Healthcare – Page 5 – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

Nurses on the Inside: Stories of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in NYC

By Scott J. Pearson | November 25, 2022November 25, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Much has changed since HIV/AIDS first started spreading widely in America. Fortunately, we now have better drugs to treat HIV infections. The healthcare system focuses on prevention through PrEP. America is more accepting of homosexuality, though more progress can always be made. Some things remain similar, though. Preventative vaccines are still a hoped-for but not realized dream. The stigma of a diagnosis still exists, but not nearly as badly as it did in the 1980s…

Healthcare Society

Bodies & Barriers: Queer Activists on Health

By Scott J. Pearson | November 14, 2022November 14, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Healthcare matters, almost by definition, are anxiety-ridden events. Few, if any, people go to doctors for mere enjoyment. If added to that anxiety lies further anxiety about who one loves or how one feels comfortable about their own body, the outcome of a medical transaction can be negatively impacted. Negative healthcare outcomes can lead to decreased quality of life or even length of life. Few people would wish for this, even for people who think,…

Healthcare Research-Education

The CTSA Program at NIH: Opportunities for Advancing Clinical & Translational Research

By Scott J. Pearson | September 20, 2022September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

The CTSA Program at NIH seeks to advance clinical and translational research – that is, quicken the flow of helpful information across the American healthcare system. This program began in 2006 and has been a big hit. By the time this report was compiled in 2013, a new landscape of translational research began to emerge. This report, from a committee of national figures in the research community, seeks to identify what a “CTSA 2.0” might…

Healthcare

Advancing Healthcare Through Personalized Medicine

By Scott J. Pearson | August 13, 2022August 13, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

The sequencing of the human genome and the subsequent reduction in price for individuals to sequence their own DNA have opened up a new opportunity for medicine. DNA sequencing has the potential for clinical use in the near future. This means that drugs can be developed with applicability only to a subset of the population with specific genetics. Indeed, genomic therapy with CRISPR (not covered in this edition of this book) further opens up treatment…

Healthcare History Science

The Gene: An Intimate History

By Scott J. Pearson | July 4, 2022July 4, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Genetics is a field of biomedical research that is both in motion and influential over our daily lives. It promises to help millions afflicted with horrific disease, yet it could be poised to change (or unravel?) human life as we seek to write our own destinies in DNA. Real action in this field has only occurred in the last 200 years, starting with Gregor Mendel and accelerating in the early twentieth century. Mukherjee, an oncologist…

Healthcare Research-Education

Personalizing Precision Medicine: A Global Voyage from Vision to Reality

By Scott J. Pearson | July 4, 2022July 4, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

This book has sat in my to-read stack for some time. I finally picked it up, and I’m glad I did. I love reading stories about the progress of medical research, the field I work in (specifically translational research). This book focuses on how medicine is evolving, especially zeroing in on in its business aspects as well as its international impacts. Even after the pandemic, precision medicine stands poised to provide more effective treatments in…

Healthcare Society

Hot Spot: A Doctor’s Diary from the Pandemic

By Scott J. Pearson | May 15, 2022May 15, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

The pandemic era provided the world many types of stories that have not been seen in generations, at least since the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918. Healthcare workers and governmental leaders had the most stress refracted their way. Jahangir, a colleague and trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt Medical Center and chair of the board of health in Metro Nashville, served in both roles. What was naively thought to last perhaps only weeks or even a few…

Healthcare HIV/AIDS Psychology Society

My Nerves are Bad: Puerto Rican Women Managing Mental Illness & HIV Risk

By Scott J. Pearson | April 27, 2022May 7, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

This sociological work examines a niche group with a lot of social factors going on that impacts their health. First, there is gender as these are women. Regionally and racially, these women are from Puerto Rico but now live in the mainland US. They are impoverished, like many who come from the island. They have to deal with very real health issues like mental illnesses and the looming risk of HIV. They have risk factors,…

Healthcare HIV/AIDS Research-Education

Scrambling for Africa: AIDS, Expertise, & the Rise of American Global Health Science

By Scott J. Pearson | January 1, 2022January 1, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

The prevalence of HIV and AIDS in Africa was a looming problem at the turn of the millennium, but heavy American investment in treatment for Africans under George W. Bush’s PEPFAR program addressed the acute symptoms. However, like much in life, smaller, no-less-significant problems exploded soon afterwards, particularly in the vein of post-colonialism. Was this a scientific partnership of equals or was it a contribution from a superior to an inferior? Does PEPFAR create a…

Healthcare Society

Unmasked: COVID, Community, & the Case of Okoboji

By Scott J. Pearson | December 28, 2021December 28, 2021 by Scott J. Pearson

In anthropology, an ethnography is an account of the culture as told by the people in that culture. As such, it’s basically a fancy word for a series of interviews within a group of people linked together. In this work, Mendenhall, a medical anthropologist working at Georgetown University, offers us an ethnography of the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in rural America. She does so in a personal account while she visits her hometown…