Public Health & Policy

Why medicine should be the Fifth Estate

Physician

October 30, 2025

In examination rooms across the country, the foundations of medical practice are being eroded. Physicians navigating the opioid crisis are forced to choose between our ethical duty to alleviate suffering and the legal risk of sanction. When we provide reproductive care, the patient-physician relationship is being superseded by political ideology, with devastating consequences. When we follow evidence-based guidelines for gender-affirming care, we face legislative intrusion that substitutes political agendas for …

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Why medicine should be the Fifth Estate

A pediatrician on the lead contamination crisis

Eric Fethke, MD

Physician

October 25, 2025

I shake my head in disbelief. Is this really happening in the United States? As a pediatrician and public health advocate, I believe we are witnessing the literal systematic dismantling of our health care system.

Case in point: the federal government’s mishandling of two recent lead contamination crises (in Michigan and Wisconsin). These failures not only expose children to preventable toxic harm, but also reveal a deeper breakdown in democratic accountability …

The secret illnesses of U.S. presidents

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Physician

October 25, 2025

Presidents are not immortal. But for much of American history, their bodies have been treated as state secrets, curated, concealed, and choreographed for public reassurance. When illness is hidden, the cost is not just clinical. It is geopolitical.

Warren G. Harding: collapse before the scandal

President Warren G. Harding died suddenly on August 2, 1923, at age 57, while touring the country on his “Voyage of Understanding.” He collapsed in San Francisco’s …

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The secret illnesses of U.S. presidents

Diagnosing the epidemic of U.S. violence

Brian Lynch, MD

Physician

October 24, 2025

As a physician, I am trained to diagnose not just the presenting symptom but the underlying pathology. This is the same lens through which many of us in the medical community view the epidemic of American violence. For years, organizations from the AMA to the CDC have called it a public health crisis. This is not merely a metaphor; it is a clinical framework pioneered right here in Chicago by …

Why the MAHA plan is the wrong cure

Emily Doucette, MPH and Wayne Altman, MD

Policy

October 22, 2025

“Make America Healthy Again (MAHA).” Finally, something we can all agree on.

The new MAHA report with its pages of promises taps into something real, something we see daily in primary care practice: Many Americans feel unwell, unheard, and unprotected by the very institutions meant to support them. Compared to our peer countries, we live shorter, sicker lives, suicide rates are rising, and even our children are …

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Why the MAHA plan is the wrong cure

How AI on social media fuels body dysmorphia

STRIPED, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Policy

October 18, 2025

The alarming relationship between artificial intelligence and adolescent body dysmorphia

That is what the American Health Law Association called the global increase in social media usage: an epidemic.

Indeed, social media usage and reliance, especially by youth, is becoming a mental health phenomenon quickly escalating out of control.

Nearly 25 percent of youth report spending over four hours on social media daily, with 46 percent of adolescents claiming that social media …

Why doctors are losing the health care culture war

Rusha Modi, MD, MPH

Policy

October 12, 2025

The interview ends. The line goes dead. A senior CDC official has resigned, not because the science changed, but because the room did. Within forty-eight hours, CDC Director Monarez is fired by tweet, three senior leaders walk out, and a deputy from HHS (Jim O’Neill, a Silicon Valley investor turned political enforcer) is slotted in as acting CDC chief.

The headlines say turmoil. That is the polite word for capture.

Meanwhile, the …

Global surgery needs advocates, not just evidence

Shirley Sarah Dadson

Education

October 11, 2025

In the world of global surgery, progress is a word we love to repeat. Since 2015, we have celebrated the drafting of National Surgical, Obstetric, and Anaesthesia Plans (NSOAPs), applauded World Health Assembly resolutions, and cited countless academic papers. But walk into a district hospital in a low- or middle-income country, and the patient waiting for a life-saving operation will not feel that progress. For them, the promises of global …

Bearing witness to the gun violence epidemic

Michelle Weiss

Policy

October 6, 2025

I stare down at the ground below me, closing my eyes tight, trying to hold back the tears. “Push it down. Deep breath in. Breathe it out … slowly … again …” The mantra I say in my head whenever it suddenly becomes too much.

I open my eyes to the view of the ground, unwillingly taking a snapshot of the view that surrounds me. Like the slow click of a …

Why doctors are leaving insurance-based care

Dana Y. Lujan, MBA

Policy

October 2, 2025

For years, concierge medicine and direct primary care (DPC) were viewed as fringe alternatives, reserved for affluent patients or entrepreneurial physicians willing to step outside the insurance system. But in my opinion, these models are no longer “nice-to-have” side projects. They’re becoming essential pathways for physicians to reclaim careers, reduce burnout, and meet patient expectations in an evolving health care landscape.

