An ectopic pregnancy cannot be relocated like a potted plant. Lawmakers got the hairbrained idea from a century-old case report published in the journal Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics, by C.J. Wallace. The author claimed to have successfully transplanted an ectopic pregnancy from a woman’s fallopian tube to her uterus in 1917.
I have had the honor and privilege of collaborating with three Kitsap Health Officers, including Dr. Willa Fisher, Dr. Scott Lindquist, and Dr. Susan Turner. After becoming a practicing physician, my reverence for the public health system has continually grown. I literally cannot do my job without the support of the dedicated employees working there.
In this case, CPS called upon child abuse pediatrician Dr. Elizabeth Woods, a new director at the Child Abuse Intervention program at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital in Tacoma. Although she told me on the phone she had “14 years of child abuse experience,” in actual fact, Dr. Woods resume tells a different story. She completed only a residency in general pediatrics in 2010 and has not completed a child abuse fellowship.
This past summer, I volunteered in Tijuana, Mexico at a clinic serving patients in the Migrant Protection Protocol program, or MPP. Also known as “Remain in Mexico,” MPP sends migrants who appear at official places of entry along the U.S. border seeking asylum, back to Mexico to await future immigration hearing dates.
This past summer, Hahnemann University Hospital—a teaching site for Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia—closed their doors. When Hahnemann closed, its’ residents were essentially “orphaned,” losing their jobs overnight. Residency refers to the post-graduate training period following medical school graduation compulsory for a physician to be licensed to practice medicine. After “matching” to an open residency position at a given teaching hospital, resident training begins across the entire nation on July 1st every year once a contract is signed with the employing organization.
Studies demonstrate that students with asthma who have access to SBHCs had fewer emergency room visits and lower hospitalization rates. Mental health services decrease school absences by as much as 50% among those with 3 or more absences in a six-week time period and an 85% decrease in school discipline referrals.
Gun violence has become a public health epidemic. Despite countless deaths in mass shootings over the last 2 decades, the Dickey Amendment—a provision inserted into the 1996 spending bill which blocked federal funding for research on gun violence—remains on the books. While every politician, media pundit, and policy expert “know” the solution, the answers are not that simple.
Is the notion of adult males having sex with tweens considered quasi-acceptable by society at-large? After all, Epstein told the New York Post in 2011, “I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an ‘offender,’…It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel.” The pediatrician in me finds this notion reprehensible. The mother in me is scared beyond belief. Teenage girls are still children. It is high-time our society started seeing them that way. Bagels, however, will never quite be the same for me, again.
Why did this picture seize our attention? Is it because Valeria’s’ tiny body is tucked inside her father’s shirt and we can vividly see her clinging to him as they drowned? Or is it because we know if they had made it across safely, the two would have been separated anyway? Or is it because every parent understands the desperation it took for a father to swim across a swirling river while carrying his 2-year-old daughter on his back?
Structural racism is the biased societal approach to housing, education, employment, healthcare, and criminal justice. As scientists study racial health disparities in depth, a picture begins to emerge that there are bigger, stronger, and more insidious forces at play than economics alone. The psychological stress generated by unfair treatment may trigger a biological series of events that lead to worsened health outcomes in the long term.
