Physician. Systems Thinker. Writer.
My Book Other Possibilities
In the late nineteenth century, everything in health and medicine was up for grabs. Hospitals and nursing were novel developments. Germ theory was still being contested. Medical specialties were practically nonexistent, with surgery just starting to show promise.
Public health—that is, approaching health improvement with whole populations and not just individuals in mind—just might have dominated the future.​
How might have our health system turned out differently if health for all were the primary driver - free from all the assumptions and policies and social norms that we take for granted today?
The answers that I've found have been surprising and inspiring.
My book follows the story of Dr. Lawson Scruggs, a Black doctor who dared to create health and community in the late 1800s. Dr. Scruggs’ approach to health care holds lessons for us now, in an era of unprecedented technological advances in genomics, artificial intelligence, and public health.
But his success was not only due to the innovations of his time. What truly set him apart was his ability to break free from the inherited values, institutions, and assumptions that continue to limit us today.
As an emergency physician, I see these constraints daily, in the chaos of the ER, and I have long wondered what would happen if we let go of them and refocused on the health of all people, as Dr. Scruggs did.