Robert J. Winn's Blog
Will Woebot Solve Our Mental Health Crisis?
A human relationship is based on trust and, in some ways, bravery. The choice to come forward to talk about our fears, our struggles, our tragedies can be a difficult one; human communication demands that we reach out to and confide in another person. Making that...
Herd Immunity Isn’t Enough: Why You Should Get a Flu Shot
Another year, another flu season. We all think we know how to protect ourselves from the onslaught of fevers, coughs, and sniffles that take our workplaces and schools by storm from October through May. We restock our desks with Purell, remember to take our...
Gun Control Is a Public Health Concern
Since the tragic shooting at Columbine, the US has lived through some of the worst acts of domestic terrorism that the developed world has ever seen. From schools to churches to concerts to clubs to army barracks, many places formerly believed to be safe community...
Assessing Urgent Care: When Last Resorts Become Common Practice (Part 2)
(Continued from Part I) Clearly, patients aren't using primary care services as much as they should - but can that all be chalked up to convenience? Studies say no. According to an 2015 NPR poll, 20% of surveyed patients choose urgent or emergency care services...
Assessing Urgent Care: When Last Resorts Become Common Practice (Part 1)
You wake up with a cough. It's not a bad one, you decide, and definitely not enough to keep you home from work. Rent's due in a week, and you know that missing out on the ten hours of the construction work your boss found you would put you awfully close to not being...
Corrections Health Care: Challenges and Opportunities
When we talk about community health care, most people prefer to keep the conversation focused on our achievements and future possibilities. We talk about the local clinics that provide flu shots and screenings to uninsured families, about school health education...
A Need for Medical Empathy
A patient is more than a collection of well-arranged data points or a series of symptoms to be decoded. The rise of medical technology aides such as IBM's Watson, which can sort through libraries of medical data in a matter of moments, has led some to speculate that a...
On Naloxone and the Rising Cost of Saving Lives
Modern medicine is nothing short of present-day magic; hard-earned and studied for sure, but miraculous nonetheless. Long years of study and research have allowed physicians to heal conditions that would have been fatal only a decade or two ago. In abstract, the...
How to Survive the Holidays
Gleeful snowmen, chipper carols, and endless holiday chatter pervades the air. Even in the early days of December, lines of cheerful parents waiting with their children to talk to Santa stretch across mall courtyards. People of all ages are basking in the holiday...
What’s In a Name? Defining a Public Health Emergency
In the space of a few months, Americans have seen a decade's worth of disaster. Countless homes and lives were destroyed in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma; to this day, many of those living in Puerto Rico are still living without without power or easy access...