COVID Pandemic-The Ongoing Tragedies
It is with a heavy heart that I focus on 2 sad events in this From the Editor.
Everything can be encapsulated by looking at individual human beings and their impact on our lives. Leah Zallman was such a person. She was one of the newest members of JACM's editorial board. I had only one conversation with her but in just that one brief conversation I could feel her humanity, her caring, who she was as an individual, as a mother, as a devoted member of her family, as a caring physician committed to the marginalized. She went to vote on November 3, was hit by pickup truck after voting, and died the next day.
Quoting from the eulogy given by her friend and mentor David Bor:
No children should be separated from their mother; no parent should bury her child.
Losing Leah leaves us numb. Heartbroken. Leah had it all: vitality, generosity and brilliance. She could do it all. And she did it all.
Leah wrote, "(my) passion arises from a deep belief that all humans have a right to health care, and that as a physician researcher, I have a role to play in elevating the voices of the most vulnerable." She pursued that task with zest. One by one, Leah cared for immigrants in her clinical practice in East Cambridge. She reached out to policy makers about improving access not just to health care but to food, housing, and other health determinants. And she published fifty probing research papers in leading health journals.
The culmination of Leah's scholarly efforts at CHA and the Institute for Community Health was to be announced this month: her founding the "Center for Immigrant Health Research." Her research documented the strengths and plight of immigrant communities. As she wrote, "This is a time when our country deeply relies on immigrants and at the same time is advancing policies that are harmful to immigrants." Leah became the premier researcher in the field. It was time to establish a center! (https://icommunityhealth.org/in-memoriam-leah-zallman-md-mph)
Dr Zallman voted in the hope our country could have a better future. Right now, we are in the middle of human tragedy after human tragedy-caused by the COVID pandemic. I have hospitalized 3 patients in the last 10 days. I see no immediate end in sight. We can only hope that voting will change the trajectory of this pandemic. As Lawrence Wright recently stated in the New Yorker:
Voting is a simple act, and an act of faith. It is a pledge of allegiance to the future of the country. Across America, people waited in long lines to vote-despite the disease, despite attempts to discredit or invalidate their vote, despite postal delays, despite Russian or Iranian meddling, despite warnings from the White House that the President would not go quietly if he lost. They voted as if their country depended on it.
People like Dr Zallman voted in the hope of a better future. However, for today, this issue of the Journal continues our focus on the pandemic. We need teams of health care providers, not individuals, in order to be able to respond effectively to this pandemic. Kurtzman and colleagues delve into the team concept in detail. The team most commonly needs to respond to needs of patients who have a chronic illness, and Tofthagen and colleagues analyze information gaps and other factors that patients with chronic illness and family caregivers need addressing. Kingston and colleagues analyze the mundane but critical issue of changes in shift schedule and its impact on teams. Grembowski and his team focused on burnout-a tragic consequence of this pandemic. In a letter to the editor, Patel and coresearchers examine e-visits.
Lauer and Coustasse in separate articles that have policy implications respectively look at health service utilization among individuals with learning disabilities and accountable care organizations.
The Journal is particularly interested in international contributions pertaining to ambulatory care, and we are pleased to publish the Gutler and colleagues article on the factors and patient preferences that deter or encourage ambulance use in life-threatening situations in rural areas.
-Norbert I. Goldfield, MD
Editor