Protecting patients rather than informed consent should be the goal when the complexity of information overwhelms patients’ decision-making capacity.

The causes of many health behaviors are deeply rooted in our culture, and using a counseling model that assumes individual control and responsibility for these behaviors can cause patients to feel hectored instead of helped.

Disparities in children’s mental health care could be addressed through expansion of school-based programs via passage of the Mental Health in Schools Act.

Patients who have been encouraged to think of themselves as consumers and a medical system that is driven by individual demands rather than big-picture planning can undermine fairness in the distribution of vaccines.

Expectations implicit in medical school funding and professional socialization lead underrepresented minorities to work with underserved populations.

PRIME-LC is a 5-year, dual-degree program at the University of California, Irvine Medical School that educates physician activists to serve in poor Latino communities.

There is some basis to believe that many people place newborns in a special moral category.

Communication and nonpaternalistic counseling are crucial to women delivering extremely premature infants.