Opinion: Seeing the ‘deep pocket’ effect when insurers pay for health care
Some Americans pay directly for their health care. Many others have it covered by their…
Category: First Opinion
Opinion: The lack of a national policy agenda for children during Covid-19 — and beyond — causes grave harm
As a neonatal intensivist, helping families and newborns in distress is part of my job….
Opinion: My severe Covid-19: It felt like dying in solitary confinement
Covid-19 is teaching everyone in medicine lessons about health care and public health. Mine have…
Opinion: Using telehealth to revolutionize the speed of making rare disease diagnoses
For a person living with a rare disease, it can take five years or longer…
Opinion: Americans aren’t listening to coronavirus warnings because the messaging is wrong
Images of bars and restaurants packed with maskless people fill the news along with new…
Opinion: To improve our dismal Covid-19 performance, establish common ground between lockdown and open economy
In these stridently partisan times, the U.S. has coalesced around two polarized default narratives about…
Opinion: Lifetime risk: a new way to understand deaths from firearms and drug overdoses
Shortly before the coronavirus shuttered schools last spring, I toured a new elementary school in…
Opinion: We don’t know if convalescent plasma is effective against Covid-19. With the emergency authorization, we might never know
Convalescent plasma has been used to fight many infectious diseases, from scarlet fever in the…
Opinion: Hospital CEOs, med school leaders shouldn’t sit on for-profit health care company boards
In late July, Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, president of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital, came under…
Opinion: Is Covid-19 growing less lethal? The infection fatality rate says ‘no’
Recent reports have suggested that Covid-19 has become markedly less lethal in the United States….
Opinion: The Trump administration’s ‘public charge’ rule and Covid-19: bad policy at the worst time
As Covid-19 sweeps across the country, many immigrant communities are being hit hard by the…
Opinion: Infections acquired in health facilities are a big problem. National reporting can help fix it
Contagious diseases are as old as time and routinely appear in health care settings. New…
Opinion: Even Covid-19 tests that aren’t perfect can help control the pandemic
A key component to managing the Covid-19 pandemic is frequent, rapid, and routine testing of…
Opinion: It’s time to stop using skin color and race in medicine and see patients for who they really are
My parents fell in love at a time when their union was illegal in 16…
Opinion: ICU capacity is more about the clinicians than the number of beds
Each time communities experience surges of Covid-19, concerns arise over the availability of hospital and…
Opinion: Telehealth and the new choreography of ‘anywhere care’
Covid-19 has transformed the traditional doctor’s office visit as we know it, moving it away…
Opinion: Going viral: What Covid-19-related loss of smell reveals about how the mind works
A few months ago, a friend called me from New York in the middle of…
Opinion: Lung cancer deaths are declining faster than new cases. Advances in treatment are making the difference
This year’s annual release of cancer statistics generated more buzz than usual. Perhaps the most…
Opinion: Instead of lockdowns, teach people how to socialize safely in the time of coronavirus
In response to the rising Covid-19 death toll and case counts in the U.S., calls…
Opinion: We need new antimicrobials to prevent the next infectious disease crisis
Imagine if scientists had seen Covid-19 coming years in advance yet did little to prepare….
Opinion: With Covid-19 halting clinical trials, wearables could be key — but data ‘wild west’ gets in the way
The biotech and pharma industries are at a pivotal moment, facing a pandemic that’s caused…
Opinion: Collective intelligence and collaboration around 3D printing: rising to the challenge of Covid-19
As Covid-19 raced across the globe, health care systems faced shortages in personal protective equipment….
Opinion: When the treatment is torture: ICE must stop using solitary confinement for Covid-19 quarantine
After months of social distancing, many of us are feeling its effects. Experts have delineated…
Opinion: As clinicians are redeployed for Covid-19, onboarding takes on extra importance
Think back to your first day at a new job. It was probably difficult to…
Opinion: Yes, we need a vaccine to control Covid-19. But we need new treatments, too
Hopes for a relatively quick return to normalcy are riding high on promising news about…
Opinion: Ventilation should be part of the conversation on school reopening. Why isn’t it?
