Medical Care enters a new chapter with the arrival of its new Editors-in-Chief, Drs. Amresh Hanchate and Deepak Palakshappa. The journal has long shaped health services research. It has advanced work on health policy, care delivery, equity, and methods. As the flagship journal behind The Medical Care Blog and a close partner of the APHA… Read More: A Conversation with the New Editors-in-Chief of Medical Care »
Every year, we pause to recognize the systems, people, and infrastructure that quietly shape the health of our communities. Yet in 2026, that pause feels less like a celebration and more like a call to action. As we approach National Public Health Week (NPHW), the stakes are unusually clear: public health is both more essential… Read More: National Public Health Week 2026: A Time for Action »
AI tools have become ever more available to the general public in the last few years. Before ChatGPT, there were standalone tools like Grammarly and the AI-adjacent Editor in Microsoft Word. Now, though, tools from many of the big technology companies have become available (freely or at low cost) to the public. Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s… Read More: Medical Care and Artificial Intelligence »
Julie M. Zito, PhD, a longtime member of the APHA Medical Care Section, a former chair of the Medical Care Section, and stalwart advocate for pharmacy policy, passed away on December 6, 2025. She was a good friend who always “liked” my Facebook posts on progressive issues. Along with Kathy Virgo, she guaranteed the quality… Read More: In Memoriam: Julie M. Zito, PhD »
A new year brings a clear choice. In 2026, The Medical Care Blog will focus more directly on how policy decisions shape health. Not just health policy in isolation, but policies across and intersecting between housing, labor, education, transportation, climate, and criminal legal systems. This approach is often called Health in All Policies. The idea… Read More: Health in All Policies: The Medical Care Blog’s Focus for… »
Greetings, dear readers, and welcome to our 2025 wrap-up! In the US, 2025 has been a very challenging year for many in clinical and public health practice and research. With funding cuts, layoffs, and reductions-in-force, many of our readers (and yours truly) had to face the fact that our livelihoods were no longer secure. It… Read More: 2025: Our Year in Review »
What just happened, and why people are talking about it In late September 2025, FDA announced it would start a process to add language to acetaminophen labels noting a possible association with autism and ADHD when used during pregnancy, and it sent a notice to physicians [pdf] summarizing the concern. The move followed statements from… Read More: Autism and Acetaminophen use during Pregnancy: reviewing the evidence »
While training to be a psychometrician I was blessed/cursed more than 50 years ago with a favorable response to a research proposal to improve tools that researchers increasingly used for surveying health outcomes but were rarely evaluated psychometrically. Knowing little about health, I found very useful the WHO’s 1948 definition of it as “a state… Read More: Surveying Health Outcomes That Patients Are Most Qualified to Evaluate:… »
Happy New Year to our readers, and thank you for joining us as we welcome in 2025. Two weeks ago, we took time to review and celebrate our first-ever blog theme: Climate Change and Public Health. We learned a lot during our first year with a theme, and we will take those lessons into 2025.… Read More: Political Determinants of Health: A Consensus Statement for 2025 »
It’s September! That means it’s our blogiversary =) This month marks the 10-year anniversary (blogiversary) of The Medical Care Blog, where we focus on the intersection of public health and medical care. To celebrate this milestone, we are dedicating this month’s podcast to a blog-focused episode featuring special guests Greg Stevens and Ben King, co-editors… Read More: Healthy Intersections Podcast: Celebrating Our Blogiversary »
Dear readers, it’s been awhile since we published a “top posts of the year” roundup! In fact, we haven’t published one since 2018. So, as we wrap another eventful year of blogging at the intersection of public health and medicine, our holiday gift to you is here! Oh – and we’re still one of the… Read More: Top Posts of 2019-2022 »
Patient experience surveys are a cornerstone of public reporting and pay-for-performance initiatives. Some healthcare providers, payers, and other stakeholders have expressed concerns about declining response rates and representativeness of these surveys [pdf], especially for underserved groups. Increasing response rates is an important goal. Several strategies have been proposed to increase response rates, including administering surveys… Read More: Increasing Response Rates »
To help you prepare your APHA and other meeting abstracts for submission, the APHA MC Health Equity Committee presented a webinar on the topic of Making Your Abstract Awesome + Getting It Accepted. We had limited spots available for the live event, but we recorded it and are happy to share that recording and the… Read More: Awesome Accepted Abstracts »
This past year at The Medical Care Blog has been quite an adventure. Like the rest of humanity, we were thrown into a whole new reality with the COVID-19 pandemic. Our first posts about SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus) and COVID-19 (the disease it causes) began in mid-March and haven’t stopped since. All told — across… Read More: End-of-year post: 2020 edition »
We announced last week that The Medical Care Blog has reached its 5-year milestone. As part of the editorial team, I’m excited to pause briefly and reflect on some great blog posts about healthcare that I think deserve to have been more widely read. Contributions from our authors have helped us reach more than 80,000… Read More: At 5 Years: Great Blog Posts That (Almost) Nobody Read »
We’re celebrating 5 years of blogging at The Medical Care Blog! We thought it would be a good time to stop, take stock, and share what we’ve learned while writing at the intersection of public health and medical care.
