Provocation by Kristin Marie Bivens and Marie Moeller The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) medical illustration that represents the novel coronavirus has become the emblem of COVID-19 and the pandemic. In a recent reverse image search, the image returned 5,260,000,000 results in 1.84 seconds. These numbers—over five billion—suggest that the CDC’s image of […]
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Better Access for the Disabled–Insights from the COVID 19 Pandemic
Blog by Aneesh Basheer Much of the response to the COVID 19 pandemic from governments, health authorities and volunteer organizations has neglected people with disabilities. While this is generally true during concerted response to any sort of disasters, the current COVID 19 situation offers particular insights into the intrinsic ableism of our society while also […]
Homelessness in a Time of Social Distancing
Blog by Joshua Mizels, Lauren Holt, and Madeline Hooper In all honesty, social distancing hasn’t been too tough for us medical students. Sure, it’s been frustrating to sit on the sidelines while our various medical colleagues are on the front lines fighting this COVID-19 pandemic; after all, this is what we signed up for. But […]
Medical Necessity, from the Every Day to Times of Crisis
Reflection by Daniel Skinner When I set out to write Medical Necessity: Health Care and the Politics of Decision Making, I had no idea that it would be published right as a pandemic was beginning to make its way around the world. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but my persistent thought over the past few […]
Access to Healthcare
Blog by Dr Rossella Pulvirenti and Dr Angelika Reichstein Last winter, the pages of British newspapers reported the story of Nasar Ullah Khan, a 38 Pakistani citizen, who had been living in Birmingham for the past 9 years overstaying his visa, which expired in 2011.[1] In August 2018, since he was struggling with some heart […]
Naming and Shaming: Covid-19 and the Medical Professional
Blog by Luna Dolezal and Arthur Rose On Saturday the 7th of March, Australia’s state of Victoria’s health minister Jenny Mikakos declared that she was “flabbergasted” that a Melbourne GP had continued to see patients while he had “flu-like symptoms”. The doctor in question, Dr Chris Higgins, had returned from a trip to the US […]
Bandage, Sort and Hustle: Ambulance Crews on the Front Lines of Urban Suffering
Book Review by Christopher Bosley Josh Seim. Bandage, Sort, and Hustle: Ambulance Crews on the Front Lines of Urban Suffering. University of California Press, 2020. 272 pages. ISBN: 9780520300231 This book offers a stunning analysis of the Emergency Medical System (EMS), its frontline workers, and its patients. Seim concentrates on the ambulance as an […]
Classics in Time of Pandemic: Lockdown Reflections from the Ivory Tower
Reflection by Michiel Meeusen Michiel Meeusen received his PhD in Literature from KU Leuven in 2013. He specialises in ancient science and medicine and the literature and culture of the High Roman Empire (Orcid). Western literature starts with a disease. At the beginning of the Iliad, Homer sings of an “evil pestilence” sent by […]
Unintended Impacts of COVID-19 Social Distancing
Blog by Dr. Thurka Sangaramoorthy Thurka Sangaramoorthy is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and an expert on issues of infectious disease outbreaks, health equity, and social justice. She is the author of Treating AIDS: Politics of Difference, Paradox of Prevention (Rutgers University, 2014) and Rapid Ethnographic Assessments: A […]
Bodies, Environments, and the Spread of Disease
Editor Brandy Schillace interviews Annamaria Carusi, PhD. Dr. Annamaria Carusi, previously faculty in medical humanities, left academe to work as a private consultant on the social dimensions of science and innovation, especially focusing on how to build bridges between biomedicine and public health policy. In today’s podcast, Dr. Carusi discusses the way humans and environments […]