Osler Medical Symposium Kicks Off Lineup with Public Health Panel (Johns Hopkins News-Letter)

Thursday Mar 8th, 2018

The Osler Medical Symposium (OMS) kicked off its first event, “Baltimore in the 21st Century: A Commissioner’s Perspective,” on Friday, March 2 in Gilman Hall. OMS is a new student-run speaker series that aims to bring high-profile guests in the field of medicine to Hopkins. The series is named after William Osler, one of the four founding physicians of the Hopkins Hospital. 

The panel featured Dr. Peter Beilenson and Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, both of whom served as former Baltimore health commissioners, as well as Dr. Michelle Gourdine, the former deputy secretary for public health in Maryland. The discussion was moderated by Dr. Leana Wen, the current health commissioner for Baltimore.

Wen explained that health is influenced by many factors, including housing, poverty and unemployment. “So often, we understand health to be what happens when you are in a hospital. But actually, that’s not what determines how long someone lives or how well someone lives,” she said. 

Read the entire story.

Related Stories

Lead poisoning cases fell 19 percent in Baltimore last year, even as more children tested for exposure (Baltimore Sun)

The number of Baltimore children with lead poisoning fell 19 percent in 2017, even as more children were tested for exposure to the powerful neurotoxin.

Statewide, the number of Maryland children found to have elevated levels of lead in their blood held steady even as the number of children tested increased by 10 percent, according to a Maryland Department of the Environment report released Tuesday.

Read the entire story.

Trump declared an emergency over opioids. A new report finds it led to very little. (Vox)

To much fanfare last year, President Donald Trump ordered his administration to declare a public health emergency over the opioid epidemic. “As Americans, we cannot allow this to continue,” Trump said at the time. “It is time to liberate our communities from this scourge of drug addiction.”

When I’ve asked experts about these approaches, it’s not that any of them are bad. It’s that they fall short. For instance, Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore (and soon-to-be president of Planned Parenthood), said that the Support for Patients and Communities Act “is simply tinkering around the edges.”

Read the entire story.

Azar Unveils Plan to Help Pregnant Patients Quit Opioids (MedPage Today)

States will get help from the federal government integrating services for pregnant and postpartum Medicaid patients with opioid use disorder under a pilot program announced Tuesday by Health and Hu

Visit the Newsroom