Hot Topics
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Health Literacy
“The degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.”
Resources:
- Health Literacy Outloud Podcasts
- Engaging the Patient
- HRSA Health Literacy Site
- NIH Clear Communication Initiative
- National Network of Libraries of Medicine Health
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Social Determinants of Health
“The conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, including the health system. These circumstances are shaped by the distribution of money, power and resources at global, national and local levels, which are themselves influenced by policy choices. The social determinants of health are mostly responsible for health inequities - the unfair and avoidable differences in health status seen within and between countries.”
Resources
- CDC: Social Determinants of Health
- WHO Key Concepts
- RWJF: A new way to talk about the social determinants of health
- Healthy People 2020
- The Social Determinants of Health and Equity: The Impacts of Racism on Health by Camera Phyllis Jones, MD, MPH, PhD
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Health Communications
“Health communication is the study and use of communication strategies to inform and influence individual and community decisions that affect health. It links the fields of communication and health, and is increasingly recognized as a necessary element of efforts to improve personal and public health.”
Resources:
- Making Health Communication Programs Work (NCI’s Pink Book)
- CDCynergy
- National Health Observances Calendar
- GoHealthyPeople Twitter
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Primary Care
An essential element of any health care system is primary medical care. All Americans should have access to a health professional trained to provide quality primary medical care as their entry point to the system. Such primary care physicians provide:
- first-contact care for persons with any undiagnosed sign, symptom, or health concern;
- comprehensive care for the person which is not organ- or problem- specific;
- longitudinal or continuous care for the patient;
- responsibility for coordinating other health services as they relate to the patient’s care.
-Vanderbilt University Department of Medicine
Resources:
- NACHC: Access Denied: A Look at America’s Medically Disenfranchised
- WHO: Primary health care now more than ever
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Health Disparities
“A health disparity should be viewed as a chain of events signified by a difference in: (1) environment, (2) access to, utilization of, and quality of care, (3) health status, or (4) a particular health outcome that deserves scrutiny. Such a difference should be evaluated in terms of both inequality and inequity, since what is unequal is not necessarily inequitable.”
- “What is a ‘Health Disparity’?” by Olivia Carter-Pokras, PhD and Claudia Baquet, MD, MPH
Resources:
- Medline Plus: Health Disparities
- Levels of Racism: A Theoretic Framework and a Gardner’s Tale by Camera Phyllis Jones, MD, MPH, PhD
- Center for Health Equity and Social Justice- Boston Public Health Commission
- Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? documentary by California Newsreel
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My Favorite Posts
District Day at Senator Scott Brown’s Office
A Year of Service (A series recapping my year as an AmeriCorps member)
Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
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Why use social media? (Where I investigate different perspectives on social media use in health care.)
Part 1: A Cardiologist’s Perspective
Part 2: Debbie Weil, Corporate Blogging Expert
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