Clinicians have an ethical obligation to promote health equity in their communities. This month, we discuss how clinicians worked to expose the water crisis in Flint, and explore ways that clinicians can combat systemic injustice and promote health equity.

When patients are unable to express their wishes and do not have surrogates or advance directives, which and whose values should inform decision making for them? We discuss ethical complexities of caring for unrepresented patients.

Dr Laura Guidry-Grimes helps us consider whether and which decisions can be shared with people experiencing mental illnesses.

Author Ryan Sallans discusses his experience accessing health care and suggests how to take good gynecological care of transmen.

In the September 2014 issue on physicians as agents of social change, Dr. Audiey Kao, editor-in-chief of Virtual Mentor interviewed Dr. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development or USAID.

This month Virtual Mentor theme issue editor Elizabeth Miranda, a medical student at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, interviewed Dr. Elliott Fisher about the problem of unwarranted variation in health care services.

AMA Journal of Ethics theme editor Emily Johnson, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, interviewed Susan Mizner, JD, about some merits, drawbacks, and alternatives to guardianship.

Sterling Johnson joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Dr Kimberly L. Sue: "Drawing on Black and Queer Communities’ Harm Reduction Histories to Improve Overdose Prevention Strategies and Policies.”

Madeline J. Hooper joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Lauren C. Linkowski, Dr Lynette Menezes, and Dr Jordan Messler: "Summer Without Shelter in Tampa During COVID-19."

Eva V. Regel joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article: “How Should Clinicians Help Homeless Trauma Survivors Make Irreversible Surgical Care Decisions?”