This week was full of building new relationships with the high school students and the other mentors as we explored South Chicago. The first day of the week our group spent the time making life maps and playing name games to get to know each other. I was slightly anxious before meeting the students…
For the summer, I’ll be hanging out over at http://www.summerservicepartnership.com This is the blog of the summer program that I direct, with the amazing help of Cathryn Smeyers, program manager extraordinaire. With the Summer Service Partnership, 21 medical, professional, college and high school students come together to learn about the social determinants of health, map…
It’s time to celebrate all things yoga, and YogaCare! Three years ago, yoga instructor Greg Van Hyfte was a student in the Social Services Administration school at the University of Chicago, and a Schweitzer Fellow. His project was to bring weekly yoga classes to Chicago Family Health Center, where I work as a family physician.…
Over Memorial Day weekend, I attended my 15 year college reunion. Fifteen years, folks. People married soon out of college already have children who are full fledged independent beings with personalities. It was fun to meet these young people, some of them less than a decade away from college themselves. Many of my college friends…
The doctor-patient relationship is under threat from state laws that try to shape what we can and can’t do for our patients. Many state legislatures are proposing laws that limit the questions doctors can ask patients in our confidential clinic visits. Do you smoke? Drink soda? Exercise? Do drugs? Is there a gun in the…
Here’s a central difficulty of the Affordable Care Act: if everyone has access to health insurance, then everyone has access to all the medical care they need. Curing sickness and preventing death costs a lot, and society can go broke providing costly medical care to everyone. Society saves money and lives when everyone sees a…
Two years ago, at a conference for the American Association of Medical Colleges, there was a group from New Mexico that was handing out little buttons that said “Innovate” (only the “ate” was a sign for infinity–eight, with a twist). As part of their Innov8 campaign, they asked conference attendees to videotape or write the…
Access was the theme of the week for the Pritzker School of Medicine’s Community Health Elective, and so we took a field trip to Friend Family Health Center, just across the street from the University of Chicago at 55th and Cottage Grove. It is a federally qualified health center (FQHC) that grew from a clinic originally founded by…
On Saturday March 29, for the first time ever, I hosted a radio program: The University of Chicago Medicine’s Dr. On Call program, on WVON Talk Radio 1690 am. The topic was Prevention Not Prescription: Bullying, Violence and the Summer Service Partnership. I was nervous about hosting a radio show. Could I keep a conversation…
In 2003, I was a teaching assistant for a class at Yale called “Fat and Thin: A History of American Bodies.” We learned about everything that makes us obese: the history of fad diets and health food, the car culture and suburbs, nutrition science and vitamin pills. Immigration and food cultures, food policies and the…
Prevention Not Prescription 