Professionalism

How Should the Use of Opioids Be Regulated to Motivate Better Clinical Practice?

This article describes historical and political reasons for and devastating consequences of US opioid prescribing policy since the 1990s, which has restricted opioid prescribing for pain less than for treating opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment. This article considers merits and…

What Would Equitable Harm Reduction Look Like?

Structural determinants of health frameworks must express anti-racism to be effective, but racial and ethnic inequities are widely documented, even in harm reduction programs that focus on person-centered interventions. Harm reduction strategies should express social justice and health equity, resist…

How Should Harm Reduction Strategies Differ for Adolescents and Adults?

Overall rates of opioid use are low in adolescents; however, recent increases in mortality from overdose in adolescents have outpaced increases in the general population. This article highlights the importance of expanding evidence-based treatment for adolescent opioid use, especially medication,…

Ethics Talk: Street Health Care as Harm Reduction

This activity is comprised of five multiple-choice questions based on the content of an AMA Journal of Ethics podcast about how street outreach programs help mitigate harms of drug use among people experiencing homelessness. The featured guest are Dave Lettrich,…

Why MLP Legal Care Should Be Financed as Health Care

Medical-legal partnership (MLP) integrates the unique expertise of lawyers into collaborative clinical environments. MLP teams meet the needs of individual patients while also detecting structural problems at the root of health inequities and advancing solutions at the institutional, community, and…

Ethics Talk: What Do MLPs Offer Undocumented Patients?

This activity is comprised of five multiple-choice questions based on the content of an AMA Journal of Ethics podcast about how medical-legal partnerships can help undocumented patient-clients. The featured guest is Lynette Martins, a legal and bioethics scholar. The target…

With What Should We Replace Nonhuman Animals in Biomedical Research Protocols?

Historically, most discussions about nonhuman animal experimentation consider what has become known as the 3 R’s: refinement, reduction, and replacement. Refinement and reduction receive the most attention, but recent modeling advances suggest that suitable replacement of nonhuman animal testing would…