The air we breathe—the air that supports all life—can also be the vehicle for introducing toxic pollutants into our lungs, leading to illness and death. Each day, around the globe, millions of people are exposed to airborne particles that have the potential to alter their state of health. Air pollution, whether from particles introduced from

April: In an interesting and significant coincidence, April is celebrated in the U.S. and several other countries as an awareness month for the following social and sexual health topics: use and mis-use of alcohol,  sexual assault awareness, and sexually transmitted diseases. These three more “social” topics and the places where they intersect are the themes

Health can be defined in several ways, from the very narrow consideration of the absence of disease: “healthy cells” that function in a body to keep that body working to its maximum capacity and capability, to the broader sense of “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of

March is the month we are joining the many global awareness campaigns for both workplace eye wellness and vision safety. While much of health messaging is focused on the “big” problems, such as heart disease and cancer, it’s important to remember that maintaining the “smaller” parts of our anatomy is equally critical to our overall health

February is Heart Month. Countries around the world are observing February as “Heart Month” with a variety of awareness days and months. In the U.S., activities to highlight heart health include “Wear Red” (Go Red for Women) day, to remind us that women are at greater risk than men for heart disease: Five times more

Hello all and happy new year! With January being observed each year as National Winter Sports/Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Month in the U.S., we thought we’d focus our attention to the topic of concussion, and try to increase awareness and patient education on the many traumatic brain injuries (including concussion) caused by participation in sports each

Health Literacy: when I was caring for patients in clinical practice, I spent time teaching them about their bodies, the conditions that brought them for care, and reviewing the results of any laboratory tests that had been done, as well as discussing the medications that had been prescribed. In each of these situations, I relied

Learning Anatomy: the human body is an exciting frontier to explore—from the first time you outline your body on paper in kindergarten to see how all the parts fit together; to middle school when you learn how stomach acids work to digest food; to high school when you’ve broken your arm playing football; to college