My Life Scoop

By ELIZABETH BROWN

Attention digital health innovators! Do you have a health tech solution that can aid community-based care coordinators in COVID-19 vaccine screening and appointment scheduling for their underserved and vulnerable patients? Apply to the second Alliance for Better Health Rapid Response Open Call, hosted by Catalyst @ Health 2.0 & sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation!

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the importance of ensuring health equity and access is vital. This RROC is looking for solutions to help community care coordinators and providers schedule appointments for COVID-19 vaccines for vulnerable and underserved patients who may be facing barriers to self-scheduling those vaccine appointments. The intended care providers are those working with patients who may lack resources, health literacy, or face other barriers to self-scheduling appointments. A select group of semi-finalists will have the opportunity to demo their technology. A grand prize winner will receive $15k … Read the rest

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By KIM BELLARD

Last week I wrote about, well, how awful social media has become, so this week it’s nice to write about pretty much the opposite: Wikipedia turned twenty last Friday (January 15). 

In person years that’s not even old enough to buy alcohol, but in Internet years that makes it one of the grand old masters, like Google or Amazon.  Wikipedia is one of the most visited Internet destinations, with its 55+ million articles, in 300+ languages, getting some 10b+ views per month. 

It is something that, by all rights, shouldn’t exist, much less be successful.  A non-profit, volunteer written/edited, online encyclopedia?  An online resource widely trusted for its objective, generally accurate articles in a world of fake news?  As the joke goes, it’s good that it works in practice because it does not work in theory.

That’s sort of the opposite of our healthcare system: it’s good … Read the rest

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By MIKE MAGEE

“We’re better than this” is the common refrain heard from many political leaders following the deadly assault on our democracy on January 6th. We hear empty appeals for blind appeasement from the likes of Kevin McCarthy in the interest of “bringing our country together.” But for those of us who study medical history, pursuing this course takes our nation in exactly the wrong direction.

Rather, the model we must follow is the model of Germany in 1945, or South Africa in 1995. In both cases, strict legal and public accountability (retributive justice) were married with fundamental expansion of universal social services to rebuild confidence and trust in their government’s ability to assure safety and security, and an equal playing field for all of their citizens (restorative justice).

In sorting through the legacy of Hitler’s regime in Germany, the Allied forces established the International Military Tribunal.  One of … Read the rest

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