Tag: health disparities

Waqas Haque Waqas Haque (1 Posts)

Contributing Writer

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Waqas is a fourth-year medical student at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas class of 2021. In 2014, he graduated from University of Texas at Dallas with a Bachelor of Science in dconomics. Before medical school, he earned a master's degree in the business school at Cambridge University in England. Last year, Waqas took a leave of absence from medical school to pursue a Master of Public Health degree at Johns Hopkins as a Sommer Scholar. He enjoys basketball, reading one book a week, and exploring new coffeeshops. In the future, Waqas aspires to integrate his entrepreneurial and public health skills as a physician-innovator.




Hospital Chargemasters: The Way Forward for Price Transparency?

Published by Waqas Haque

President Trump signed an executive order this past June that directs the Health and Human Services Department to develop a rule requiring hospitals to disclose online the prices that insurers and patients pay for common items and services. The rule also requires hospitals to reveal the amounts they are willing to accept in cash for an item or service. However, hospitals not complying only face a civil penalty of $300 a day, giving them latitude to effectively ignore the executive order.

Are Medical Schools Addressing All Dimensions of Health? A Perspective from Philadelphia Medical Students

Published by Genevieve Silva

So, what is planetary health? It refers to a burgeoning field focused on understanding the health impacts of human-caused disruptions of Earth’s natural systems, including climate change and environmental pollution. This also encompasses the immediate and downstream health threats from such disruptions, which have impacts on communities at the local level — Philadelphia is no exception.

Academic Medical Centers and Their Neighbors: What Medical Students Should Know

Published by Reilly Sample

As many urban academic medical centers have become the world’s leaders in research and patient care, their bordering neighborhoods have suffered through decades of disinvestment and economic blight. Medical students often receive their first years of training in hospitals that serve these disadvantaged populations. While the current focus on social determinants of health represents a rising cornerstone of medical education, what else do medical students need to know about inner city poverty?

How a Pandemic Has Shifted the Conversation Around Harm Reduction

Published by Katherine Termini

For a variety of reasons, the substance use population is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on data from previous financial crises, the emotional toll will increase rates of new substance use, escalate current use, and trigger relapse even among those with long-term abstinence. There may be a significant lag before these changes are detected and treated because health care resources are being funneled toward the pandemic.

Structural Violence and Noncompliance: A 49-Year-Old Hispanic Woman with Metabolic Syndrome

Published by Philine Endres

Mrs. H’s story is just one of millions of Americans who have become victims of structural violence and suffered from the social determinants of health. With a clearer understanding of the complex factors that contribute to patients’ health outcomes, I now aim to reunite the erroneously separated domains of medicine and social sciences.

This is Water: A Perspective on Race from a White Male

Published by Caleb Sokolowski

As a White male, there are certain things that I will never understand. I was raised in an upper-middle-class family in a safe neighborhood — one with adequate resources, education and funding. I have never had to live in fear in my community, worry about my safety on my street, or been threatened or condemned because of how I look. My reality is inexplicably shaped by the privilege and opportunities that I have been given. I realize that to me, racism appears nonexistent because I have not seen it.

Yasmine Suliman (1 Posts)

Contributing Writer

University of California Riverside School of Medicine

Yasmine Suliman is a first-year medical student at the University of California Riverside School of Medicine in Riverside, CA class of 2023. In 2018, she graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts in health and human biology. She enjoys spending time with family and friends, cooking and reading. After graduating from medical school, Yasmine would like to pursue a career in pediatrics.