Burnout is pushing physicians to the edge.

The pandemic only magnified …

Why culturally compassionate care matters for South Asian communities

Nishat Uddin, MPH

Conditions

October 2, 2025

South Asians are one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations in the United States, yet their health experiences remain poorly understood, often falling into broad “Asian American” categories that erase unique needs. The result is persistent inequities: South Asians face disproportionately high rates of conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and PCOS, while also contending with cultural stigma, language barriers, and limited representation in the health system.

As a public health professional and …

The cost of illegal immigration on Black communities

Anonymous

Physician

September 29, 2025

In the shadowed corridors of America’s great academic hospitals, those bastions of progressive piety nestled in sanctuary cities like Denver, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, a quiet usurpation unfolds. For decades, as a physician committed to mentoring Black Americans, I have viewed my profession not merely as a vocation but as a form of restitution: a personal reckoning with the sins of our white forebears, whose legacy of chattel …

Treating the economy like a crashing patient

Larry Kaskel, MD

Policy

September 27, 2025

We all know the look of a patient about to crash. The monitor has not flatlined yet, but the story is already in the vitals: The pulse is racing, the pressure is dropping, the skin is clammy.

That is the U.S. economy right now. Debt overload looks like a chronic hemorrhage. High interest rates are a sustained hypertensive crisis. Political paralysis is the family arguing in the hallway while the patient …

How collective action is shaping physician empowerment and patient care [PODCAST]

American College of Physicians & The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

September 24, 2025

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

Physician leader Janet A. Jokela discusses its article “Collective action as a path to patient-centered care.” The piece reflects on the evolution of physician unions since the 1980s, beginning with housestaff associations …

Why U.S. health care pricing confusion demands bold solutions [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

September 22, 2025

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

Health care executive Ashish Mandavia discusses his article “Why U.S. health care pricing is so confusing—and how to fix it.” Ashish explains how systemic misaligned incentives, opaque insurance practices, and weak enforcement …

A critique of medicine’s response to RFK Jr.

Rakesh A. Shah, MD

Physician

September 21, 2025

In recent years, American politics has witnessed a disturbing rise in conspiracy-driven health narratives that undermine science and public safety. Among the most vocal proponents of anti-vaccine rhetoric has been Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose campaign of misinformation poses a clear threat not only to childhood immunization but to medical research more broadly. One might assume that the nation’s leading physician organizations, particularly major medical and pediatric associations, would respond …

Why doctors must fight for a just health care system

Alankrita Olson, MD, MPH & Ashley Duhon, MD & Toby Terwilliger, MD

Policy

September 18, 2025

“We do not have the money! You took it all!”

Startled, I moved the phone away from my ear to dampen the screaming voice on the other end. I had just explained to my patient’s son that his 95-year-old mother could walk again; she just needed surgery to repair her hip fracture. This was good news, or so I thought. His mother had insurance, “good” insurance, and needed a fairly routine …

Unused IV catheters cost U.S. hospitals billions

Piyush Pillarisetti

Policy

September 15, 2025

Imagine a patient is admitted overnight for a mild UTI. In the ED, she is told that a peripheral IV catheter (PIVC) needs to be inserted. She asks why—after all, she is volume neutral, taking her daily medications by mouth without issue, and her CBC/CMP are unremarkable. “It is just a precaution,” she is told—just a benign step in the protocol. For the two days the patient is hospitalized, the …

Why I left the clinic to lead health care from the inside

Vandana Maurya, MHA

Conditions

September 12, 2025

I didn’t leave medicine because I stopped believing in the healing power of the white coat. I left because I realized that healing, in today’s health care system, often requires more than a stethoscope.

My journey began in India, where I earned my medical degree and practiced within a health care system that, like many around the world, faces the dual challenges of limited resources and high patient demand. I saw …

Why your health care dashboard isn’t working and how to fix it

Dave Cummings, RN

Policy

September 11, 2025

In today’s data-rich but insight-poor health care environments, the ability to measure performance isn’t the problem. The real challenge is turning that measurement into meaningful, actionable insight—and more importantly, sustainable improvement. I’ve seen countless KPI dashboards rolled out with great fanfare, only to become screen clutter that no one trusts, understands, or uses to drive change.

To avoid that fate, you must build dashboards rooted in operational reality, tailored to the …