AMA Journal of Ethics^®

Dr Susan Veldheer joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Daniel R. George: "Strategies to Help Health Care Organizations Execute Their Food System Leadership Responsibilities.”

Since health organizations offer food, they are situated at key intersections of agricultural policies and practices and public health.

Consumption of over-the-counter vitamins, minerals, and herbals is widespread, but clinicians lack critical information about their use.

Poor oral health has been neglected as a public health threat, despite recognition as “epidemic” in scale by the US Office of the Surgeon General.

Standard treatment of hyperglycemia in type 2 diabetes includes a pathway when “cost is a major issue.” Whether it’s just to do so remains unclear.

Stressful life experience associated with racial and ethnic discrimination can have detrimental effects on the coronary and cardiovascular health of people in historically marginalized groups.

Patients have the ethical and legal right to choose their physicians for whatever reasons they wish, but physicians need not let patient prejudices go unremarked upon.

An aggregation of evidence over a span of decades has established as a bedrock fact of modern epidemiology that tobacco, poor diet, and lack of physical activity constitute the leading causes of chronic disease, including cardiovascular disease, and premature death.

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.