We must not pit immigration policy and health care needs against one another. We need better policy on immigration, and that policy should confront immigration at the workplace and at the border—not in the hospital emergency room.
Given the well-established correlation across cultures between poverty and unhealthy lifestyles, can it be just to hold individuals responsible for choices typical of their socioeconomic sector? Aren’t patient-responsibility programs simply conspiracies to shrink benefits to the poor?
Industrialized nations could benefit from strategies emerging in developing nations such as respectful collaboration between traditional out-of-hospital birthing practices and maternity units in partnering hospitals.
White Coats for Black Lives advocates that American medicine address racial inequities in health and health care by promoting diversity, eliminating implicit racial bias in the physician workforce, and advocating for equitable social structures.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(10):978-982. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.sect1-1510.
Doctors and hospitals must stop being bystanders to food-related illness and begin to become role models and educators in the transition to healthful eating habits, just as they did in tobacco cessation.
All of us who are pursuing solutions to the obesity epidemic face clinical, ethical, and regulatory challenges. First among them is the significant role of individual lifestyle and behavior choices in causing obesity.