Opinion: As vaccination efforts falter, the U.S. must get serious about Covid-19 testing and reporting
As the U.S. heads into Thanksgiving and the holiday season beyond, new cases of Covid-19…
Category: First Opinion
Opinion: The staggering toll of complications related to pregnancy and childbirth
In conversations about the woeful state of maternal care in the United States — pregnancy-related…
Opinion: Laugh a little: Medical professionals, engaged in serious business, need to reclaim their humor
Serious question: Is it OK for medical professionals to laugh at themselves or make fun…
Opinion: The U.S. needs to engage communities around BIPOC data
Nearly 170 years ago, a physician who had been born into a poor family used…
Opinion: Health plans, insurers need to make addressing racial inequities in health care part of their core work
Health care companies and organizations across the country are grappling with health inequities, spurred by…
Opinion: Lessons from the inverted paradiddle can help telehealth move forward
By day I run a health care company. At night and on weekends I play…
Opinion: Why is the CDC missing in action on severe mental illnesses?
In October, the CDC updated its list of medical conditions that contribute to worse outcomes…
Opinion: Vaccine mandates should cover the incarcerated, too, not just prison guards and workers
Federal, state, and local vaccine mandates are being opposed by several high-profile groups, including firefighters,…
Opinion: People in states without Medicaid expansion can’t wait any longer to build back better
Lawmakers are in the midst of deliberations over the Build Back Better Act, a landmark…
Opinion: Listen: A resident physician on the Covid-stoked fire that burned him out
Resident physician Sudhakar Nuti was almost too burnt out to write about burnout. He spent…
Opinion: With 128 Covid vaccines in clinical development, we don’t know if the approved/authorized ones are the best ones
Pfizer/BioNTech. Moderna. Johnson & Johnson. AstraZeneca. These are the marquee names that spring to mind…
Opinion: Personalized medicine goes far beyond genetics
Since the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003, most public considerations of personalized medicine…
Opinion: The pandemic didn’t increase suicides. That shouldn’t be a surprise
In the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, mental health experts and members of the…
Opinion: Texting saved lives during Covid. What does that mean for health care’s future?
Despite the ongoing push to increase the number of vaccinated people in the U.S., about…
Opinion: It’s time for individuals — not doctors or companies — to own their health data
Health data should be like a mountain stream, flowing in a single direction with a…
Opinion: Why two emergency physicians’ kids took part in the Pfizer vaccine trials
Cue the collective sigh of relief from many parents across the country. While the Pfizer-BioNTech…
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Opinion: Broadband access: Health care’s newest challenge
The past two years have underscored the long-standing but always disturbing reality that millions of…
Opinion: Isolated in Uganda: How Covid-19 evacuations highlight unfairness of global health partnerships
Patients gasping for air in hospital hallways, trailers serving as makeshift morgues, emergency medical tents…
Opinion: Understanding health care consumer preferences is key to effective Covid-19 vaccination messaging
Health care, like politics, is local. The performance of certain procedures or the prevalence of…
Opinion: Listen: A patient and a nephrologist on how using race in kidney testing puts lives at risk
Ever since medicine adopted a race-based formula to assess kidney health in the mid-2000s, some…
Opinion: I’m almost always the only Hmong American scientist in the room. Yet I was told I come from a group overrepresented in STEM
I grew up in a small, low-income community surrounded by diverse groups of people, including…
Opinion: Drug pricing bill’s unintended consequences will distort drug development
After months of wrangling, Democratic lawmakers have agreed on a drug pricing bill. The House…
Opinion: Preventing market failure in brain health: Moving toward fixes in investment, operations, and governance
The world is in the midst an escalating global crisis of brain health, by which…
Opinion: STAT+: Why does the FDA want to stop improving medicines via patent ‘areas of concern’?
