How To Get Homeless People Good Health Care
Jacob, a young homeless man with hearing loss, recently walked into one of the free clinics that my colleagues and I had organized at his shelter. He sat down with me and described how severe hearing loss had impacted his life. During a previous job interview, he had been unable to properly hear the interviewer, forcing him to ask his potential employer to speak louder and repeat himself multiple times.
He was not offered the job. Jacob told me that he was feeling depressed, and that he was losing faith in his ability to provide for himself.
Unfortunately, his story is not unique. As an ear, nose and throat physician who has practiced in Chicago for the last 20 years, I’ve met countless individuals like Jacob who are housing-insecure and whose health issues prevent them from improving their circumstances.
And yet, as you might imagine, I have never had a homeless person call to make an appointment with my office. The stark reality is that health care remains out of reach for most of the homeless population in the U.S. due to societal neglect and systemic barriers pertaining to technology, transportation and cost.
To address this disparity, we initially began visiting local shelters with the goal of providing on-site care, but soon realized that this mobile care model limited our impact significantly. Being on-site in the shelters meant that we couldn’t provide certain medical services, and we were ultimately unable to see everyone that needed to be seen.
So we realized that we’d have to bring the patients to us.
The Center for the Underserved at Rush ENT — or CURE — initiative was founded in 2022 with a mission to improve access to compassionate and high-quality care in the medically underserved community of Chicago’s West Side. Our program provides
Privacy breach ‘absolutely terrifying’ – Winnipeg Free Press
Two Winnipeg residents who were notified a health worker snooped on their medical records — among a string of recent privacy breaches in the province — are demanding the system be made more transparent and accountable.
Daniel Hidalgo and Shontise McFadyen received identical letters from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority in December, alerting them an employee had inappropriately viewed their personal health records dozens of times.
The pair are colleagues at CommUNITY204, a non-profit organization founded by Hidalgo to serve Winnipeg’s homeless population.
According to the letters, viewed by the Free Press, the privacy breach was identified during a routine audit earlier that month.
“It’s absolutely terrifying because all you can think is there must be some kind of spiteful or malicious intent behind it,” Hidalgo said.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS Daniel Hidalgo, whose personal medical information was breached last year, is calling for more transparency in the health-care system.
“I immediately responded. I needed to know who this was and if this could be somebody who knows me personally. I wanted to know what they accessed, how long they had access — are there cameras showing them taking photos of these records or were they printed?”
Records provided to Hidalgo by WRHA officials and shared with the Free Press show the woman accused of snooping had allegedly done so 19 times over a period of about nine months.
Hidalgo has met the woman on several occasions through his advocacy work. He believes she may have been working in public health, but does not know why she would look at his personal records.
The health authority refused to confirm the woman’s official job title or whether she is still employed in the region Tuesday.
“The WRHA cannot discuss personal information regarding employees,” a spokesperson said in an email.
Collectively,
You can buy extremely rare designer clothes at this new Toronto clothing shop
Less than two years after dodging post-secondary programs to pursue their archive fashion dreams, Alex Maxamenko and Christian Ferguson have already done what most in the Toronto retail game hope to achieve at one point in their career — open up a store.
20 Maud is both the name and address of the archive sellers’ new base, out of which they’ll be selling extremely rare archive clothing, offering private shopping appointments as well as a buy/sell/trade program, monthly membership plans including a photography studio and styling services and monthly community events.
Kicking off this weekend, 20 Maud will be open to the public for the first time April 27-28 from 10 a.m.-10 p.m. The new shop’s community events will feel similar to the massive pop-ups the pair have been known to host in the past, with thousands of pieces for sale, a buzzing crowd of fashion enthusiasts and interactive elements– in this case, a live DJ. They even have customers from China and the U.S. flying in for the event.
“A lot of stuff is really hard to get, which means we might be some of the only people in the world with certain pieces,” explains Maxamenko, pointing to a $20,000 Raf Simons Nebraska sweater on the wall. “If you look up where to buy it, you just can’t,” he says.
“People will get to browse our entire archive at discounted prices, which is something we rarely do,” he adds. “We don’t really do sales on this type of archive because it’s so difficult to find, so when we do events like this, we just want to bring the city together and show our gratitude for everyone supporting us.”