Barbara Starfield was a pediatrician, primary care researcher, and member of the Medical Care section of the American Public Health Association. She passed away suddenly in 2011, and in 2016, the section decided to honor her memory by creating a new award: the Barbara Starfield Medical Care Scholar Award. The purpose of this award is… Read More: Call for Applicants: the Barbara Starfield Scholar Award »
This will be the last post of 2018 for us here at The Medical Care Blog. We would like to take this opportunity, as we do every year, to recognize YOU – our reader – as well as our contributors. We are really proud of the work we’ve done this year, and we hope you’ve… Read More: Top posts of 2018 »
The December edition of Health Wonk Review is now up at Health System Ed. In case you missed it, our contribution for this month comes from Jess Williams and covers some interesting new collaborative work on what research topics should be prioritized according to people with diabetes and/or obesity and researchers specializing in the fields.… Read More: Health Wonk Review – December 2018 »
Greetings from San Diego, where we’re just wrapping up the 2018 meeting of the American Public Health Association. It’s been a whirlwind stretch of great presentations, engaging conversations, and electric scooters! Have you seen these things? I was surprised at how many of my public health colleagues were willing to ride without a helmet… But… Read More: Health Wonk Review – November 2018 »
The October edition of Health Wonk Review is now up at Joe Paduda’s Managed Care Matters blog. This month, our featured post is the excellent commentary by new contributor Dr. Ranit Mishori titled The Social Determinants of Health? What about the Political Determinants of Health? Enjoy!
This month’s Health Wonk Review, by Andrew Sprung at xpostfactoid, is called Map of Malfunction. Andrew describes this month’s edition as “a smorgasbord of smart takes on the morphing ACA marketplace; various dysfunctions (and one or two functions) of U.S. health care; and political wars over Medicare and the ACA.” The round-up features Red Thaddeus Miguel’s first… Read More: Health Wonk Review – September 2018 »
We have been contributing to the Health Wonk Review, a longstanding roundup of “the best of the best” in health policy-related blog posts, on an irregular basis for some time. Starting this month, we’re pleased to announce that we’ll be participating more regularly. We will post a notice and link to the latest edition every… Read More: Health Wonk Review – August 2018 »
It’s summer! In my world, that means road trips and beach days. One of my favorite ways to pass the time on a road trip or long lazy day at the beach is to catch up on podcasts. Podcasts — the name derives from iPod + broadcast — are audio or video transmissions, often produced… Read More: Summertime, and the listening is easy: podcast roundup »
It’s been a wonderful year for The Medical Care Blog, and we are very proud of the great work of our contributors. Thank you for reading and sharing! Here are our most-read posts of 2017: Avoiding Anticholinergic Drugs May Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk by Barbara Zabielski The Impact of Social Media in Healthcare by Alexa Ortiz and Catherine… Read More: Top posts of 2017 »
The year 2016 was a big one for The Medical Care Blog: in February, we moved from our old publisher-hosted location and launched this new domain and design. We’ve published 61 posts here since then – a little more than one a week. We’ve added many new contributors and broadened our audience. Thank you for reading!… Read More: Top posts of 2016 »
In just a few days, thousands of public health practitioners, students, scholars, and activists will descend on Denver, Colorado for APHA 2016. This year, your faithful co-editors will be there, live-tweeting about sessions! So be sure to follow @MedCareBloggers for real-time updates. Here are just a few of the sessions we’re looking forward to this year:… Read More: APHA16 Preview »
The Medical Care Blog is always looking for new contributors! We’re especially interested in people who can commit to writing one blog post per month or every 3 months. We are open to contributors at all stages of career development. Prior blogging experience preferred, but not required. Our posts cover a wide range of topics. Some… Read More: Call for Contributors »
Welcome! We are so happy you have joined us on our new domain and platform. This move is one that we hope will allow our blog to grow its reach and readership. Our archives remain mostly at the old site. We hope you will share these posts with your colleagues, students, and fellow researchers and practitioners. Comments… Read More: Welcome to The ^new!^ Medical Care Blog »