It’s hardly unprecedented for one federal agency to encroach on another’s turf. But the latest intra-executive-branch…
Opinion: The hurried push by Congress to address drug costs shouldn’t undermine the vast savings from generics and biosimilars
Americans rightfully expect Congress to address the ever-increasing prices of brand-name prescription drugs. But the…
Opinion: Is the debate over the origin of Covid-19 still worth having?
The American public is understandably interested in how a pandemic that has killed nearly 750,000…
Opinion: I worry that burnout can’t be reversed and has fundamentally changed me as a doctor and a person
It took me four months to write this sentence. I wanted to capture my feelings…
Opinion: Time, facial feminization, and the transgender experience
Time, a precious commodity for all of us, poses extra challenges for transgender people. Every…
Opinion: What Moderna owes the world
Moderna is expected to reveal its third quarter earnings on Nov. 4. The announcement will…
Opinion: Listen: An antibiotic expert on her body’s stinging betrayal
Natalie Ma knows a lot about antibiotics. She’s familiar with the consequences of antibiotic resistance…
Opinion: Molnupiravir: another Covid-19 treatment, another opportunity to recognize inequity
The Covid-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected communities of color and those with lower socioeconomic means,…
Opinion: I’ve worked with Robert Califf. He is the leader the FDA needs
If the cascade of news reports are true, President Biden is finally about to name…
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Opinion: Make Covid-19 testing an empowering choice rather than a draconian punishment
Public health is at its best when it is pragmatic in the face of complex…
Opinion: Had I done Ancestry.com sooner, I could have gotten a kidney transplant two years earlier
For the past few years, experts have criticized — and defended — the use of…
Opinion: My company is developing new antibiotics. My resistant infection showed me we need them now
I biked to work in a rainstorm one day in October 2019. As a longtime…
Opinion: For people with sickle cell disease, add check-ins to checkups
Among the many lessons the Covid-19 pandemic has taught society are that individual behaviors matter;…
Opinion: Hyperthymia: a mental illness that helped me for years — until it didn’t
From my teenage years on, I benefitted from what I thought was a positive personality:…
Opinion: Listen: A physician and philosopher on the dangers of ‘curating’ natural deaths and executions
Americans have a tendency to fixate on what’s commonly thought of of as “a good…
Opinion: A new index measures the extent and depth of addiction stigma
“I finally build up the courage to tell the doctor I need help. Staring at…
Opinion: How Moderna nearly lost the race to develop a Covid-19 vaccine
Moderna Inc. has emerged as a biotech power — and a household name — thanks…
Opinion: For prenatal care, more doesn’t necessarily mean better
Most pregnant people receive prenatal care today in much the same way their mothers or…
Opinion: Fake, substandard vaccines and medicines spell trouble for controlling Covid-19
A notable rallying cry that emerged early during the Covid-19 pandemic was “flatten the curve.”…
Opinion: Don’t give Covid-19 long-haulers the silent treatment
“I feel like I’m getting the silent treatment and it’s killing me,” Pamela Bishop confided…
Opinion: Making clinicians worthy of medical AI: Lessons from Tesla and self-driving cars
Tesla is in the midst of conducting an unprecedented social experiment: testing drivers of its…
Opinion: What the death rattle and capital punishment have in common
Death rattle. That’s the sound some dying people make, caused by a buildup of mucus…
Opinion: Listen: A Filipinx physician on health disparities disguised by data
When data shows that Asian Americans are faring better during the pandemic than other racial…
Opinion: Telehealth skeptics miss the forest for the trees
The role of telehealth and its staying power in our health care system is up…
Opinion: Insurers should cover energy costs for prescribed medical equipment
Some Americans working from home during the pandemic noticed sizable increases in their monthly electric…
Opinion: Investing in caregiving: a social, public health, and economic issue
As a working daughter, I recently embarked on a new and uncertain phase of my…
Opinion: On Covid-19 booster shots, the FDA has overstepped its role
Booster shots for all adults six months after being vaccinated against Covid-19 are safe, effective,…