Ferguson likens it to a museum: “You can come see 40 years of fashion in one room and they’re
Biden administration restores protections for gay and transgender Americans seeking health care
CNN
—
The Biden administration announced a new rule Friday expanding safeguards against potential discrimination of gay and transgender Americans seeking medical care, in a reversal of Trump-era limitations that nixed federal health protections for members of the LGBTQ+ community.
In a set of expansive new rules unveiled by the Department of Health and Human Services, the department moved to advance civil rights protections for patients by barring health providers and insurers receiving federal funding from discriminating against those seeking care on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. The HHS rule restores Obama-era protections for transgender patients that the Trump administration rolled back in 2020 — a move that was condemned by LGBTQ+ advocacy and human rights organizations.
“Today’s rule is a giant step forward for this country toward a more equitable and inclusive health care system, and means that Americans across the country now have a clear way to act on their rights against discrimination when they go to the doctor, talk with their health plan or engage with health programs run by HHS,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a Friday statement.
The finalized rule comes as access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth has been tangled in political controversy, with more than 20 states in recent years attempting to restrict youth access to such care. As conflicting rulings on state-level bans have emerged from lower-level courts across the country, the Supreme Court has faced mounting pressure to consider the matter.
The contested rule stems from Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which bars “discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability in specified health programs or activities.” The new HHS guidelines stipulate that while Section 1557’s prohibition on sex discrimination includes LGBTQ+ patients — and bans limiting
TikTok is being increasingly used for medical advice
Since the monumental search engine Google was founded in 1998, it has been a running joke that instead of consulting their doctors about medical problems, many computer users go to “Dr. Google” for explanations and advice.
Now, it seems, the Chinese-owned TikTok social media platform is starting to take its place – raising the possibility that it should be called “Dr. Quack” instead.
TikTok has become an integral part of the lives of many around the globe, offering not just entertainment and catchy dances but also a wealth of so-called information on topics ranging from home improvement to world news. Many young people even prefer to use social media in place of traditional search engines like Google when looking for answers.
The dangers of quackery
Health information is no exception. Hashtags like #celiactok, #diabetestok, and #sinustok have millions of views, with each tag leading to countless videos about each health issue. “Every type of ‘Tok’ exists – that’s just how the internet works,” said Rose Dimitroyannis, a third-year medical student at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine. “Little tiny segments of the population find one another and make waves.”
TikTok has already become the sixth-most-popular social media platform with over 1.05 billion active monthly users and is expected to grow to 2.2 billion users by 2027.
It can be good for people who share questions about their medical conditions to find one another, but unfortunately, they and anyone else who views health-related social media content are also likely to come up with misinformation from ignorant informants or vested interests with something to sell.
While some trends are relatively harmless, such as when people were to “draw out toxins,” others can be
Alberta unveils new nurse practitioner funding model
The new funding model grants nurse practitioners the autonomy to work independently, including in new or existing primary care clinics
Article content
Alberta is set to announce Thursday a new funding model for nurse practitioners that will grant them the autonomy to work independently, including in new or existing primary care clinics.
The government’s $15-million nurse practitioner primary care program is intended to help fill in gaps around primary care, particularly for the more than 700,000 Albertans who don’t have a primary health care provider.
Advertisement 2
I Got Divorced, and Now I Hate All My Clothes
I didn’t get married anticipating divorce. Nor did I, a fashion and beauty editor, expect to find all my garments suddenly unwearable. Yet there I was, alone in my bedroom, with a wardrobe full of nothing I wanted to wear.
I wish I could tell you there was a big, explosive blowout, a tantalizing scandal, or a major red flag that festered or metastasized beyond the point of reconciliation, but the sad truth is that we grew apart. And as the chasm between us became too wide to bridge, it felt easier to separate gracefully than to force a lifetime together.
After a breakup, most people wax melancholic about the landmarks they frequented, once-cherished memories that become almost too painful, too unbearable to hold onto— anecdotal souvenirs that they wish they could scrub clean, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-style. Remember how happy we were there and there and there? For me, those tales are told in threads: There’s the Only NY long-sleeve I bought, because it was one of his favorite brands; a J.Crew sweater he gifted me during one of our first holidays together; the vintage Thierry Mugler suit I snagged on one of our trips to San Francisco; the navy ruched dress I wore to his friend’s wedding; and then, of course, there was our own wedding—the Calvin Klein Collection dress I got custom-made for the big day. My closet felt like a gravesite, memorializing all these moments we had together, large and small.
