This is an open letter to everyone everywhere, especially people who live in small communities such as mine:
If you drive to work, you are missing out. If someone offered you an opportunity to improve your health, enhance your happiness and creativity, boost your self-esteem and even make you richer, what would you say? Many might think it would be an offer that was too good to be true — a …
Here’s how your commute can help you
“I’ve got to use the right tool,” I thought to myself as I attempted to pound a nail into the wall with the bottom of my coffee cup. Kneeling on the exam room table, I was attempting to hang a picture on the wall before the clinic day began. I have all sorts of useful tools in my clinic: scalpels, special scissors and a multitude of precision instruments for surgical …
Science is the right tool to improve health
During sports physical appointments, I routinely address preventive health topics that range from asking about alcohol, drugs, and sexuality, to addressing accident prevention and updating immunizations. At one such appointment recently, a young male teen was due for two routine vaccines. The mother accompanying him had no concerns about one of the vaccines, but expressed concern about the other. A friend had recently shared information on Facebook about how the …
It is critical for physicians to use their long-held trust wisely
Not far from the busy pedestrian streets in the center of Vienna, down a quiet narrow street, lies a small cobblestoned city square. Before World War II, this city neighborhood was the bustling, vibrant heart of Vienna’s Jewish Quarter, but today it is has a quiet, almost subdued feeling. Vienna’s current Jewish population is only a small fraction of what it was before the war, and the quiet feel of …
The health of the natural world and humans are intimately intertwined
The term “vaccine hesitancy” is a relatively recent term in medicine, a term used to describe patients who are worried about the safety, efficacy, or necessity of receiving immunizations. Vaccines are safe and have a proven track record of saving lives. As a result, doctors been caught somewhat off guard by the notion that anyone would have second thoughts about the benefits of immunization.
Recommendations commonly publicized on how to respond …
Vaccine hesitancy: It’s time to go on offense
In the hallway the other day a colleague stopped me and said, “Hey, do you want to see something funny?”
“Sure,” I said, and he showed me the YouTube video called “How Anti-Vaxxers Sound to Normal People.” The video highlighted that those who choose not to vaccinate themselves or their children do so for reasons that do not make sense, and frankly seem somewhat absurd. It is a …
Can the anti-vaccine movement be convinced with more positive messages?
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