KFF Health News June 19, 2019
Part of Dr. Aletha Maybank’s medical training left a sour taste in her mouth.
Her superiors told her not to worry about nonmedical issues affecting her patients’ quality of life, she said, because social workers would handle it. But she didn’t understand how physicians could divorce medical advice from the context of patients’ lives.
“How can you offer advice as recommendations that’s not even relevant to how their day-to-day plays out?” Maybank asked.
Today, Maybank is continuing to question that medical school philosophy. She was recently named the first chief health equity officer for the American Medical Association. In that job, she is responsible for implementing practices among doctors across the country to help end disparities in care. She has...
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