public health
Punished for Getting Sick
Prisons are sites of pervasive medical neglect, both creating and worsening disability. Never was this more the case than during the COVID-19 pandemic.
public health
22 posts in ‘public health’
interventions
A Bridge to Health
Medicaid access, both pre- and post-release, is a promising path to ensuring that reentry is a genuine, lasting return to freedom.
public health
Surviving Abstinence
Abstinence-only drug treatment doesn’t work. For people in prison, where drugs flow freely, such programs simply place them at greater risk of relapse.
public health
The Prescription Police
Placing criminal system tools in health-care providers’ hands causes irreparable damage to patient care and public trust.
Surveillance
For the Public Good
While on parole in Oregon, homelessness, unemployment, and lack of services kept me in survival mode. This is not public safety.
abolition
For the People’s Health
Abolition and public health go hand in hand. Organizers are embracing both as they pursue decarceral projects that center everyone’s well-being.
advocacy
Philly’s Safe Consumption Fight
Public skepticism about scientific research, coupled with echoes of the war on drugs, have hindered our city’s ability to respond to our overdose crisis.
public health
Beware the Healthier Cage
In Atlanta politicians are pushing for a bigger jail they claim will be more humane. But health-care workers are pushing back.
public health
The Essentialism of Addiction
We must challenge the dominant carceral narrative that one is born an addict and a criminal—rather than constructed as one by those in power.
public health
The Pain of Punishment
Criminalizing pain medicine has led patients to despair while the carceral state forces their medical decisions. But it has also opened avenues for solidarity between pain sufferers and incarcerated people.
public health
Care and Carceralism
Disentangling medical care from policing, prisons, and other punitive institutions remains an imperative—now more than ever.
public health
Monkeypox and Decarceration
Urgent action in our nation’s jails and prisons can prevent the kind of mass suffering seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.
public health
Letting Kids Be Kids
Prosecution, incarceration, and surveillance don’t stop child sexual abuse. But prevention can.
public health
Policing Health
The surprising link between Medicaid expansion and arrests levels suggests that keeping people healthy also keeps them from the reach of the criminal legal system.
public health
Unwell in a Cell
Co-opting the language of mental health and treatment, jail expansion is taking root in several cities and localities. But these are cages all the same.
public health
Drug-Induced Panic
Criminalization of so-called drug-induced homicides is yet another manifestation of the failed war on drugs — and far from an adequate public health response.
Local jails
The Sheriff and His Jail
Jails are key drivers of COVID spread. My experience with Chicago’s top jailer shows how politics can often stand in the way of public health.
interventions
Abolition Is Public Health
The largest public health professional organization in the U.S. took a stand against carceral systems as fundamentally antithetical to public health. Here’s why that matters.
interventions
Building Bridges
There’s a direct link between the penal system and community wellbeing. Here’s why, and how, I decided to teach that connection to a group of public-health students.
In Depth
The Invisible Violence of Carceral Food
There's no such thing as a 'humane' eating environment in a penal system that inherently produces illness and death.
A closer look
Community Spread
People in counties with higher jail populations are getting sicker and dying younger. The data shows that mass incarceration is playing a role.
public health
Treating Unfreedom
Practicing correctional medicine is fundamentally an exercise in harm reduction. And it’s no match for freedom itself.