, 2023, in a sleepy community 50 miles north of Houston, Texas, bullet-riddled bodies of five human beings, including an eight-year-old boy, lay lifeless, cut down in the most gruesome way. Their only sin was asking for a night of peace, but their request was met with the deafening sound of gunfire from a neighbor brandishing an AR-15. This senseless tragedy is yet another grim …

Family physicians unite at the U.S. Capitol, seeking congressional support for Medicare reform and health care transformation

Tochi Iroku-Malize, MD, MPH, MBA, Sterling N. Ransone, Jr., MD, and Steven P. Furr, MD

Policy

May 22, 2023

Picture this: Hundreds of family physicians and future family physicians arriving on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to share the top challenges they face and to ask their leaders to make a purposeful investment in primary care. They’ve earned the right to make this request through the hard work, long hours, and comprehensive care they’ve offered patients and their families across the country. They served on the front lines …

Breaking down barriers: Illinois bill calls for cultural competency training for physicians to improve health care for LGBTQ+ community

Michael Pessman

Policy

May 13, 2023

Illinois HB 4654 is a bill requiring physicians to undergo cultural competency training focusing on caring for patients who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and two-spirit LGBTQ2S+, or questioning LGBTQ+. This training is critical for ensuring that all patients receive the best possible care, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity in the state of Illinois. Even though the bill has been …

Breaking the cycle of racism in health care: a call for anti-racist action

Tomi Mitchell, MD

Policy

May 10, 2023

May 25th marks the anniversary of the brutal murder of George Floyd. I remember feeling numb when I first heard the news. Then, some days later, the tears filled my eyes, then came my anger. It is frustrating that we still live in a world filled with so much ignorance and the complicit attitudes of individuals who gain from their white privilege. However, the experience of George Floyd, and the …

The growing threat to transgender health care: implications for patients, providers, and trainees

Carson Hartlage

Policy

April 30, 2023

The ACLU is currently tracking over 400 anti-LGBTQ bills this legislative session, the highest number on record. Over 150 of these pertain to transgender people, including many targeting health care for transgender youth.

As of April 2023, thirteen states have passed laws or policies banning gender-affirming care for youth, while more than fifteen others have introduced similar bills and policies. These actions may forbid or criminalize evidence-based medical treatment for …

Here’s how to fix the public health system in the U.S.

Donna Grande

Policy

April 29, 2023

Today, the current health care ecosystem is broken and in need of an overhaul. To start, this country’s high cost of health care is not sustainable, preventing millions of Americans from accessing important health care services. The recent ruling will only exacerbate this to remove requirements for preventive screenings from the Affordable Care Act. Further, there are vast omissions of care provided to individuals in historically marginalized communities. These inexcusable …

Poverty: America’s disease with devastating consequences

Osmund Agbo, MD

Policy

April 29, 2023

I need to tell you about John (not his real name). He is a Cameroonian immigrant who came to the U.S. on a student visa. He waited tables in a popular pub in downtown Houston to earn a little change and support himself through school. Hardworking, courteous, and gregarious, John wears the most infectious and charming smile you have ever seen.

It didn’t take long for him to get noticed by …

America’s ailing health care system: How it’s failing patients and doctors

Jen Baker-Porazinski, MD

Policy

April 27, 2023

As painfully revealed by the coronavirus pandemic, the American health care system is ailing, plagued by the inefficiencies and greed of big business and for-profit medicine. It is not unlike the virus, attacking vital organs one by one until the whole is weakened. In more grave cases, the severely ill can’t survive. In much the same way our health care system is killing Americans. The sickness is proving incurable, for …

Why HIPAA isn’t enough to protect your health data

Brian R. Jackson, MD

Policy

April 27, 2023

After all the hours spent in HIPAA training over the years, physicians and other health care workers might think of HIPAA as a powerful regulation. It’s true that HIPAA does require health care workers to follow a number of rules, with pretty harsh penalties for violations. But from a patient’s perspective, how well does U.S. law protect overall health information privacy? Unfortunately, not very well, and things are getting worse.

