Why I left the ER to run Baltimore's health department

When I was just beginning my third year as a medical student, I learned an important lesson about what matters most in health. It was a typical summer afternoon in St. Louis, with the temperature and humidity both approaching 100. My patient was a woman in her 40s who was being admitted to the hospital because her lungs were filling with fluid, a complication of kidney failure. She had missed all three dialysis appointments that week. She told me that her son had been arrested, and he was the one who drove her back and forth from the dialysis clinic. She couldn't pay her bills, and her electricity had been shut off.