advocacy - Bill of Health

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A Patient’s Right to Masked Health Care Providers

July 20, 2023July 19, 2023 Katherine Macfarlane Leave a comment

By Katherine A. Macfarlane

In May 2023, Mass General Brigham instructed its patients that they “cannot ask staff members to wear a mask because our policies no longer require it.”

Following patient protests, the hospital updated its policies with an imperfect fix, announcing that “patients can ask, but providers determine when and if masking in a particular situation is clinically necessary.”

This episode highlights the uneasy circumstances that people with disabilities face in the U.S. while accessing essential care: On the one hand, the law surrounding reasonable modifications in health care is well-settled. On the other, the practical reality of U.S. health care leaves little room for individualized accommodation and self-advocating patients vulnerable to retaliation.

person walking away from a surgical mask lying on the ground.

Personal Crusades for Public Health

February 14, 2023February 13, 2023 Katherine Macfarlane Leave a comment

By Katherine Macfarlane

Public health in the U.S. has collapsed. In its place, we are left with an insufficient, impoverished alternative: personal crusades. This essay describes the cost of casting aside what is best for the public’s health in favor of individual choice, especially to those who are high-risk for serious illness or death from COVID-19. It explores how they must negotiate public health measures on their own.

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Failures of Imagination in Public Health Policy

February 10, 2023February 10, 2023 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Daniel Swartzman

If public health is to prosper, we will need to overcome the after-effects of several failures of imagination.

Failing to recognize the threat to liberal democracy from the last 50 years of coordinated conservative political and policy actions.
Failing to use litigation against inadequate public health actions, as did the early civil rights and environmental movements.
Failing to anticipate litigation that challenges our efforts, such as with the ACA or the upcoming attempt to “codify Roe v. Wade.”
Failing to demand moral leadership of governmental actors.
Failing to make political action and advocacy an integral part of professional education in public health.

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Injustice Anywhere: The Need to Decouple Disability and Productivity

March 22, 2022March 22, 2022 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Brooke Ellison

There is a profound need to deconstruct and actively reconstruct the interpretation of disability as it is currently understood.

The current framing of disability as inability — whether an inability to be employed or otherwise — has utterly failed not only people with disabilities, but also the communities in which they live.

This perception of disability is a relic of attitudinal and policy structures put into place by people who do not live with disability themselves: people who may have been ignorant to the virtues that living with disability engenders.

Current calls for attention to a disability bioethics or a disability epistemology have heralded not only highlighting, but also actively promoting, the qualities, leadership skills, and valuable character traits associated with surviving and thriving in a world fundamentally not set up for one’s own needs.

Before any meaningful movement can be made when it comes to the employment of people with disabilities — whether in the form of workplace accommodations, flexible work settings, recruitment practices, or limitations on earnings — the underlying assumption about the value of their presence in the workforce needs to change.

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Fostering Mentally Healthier Workplaces via Disability Advocacy: COVID-Era Strategies and Successes

March 18, 2022March 17, 2022 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Zachary F. Murguía Burton

Can employers foster mentally healthier workplaces via theater?

Here, I discuss a mental health advocacy and inclusivity initiative built around a theatrical production, The Manic Monologues, with a particular focus on pandemic-era efforts to foster awareness, empathy, and connection around mental health challenges.

These efforts aim to promote healthier and more inclusive (and, by extension, more productive) workplaces in the face of the ongoing, escalating global mental health crisis.

How Preclinical Medical Students Have Embraced Advocacy Amid Virtual Education

April 13, 2021April 12, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Tarika Srinivasan

On February 28^th, 2020, after an hour of incessantly refreshing my email inbox, I received an acceptance letter to my dream medical school. That same day, a conference in the city I would soon call home became the superspreader nexus from which up to 300,000 COVID-19 infections have been traced.

The ensuing months, which were meant to be an exercise in pomp and circumstance, were marked by a steady stream of anxiety, frustration, and disappointment associated with virtual learning.

As first-year medical students, it is hard not to feel that we comprise the bottom rung of a long, rigid hierarchy. We are fully aware of the limited role we play in this pandemic; we lack the useful clinical skills of a final-year medical student or an employed resident. Our presence in the hospital is more of a liability than an asset.

We witnessed classes of fourth-years graduating early to serve on the front-lines of the spring first wave (though reception to this call of duty ranged from appreciation to apprehension). We imagined that in a few short years, we too might be deemed so “essential” that folks would be clamoring to have us serve on the wards.

But, despite our limited skills, we preclinical students decided we could not simply wait in the wings for our cue. Though we were dedicated to the didactic portion of our curriculum, we were itching to be involved in the action. Thus, we sought to expand the scope of what medical students could do during a pandemic.

Tag: advocacy