Dr. James McCune Smith

Because I wanted to be a doctor, my mother made sure I had books with female role models in medicine. As a girl, I read about “Molly Pitcher” giving Revolutionary War soldiers water to drink. I knew that Florence Nightingale was “the lady with the lamp” during the Crimean War and that Clara Barton was […]

How times have changed

Most of us are comfortable living in the present time despite the threat of the pandemic. Many people talk about “the good old days” when life was perceived as simpler. Sometimes, however, a life-altering event invites us to think about how that event would have been managed in the past. This past July, I suddenly […]

Pearls from the ashes

By Deval (Reshma) Paranjpe, MD, MBA, FACS The siege has lasted one year now. One year since the pandemic caused our lives to change in ways we’d never imagined. One year since everything shut down and all manner of unthinkable things ensued. One year since we started to see both the best and the worst […]

The most important test no one remembers

Newborn screening (NBS) has been cited by the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) as one of the most impactful public health initiatives of the 20th century, and in the 21st century has undergone significant expansion through improved techniques of high throughput biochemical analysis, enzymatic activities and specific molecular defects. Screening is particularly indicated for […]