What a Year of Pandemic Isolation Taught Me About My Transition

by Riley Black Hormone replacement therapy is a slow form of magic. Very little physical exertion is needed – in my case, little more than twisting open a prescription bottle – but patience is a virtue you learn if you don’t already have it at the start. From the time I took my first doses […]

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On the Need for an Ecologically Dimensioned Medical Humanities

Article Summary by Jonathan Coope Healthcare often tends to be compartmentalized as something quite separate from issues of ecology and ecological sustainability. Yet health impacts of global warming and other environmental problems alert us to the fact that health and the fate of the biosphere are inextricably related and always have been. Yet western modernity, […]

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Prioritizing Justice in the U.S. Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Blog by Sarah E. Rowan, Michelle Haas, Lilia Cervantes, Kellie Hawkins, Lilian Barahona Vargas, David Duarte-Corado, Alonzo Ryan and Carlos Franco-Paredes Days ago, a clinician in Denver looked with anger at a patient who laid dying in the ICU. “Why didn’t she access care earlier? There are resources available and now she’s dying!” The patient […]

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No Words: A Virtual Choir of Healthcare Workers Memorializes 500,000 Americans Lost to the Pandemic

Announcement by The Nocturnists The U.S. has reached half a million deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic. To mark this moment, The Nocturnists medical storytelling community has created No Words, a video memorial honoring those lost to the pandemic and the healthcare workers who cared for them. No Words Memorial Video: https://bit.ly/TheNocturnists_NoWords No Words Webpage: https://thenocturnists.com/no-words […]

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Trauma–Aware Care

Blog by Lily Kim While chairing Holocaust Education Week (UJA Federation) and leading Equity for the Canadian Disability Studies Association (CDSA), I recognized the need to reconcile diverse intersectional perspectives in Canada. The current situation is widely viewed as a healthcare crisis brought about by the COVID-19 virus. However, the pandemic has revealed the existential […]

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The Fight Against Sexism in Science: International Women’s Day Featuring Scientist Rita Colwell

Welcome to the Medical Humanities podcast, where today we are pleased to have Rita Colwell join us for International Women’s Day! In addition to discussing the trials and successes of being a woman in science, she also talks to us about her new book A Lab of One’s Own. Rita Colwell is one of the […]

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The Power of Equity: Interview with Oni Blackstock

Welcome back to the medical humanities podcast. I am Brandy Schillace, Editor in Chief, and today we are speaking with Dr. Oni Blackstock. In this episode, we discuss the powerful influence of Black women in medicine and in health justice. What will it take to change the course of healthcare and ensure equity for all? […]

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Call for Papers: Access and Social Justice

The Covid-19 pandemic has stripped away comfortable illusions, has exposed how fragile our medical, governmental, and social health care systems, and has shed additional light on deeply problematic inequalities in the distribution and allocation of care. We mustn’t return to normal; normal was not good enough. For this reason, we are continuing this year in […]

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