Physicians can take an active role in disease prevention by learning counseling skills and helping patients to cease medically destructive behaviors.

Physicians need to properly screen their patients for intimate partner abuse and provide referrals for support and counseling.

Physicians who change their practices to concierge medicine may lose valuable patient-physician relationships.

Although civil rights questions come into play, quarantine as an attempt to control an infectious disease can still be used when certain conditions are met.

When a public health risk exists, a physician's obligations to warn those in potential danger overrides rules of patient confidentiality.

Physicians need to properly screen their patients for intimate partner abuse and provide referrals for support and counseling.

The authors of a 1995 Archives of Internal Medicine article assert that physicians should engage in bedside rationing in order to contain rising health care costs, while some ethicists oppose the practice on the basis that it will disrupt the essential trust between patient and physician.

Ethical and legal questions arise when public health research that provides a benefit to society at large can potentially cause harm to the subjects.

The theme editor introduces a special issue focused on the role of physicians in improving public health.

When a public health risk exists, a physician's obligations to warn those in potential danger overrides rules of patient confidentiality.