In this video edition of Ethics Talk, journal editor in chief, Dr Audiey Kao, talks with Dr Carla Perissinotto about the health consequences of social isolation and loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Physicians tend to rely on diagnostic criteria to diagnose, which can influence patients’ access to care by legitimizing need for care, connections to appropriate clinicians, and insurance coverage for indicated interventions. This article considers potential unintended but foreseeable negative consequences,…
Use of body mass index (BMI) as a health care metric is controversial, especially in candidacy assessments for gender-affirming surgery. When considering experiences of fat trans individuals, it is important to advocate for equitable divisions of responsibility for and recognition…
Diagnostic utility of weight and body mass index (BMI) is widely overestimated. Although both are clinically relevant, their use as universal measures of health and wellness can result in missed or incomplete diagnoses, which are neglected sources of iatrogenic harm….
Discussions about how to better accommodate fat persons’ needs in health care settings tend to focus on how to reduce stigma and improve equipment (eg, scanners). While important, such efforts must address underlying ideological foundations of stigma and equipment inadequacy,…
Following the US Civil War, newly freed Black Americans had significantly poorer health than Whites. Founded in 1865, the Freedmen’s Bureau offered a range of support (eg, food, health care, shelter, legal aid) to try to improve health among the…
This article considers intergenerational trauma by drawing on the experience of a 37-year-old Black woman whose great-grandfather died as a result of involuntary involvement in the US Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. Although she never met her great-grandfather,…
Patients and families with limited English proficiency (LEP) face barriers to health care service access, experience lower quality care, and suffer worse health outcomes. LEP is an independent driver of health disparities and exacerbates other social determinants of health. Disparities…
Physicians, pharmacists, and other health professionals play an important role in addressing social determinants of health and health disparities. Pharmacists have been addressing social determinants of health for years in all populations that experience health disparities by working as vital…
Institutional racism is a set of practices and policies that disadvantage individuals not part of societies’ dominant groups. In academic health centers (AHCs), institutional racism mediates structural racism; it is embedded in institutional policies, clinical practice, health professional training, and…
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