Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed

AP: Few Transplant Surgeons Are Black. Giving Medical Students A Rare Peek At Organ Donation May Help 
It’s long after midnight when the bustling operating room suddenly falls quiet –- a moment of silence to honor the man lying on the table. This is no ordinary surgery. Detrick Witherspoon died before ever being wheeled in, and now two wide-eyed medical students are about to get a hands-on introduction to organ donation. They’re part of a novel program to encourage more Black and other minority doctors-to-be to get involved in the transplant field, increasing the trust of patients of color. (Neergaard, 10/24)

The Wall Street Journal: America’s Most Famous Neurosurgeon Thinks You Should Take A Nap 
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the Emmy-winning CNN correspondent, talks about prepping for the operating room, therapy apps and how he stays focused. (Florsheim, 10/23)

The New York Times: How Climate Change Is Changing Therapy 
Studies have found rates of PTSD spiking in the wake of disasters, and in 2017 the American Psychological Association defined “ecoanxiety” as “a chronic fear of environmental doom.” (Jarvis, 10/21)

The New York Times: A Hospice Nurse On Embracing The Grace Of Dying
A decade ago, Hadley Vlahos was lost. She was a young single mother, searching for meaning and struggling to make ends meet while she navigated nursing school. After earning her degree, working in immediate care, she made the switch to hospice nursing and changed the path of her life. Vlahos, who is 31, found herself drawn to the uncanny, intense and often unexplainable emotional, physical and intellectual gray zones that come along with caring for those at the end of their lives, areas of uncertainty that she calls “the in-between.” (Marchese, 10/21)

The Washington Post: Older Americans Are Dominating Like Never Before, But What Comes Next?
Virginia Boothe, a palliative care physician, retired at 69. She loved her work helping people navigate the final chapter of life, but it was relentlessly trying, one emotionally fraught day blending into the next. She was ready to cast off the burdens of medical bureaucracy, the endless battles with insurance companies to get her patients the treatment they needed. “I wanted to take a step back from human suffering,” she said. (Fisher, 10/24)

The Nation: A Weekend At Abortion Camp Offers A Glimpse Into The Future Of Abortion Access
“In post-Dobbs America, patient navigation is not a linear path,” said Amelia Bonow, executive director of the activist group Shout Your Abortion, which organized the event. “Access is a cobbled-together ecosystem of smaller organizations, including those ready to do shit in a post-institutional way, who aren’t waiting around for courts, for politicians, for doctors, but all our work is too siloed. It feels like we are building a new system, and we need to do it in-person.” In the year after Dobbs, the movement was operating in triage mode, and Abortion Camp was conceived as a conclave of sorts, where activists could come together to have honest, nuanced conversations about the present and future of abortion access, build relationships, and relax and recharge. There were people present who represented mainstream organizations, folks who operate underground, and everything in between. The idea was to get them all in a room where they could productively and securely talk to each other about their work, their challenges, and what they needed from each other. (Grant, 10/26)

The Washington Post: The Pandemic Is Over In This Michigan County. The Mistrust Never Ended
In Ottawa County, a fast-growing, middle-class community of about 300,000 people on the Lake Michigan shore, battles over mask mandates and whether to get vaccinated had divided families and torn apart church congregations. They had eroded trust not only in medical experts and government institutions, but also among neighbors and friends. They had turned the county, which voted to reelect Donald Trump by 21 points, into a place where the Republican Party’s future was taking shape. No local institution faced more pressure than the county’s 100-person public health department. Before the pandemic, its workers had drawn little attention. Health department employees inspected restaurants and sewage systems. They tracked communicable disease outbreaks and immunized children. (Jaffe andMarley, 10/22)

The New York Times: Roland Pattillo Dies At 89; Doctor Championed Henrietta Lacks 
Roland A. Pattillo, a gynecologic oncologist who had been treating and researching female cancers for decades, had long been haunted by the curious case of Henrietta Lacks, a young, impoverished Black woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951 yet whose cells lived on and made medical history. They were known as the HeLa cell line, and they had been used to develop the polio vaccine, treatments for H.I.V. and other landmark medical advances. Like most medical researchers, Dr. Pattillo had known about the HeLa cells since he was a graduate student. As it happened, he had also been a fellow in the Johns Hopkins lab in Baltimore that had first cultured them, one of the few Black doctors working there in the late 1960s. (Green, 10/20)

The Washington Post: Rising Temperatures, Extreme Weather Threaten To Propel Malaria Spread
Cases of malaria threaten to increase dramatically from climate change as rising temperatures push mosquitoes to new areas and lengthen transmission seasons. (Chason, Crowe, Muyskens and Chikwendiu, 10/23)