Like every other parent with a school-age child, I want schools to reopen in the…
Opinion: The DRC needs an Ebola survivor program to truly quell its outbreak
If the Democratic Republic of the Congo truly wants to break free of Ebola, it…
Opinion: Children will pay long-term stress-related costs of Covid-19 unless we follow the science
The world is learning more about the uncommon but puzzling ways Covid-19 can show up…
Opinion: Black lives depend on the U.S. dietary guidelines. Don’t water them down
Most Americans know about the Dietary Guidelines for Americans primarily through their colorful representations: the…
Opinion: Measuring excess mortality gives a clearer picture of the pandemic’s true burden
How best to represent the true toll of the Covid-19 pandemic on human lives is…
Opinion: A Covid-19 vaccine, amazingly, is close. Why am I so worried?
A mere six months after identifying the SARS-CoV-2 virus as the cause of Covid-19, scientists…
Opinion: The curious link between kids’ birthdays and their getting the flu vaccine
Getting the influenza vaccine will be even more important for adults and children this fall…
Opinion: The nursing science behind nurses as coronavirus hospital heroes
The coronavirus pandemic has given nurses a rare moment in the media spotlight. They are…
Opinion: Sexist and incomplete data hold back the world’s Covid-19 response
How many women have died of Covid-19? How many women have lost their jobs in…
Opinion: A NASA mindset can help end the pandemic
Eight months into the global coronavirus pandemic, the life sciences industry is ramping up drug…
Opinion: Pandemics wreak devastation — but spark biomedical innovation
There are no “silver linings” in the dark cloud of Covid-19. Yet if history repeats…
Opinion: Telehealth makes me aspire to be a different kind of physician: the kind I used to be
In my nearly quarter-century as a primary care pediatrician, I have always aspired to be…
Opinion: Quality issues may be the stumbling block in the race for contact tracing apps
The world is in a rush to find ways to fight Covid-19. This urgency makes…
Opinion: Boosting the promise — and reining in the peril — of Covid-19 preprints
There’s a common refrain in engineering: When it comes to the triple goal of “faster,…
Opinion: I failed — at age 34 — the now-politicized Montreal Cognitive Assessment
One sunny day in October 2016, I failed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). That’s the…
Opinion: We need to forecast epidemics like we forecast the weather
Disease-modeling communities around the world have been working tirelessly since January to predict how and…
Opinion: Science alone cannot beat the pandemic. We also need outreach about a Covid-19 vaccine
Americans anxiously await two key benefits that a Covid-19 vaccine will deliver: freedom from fear…
Opinion: A pandemic ethical conundrum: Must health care workers risk their lives to treat Covid-19 patients?
The sweep of Covid-19 across the globe has raised a fundamental question about medical ethics:…
Opinion: Say her name: Don’t erase Bebe Moore Campbell from National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month
The U.S. health care system has long neglected minority mental health. It continues to do…
Opinion: Using a global network of adaptive clinical trials to fight Covid-19
Viruses like SARS-CoV-2 can circle the globe with astonishing speed by taking advantage of human…
Opinion: ‘How painful is the cost of your health care?’ The case for a new vital sign
“On a scale of 0 to 10, how painful is the cost of your health…
Opinion: My patients want the good old days of office visits. That’s not happening any time soon
I recently got a note from my secretary with this message from a patient: “Tell…
Opinion: Clinical trials need to include more Black and other minority participants. Here’s how
The Covid-19 pandemic and the disproportionate devastation it has wrought on Black, Hispanic, and poor…
Opinion: Lower the cost of producing doctors, not just the price of going to medical school
Medicine has become a profession accessible mainly to the rich. Just look at the price…
Opinion: Chronic fatigue syndrome may hold keys to understanding post-Covid syndrome
Some survivors of acute bouts of Covid-19 experience a range of persistent medical issues —…