We were together 11 years—pretty much all of my 20s and the entirety of my time in New York. When so much of yourself
A Deep Dive Into TikTok’s Sketchy Mental Health Advice
A high school counselor can track what’s trending on TikTok by hearing what undiagnosed mental health or neurological condition her students think they have.
An elementary school counselor listens to 3rd graders say they have depression—a word she’s pretty sure they picked up on social media.
And more half of teens surveyed by the EdWeek Research Center earlier this year said they have used social media to diagnose their own mental health conditions.
The 24/7 conversation about mental health taking place on sites like TikTok is finding its way into classrooms. To be sure, there are some positive effects: Social media has destigmatized many mental health conditions and encouraged students to be more open about their feelings, educators and experts say. But students are also seeing a lot of potentially counterproductive misinformation.
One way to combat the problem: Teach students to apply the same media literacy skills to the mental health information they see online that they would to a news opinion piece, educators and experts said.
Educators can “really get [students] to kind of do this critical thinking,” said Dan Florell, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University who teaches school psychologists. Have students consider if the video cites a valid study to back up its claims, and if the creator of it has professional credentials in mental health.
Florell even suggested teachers or counselors turn this into a classroom activity. “OK, let’s go online and find some TikTok videos that are claiming certain stuff. And then let’s break it down and see if this is true. And if not, why not?” he said.
As a reporter for Education Week covering mental health, technology, and the intersection between the two, I asked Florell to put his advice into practice. Earlier this month, I searched TikTok for popular videos offering a
Oracle Is Moving to Nashville to Focus on Health Care
(Bloomberg) — Larry Ellison plans to make Nashville the world headquarters for Oracle Corp., only a few years after relocating the tech giant from Silicon Valley to Austin.
Ellison said Oracle is developing a campus in the Tennessee city, moving it closer to a major health-care hub and reflecting the software giant’s ambitions in the industry.
“It’s the center of our future,” Ellison, Oracle’s chairman, said at its health care summit in Nashville on Tuesday. Norman Foster, who created Apple Inc.’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, is designing the campus along a river in Nashville, Ellison said in a conversation with Bill Frist, a physician and former US Senate majority leader.
Oracle makes most of its money on database, financial, and cloud infrastructure software but has targeted the health care industry for future growth. Ellison, the world’s 10th richest person, agreed to buy electronic health records company Cerner for $28 billion in 2021. Around that time, Oracle pledged to create 8,500 jobs by 2031 in the region as part of a $1.35 billion office development in Nashville, according to the Nashville Business Journal.
The shift is potentially a significant boost for the area, which has been attracting corporations from across the US in recent years driven by the relatively cheap cost of living, low taxes and state incentives. Money manager AllianceBernstein announced its move from New York to Nashville in 2018 after evaluating 30 cities on attributes including housing, education and weather.
The metro area has for decades though pitched itself as a health-care hub and middle Tennessee is now home to 900 health-care companies, according to the Nashville Health Care Council, a group created about 30 years ago to promote the industry.
HCA Healthcare Inc., which operates more than 180 hospitals across the country, was founded in Nashville in the
Bay Oral security breach exposes protected patient health information
GREEN BAY, Wis. (WBAY) – If you are one of 10,000 clients who received a letter from Bay Oral Surgery and Implant Center this week, listen up. There’s been a privacy incident and your information could be at risk.
In January, Bay Oral discovered an unauthorized person accessed an employee’s email account and viewed client information. In February, the company confirmed the breach and just this week notified clients.
In a Consumer First Alert, we look at why clients are just hearing about this now and what they can do to protect themselves.
We talked to identity theft expert James Lee, who says it’s not unusual for people to hear about a breach several weeks or months after it happened.
In this case, according to Bay Oral, clients’ information was viewed. Lee tells us that if it had been removed or copied, there would be a trail and make it much easier for the company to tell exactly where the risk is. But because it was only available to be viewed, Lee says it likely took longer to figure out what might be at risk.
Here’s what we know about this incident. Investigators found that the unauthorized person installed software, accessed emails, and viewed patient information, including social security numbers and banking information.
While questions remain, Lee says how you protect yourself remains the same no matter what happened.
The goal is to make the information less usable. Change your password, make it unique, and long for accounts. Use multi-factor authentication, and freeze your credit to prevent new credit from being taken out in your name.
Bay Oral declined our interview request on Friday. In a press release, Bay Oral says it has since changed IT companies, added new protections, and is no longer storing protected health information in emails.