March 3, 2011

By Phillip Zegelbone

If we hope to improve our nation’s health care delivery systems, I believe we must stimulate pre-medical students to take an interest in system reform. The fresh outlook, optimism, and intellectual curiosity of young doctors-to-be are essential for progress.

Case in point: As an undergraduate at Wesleyan University, my classmates and I were inspired by the ideas and experiences we shared in a public health course offered by our Sociology Department: the Health of Communities (HoC). In HoC, our course professor assigned each of us an internship in a community health clinic. We met in class to compare our progress in the internships and to discuss assigned readings. When the course ended, we felt the need to create a Health Care Action Network (HealthCAN) out of a shared desire to promote social justice in health care. more...

February 24, 2011

By Lenny Feldman, MD

With the passage of healthcare reform, the need for primary care physicians and leaders has never been more acute. Baltimore, MD faces a primary care workforce crisis as it contends with problems prevalent in the inner-city: poverty, chronic disease, substance abuse, psychiatric illness, urban violence, literacy issues, and health care disparities.

A few years ago, as my colleagues at Johns Hopkins and I reevaluated our institution’s role in the community, we realized that we were not addressing one of its most glaring problems: a lack of primary care access. more...

February 17, 2011

By Stella Safo

It is Saturday night at an Emergency Department (ED) in Boston, MA and I am faced with a medical student’s dream dilemma: which one of the many interesting cases should I observe? Should I watch trauma surgeons operate on the 17-year-old gunshot victim or work with the ED docs to assess whether a 59-year-old woman is having an acute stroke? That is exactly what I adored about emergency medicine as a third year student: I could observe, in real time, a variety of patients with conditions that ran the gamut from splinters to near-death experiences. more...

February 10, 2011

By Aakash Shah

Mr. Williams* is a storyteller at heart. Each time he catches my gaze fixed on a picture frame, he lets out a knowing sigh and then launches into the memory behind each photo. There was Michael’s graduation, Nathan’s wedding, Lauren’s first child, and the entire family, three generations in all, gathered together around the Christmas tree. Mr. Williams has been blessed with a beautiful family – a wife of 55 years, four sons, three daughters, and nine grandchildren – and he knows it. Turns out, he also knows a bit about what ails our healthcare system. more...

February 3, 2011

By Eric Lu

I didn’t expect to bump into Max* on the streets.

“I was kicked out of the house by my wife,” he sighed. Max shifted around on his feet, eyes puffy and cheeks pink.

“Did you start using again?” I asked.

Max looked down and didn’t say anything. In the three years I had known Max, an alcoholic and former drug user, he had been clean. But recently he had started struggling. He lost his job, began drinking again, experienced episodes of depression, couldn’t afford medication for his diabetes, and became overweight. Now it appeared that he was using heroin and was homeless. more...