The …

How lack of access to clean water is devastating developing countries

Connor Christensen

Policy

April 24, 2023

Maybe dogs aren’t the only ones drinking water from a toilet bowl. In the United States, we have easy access to clean water. We use culinary water to do our dishes, bathe, wash our cars, and even fill our toilets. Most Americans don’t ever consider the possibility of running out of drinkable water; the same can’t be said for the friends I made in the Philippines. Let me tell you …

Binary medicine harms our gender-expansive patients

Alexandra Beem

Policy

April 24, 2023

The first time I saw a preceptor use the American College of Cardiology’s atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (mercifully, ASCVD) risk calculator, I was hooked. As a first-year medical student, data nerd, and aspiring primary care provider, I love a good diagnostic tool. Watching as he entered our patient’s pertinent medical history, I ran down the list of risk factors for cardiovascular disease we’d just learned in my …

Medicine and history: a seemingly unlikely but necessary duo in understanding COVID-19 disparities

Grecia Quiroga

Policy

April 21, 2023

“Hispanic community makes up more than half of coronavirus cases in Southwest Michigan county” was the headline in the newspaper that caught my eye in August 2020 – that infamous year that the nation went into lockdown to prevent the spread of what was still a new and emerging virus.

It shocked me to realize that only three counties west of my Southcentral Michigan home, Latinos were …

When cute is actually harmful: It’s time to end the in-store tricks that hurt our kids’ health

Leia Minaker

Policy

April 20, 2023

In a grocery store recently, a friend’s young child gave a big hug to a brightly colored, meter-high plastic cartoon mascot for a well-known candy brand standing at the end of an aisle surrounded by many bags of the candy on sale.

“Aww, that’s so cute!” was the mother’s first reaction.

Then it dawned on her – it wasn’t cute at all.

It was, she realized, very effective and invasive marketing. Not only …

Why retail giants will revolutionize American health care

Robert Pearl, MD

Policy

April 18, 2023

In health care, as in life, people devote a lot of time and attention to the way things should be. They’d be better off focusing on what actually could be.

As an example, 57% to 70% of American voters believe our nation “should” adopt a single-payer health care system like Medicare for all. Likewise, public health …

Raising reimbursements: the Medicaid imperative

Fatima Al-Shimari, MPH, Miriam Al-Saedy, and Salsabeal Al-Saedy

Policy

April 18, 2023

One early evening in June, we sat in the second row of a Health Sciences Building classroom with 79 other students enrolled in the Summer Medical and Dental Education Program (SMDEP). We were excited to hear a guest lecture from a program alumnus, a clinician who shared that he, too, had lived in an underserved community, had Medicaid insurance, and relied on community clinics growing up. He concluded his presentation …

Food is medicine: Why doctors care about the Farm Bill

Ashwani Garg, MD

Policy

April 18, 2023

As the spring planting season approaches, seven farmers from my home state of Illinois traveled to Washington, DC to participate in the “Farmers for Climate Action” rally. Farmers sought meetings with lawmakers, including Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, a member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. Sen. Durbin and others are crafting the Farm Bill, and the farmers want to ensure climate change …

Physicians take a stand against anti-LGBT laws: a call to action

Mike Stillman, MD

Policy

April 14, 2023

In the 1970s, my brother and I were raised as twins. He’s a year older than me, but we wore matching denim outfits, had thick side-parted hair, and worshiped The Beatles. Near identical though we were, only one of us was queer. And America was lying in wait.

When I was a toddler, the American Psychiatric Association de-pathologized homosexuality, but nearly 40 percent of its members fought that decision. Many of …

The realities of immigrant health care served hot from America’s melting pot

Stella Cho

Policy

March 24, 2023

By the time I was in elementary school, I was Mom’s right-hand man when it came to interpreting official documents, work emails, or confusing American jokes. Like 20.3 percent of the U.S. population, I grew up in a primarily non-English speaking home since Korean is my parents’ native tongue. Among all the odd translations my mom consulted me for, health care ones were always the hardest. Even today, as …

Healing the damaged nurse-physician dynamic

Angel J. Mena, MD and Ali Morin, MSN, RN

Policy

March 20, 2023

As anyone in health care knows, a strong nurse-physician dynamic is critical to achieving successful patient outcomes. To provide a quality care experience, it is essential to have a clinical team that knows how to collaborate to achieve that goal. If we don’t know how to work together, or how to coordinate our care, it’s going to be very difficult to maintain a safe environment for the patient.

Nurses are at …

Deaths of despair: an urgent call for a collective response to the crisis in U.S. life expectancy

Mohammed Umer Waris, MD

Policy

March 20, 2023

Some grim news has emerged revealing the sad decline in the health of the United States. America saw its most significant 2-year fall in life expectancy, 2.7 years, in almost 100 years. This has led to U.S. life expectancy being at its lowest since the mid-1990s. This unprecedented fall requires deep examination.

While COVID is a major cause behind this decline, another …