How Medical Schools Try to Help Doctors Understand Patients in Poverty
“When it comes to health and longevity, being poor is expensive. Poverty’s detrimental health effects are many and wide-ranging. From a lack of access to fresh vegetables and lack of money to pay for medications to not having the time off to visit a doctor during business hours, the impacts can be subtle, cumulative and ultimately life-threatening. A 2017 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that residents of wealthy counties can have a life expectancy more than 20 years longer than those who live in impoverished counties.”