Barriers to effective care: Specialty drug treatment in Philadelphia.

Introduction: In Philadelphia, the poorest big city in the United States, an estimated 60,000 people misuse opioids and more than 3500 have died of overdose in the past three years. In 2019, fentanyl was detected in 76% of drug-related deaths and 94% of opioid-involved deaths. While much attention has been directed at the public face of the city's drug problem, more than 75% of drug deaths in 2017 took place in a private residence.

A qualitative study on retailer experiences with Philadelphia's sweetened beverage tax.

The Philadelphia Beverage Tax was implemented on January 1, 2017 for some sugar- and artificially-sweetened beverages. Few qualitative studies have assessed retailers' reactions to beverage taxes. We aimed to understand food retailers' knowledge and attitudes about the Philadelphia beverage tax and how they responded to it with the goal of informing the framing and implementation of beverage taxes in other interested jurisdictions.

Legacies of the war on drugs: Next of kin of persons who died of opioid overdose and harm reduction interventions in Philadelphia.

Background: Between the years 2017-2019 in Philadelphia, more than 70% of all deaths from opioid overdose occurred in a private residence. To learn more about home-based opioid use and overdose, researchers conducted qualitative interviews with next of kin of overdose victims to learn their perceptions about the decedent's drug use and their opinions about city-led harm reduction efforts, specifically naloxone administration and collaborative efforts to open an overdose prevention site.

Methods: In 2019, researchers conducted 35 qualitative interviews with next of kin of persons who died of opioid overdose in Philadelphia in 2017.

"I'm Just a Patient": Fear and Uncertainty as Drivers of Emergency Department Use in Patients With Chronic Disease.

Study Objective: Despite focus during the past decade about the need to design a more patient-centered US health care system, patients have been minimally engaged to define what they want from it. Our objective is to engage patients to identify individual-defined priority outcomes on discharge from the emergency department (ED) and individually tailored interventions to help achieve their outcomes.

Methods: We used qualitative semistructured interviews with patients with diabetes mellitus or cardiovascular disease who were being discharged from 2 EDs.

Fear, vulnerability and sacrifice: Drivers of emergency department use and implications for policy.

Patients' existential fears of unknowns associated with illness and unusual bodily signs and symptoms are common, but unexamined drivers to the emergency department (ED). This paper examines a May 2015 case study of a 51-year-old low-income, recently insured, African American man in Philadelphia (USA) who had two recent ED visits for evaluation of frequent headaches and described fear of being at risk for a stroke. Through ethnographic methods and anthropological analyses we find that fear of failing to fulfill social roles due to a potentially debilitating illness, and fear of burdening family members with medical bills resulting from doctor's visits affect this man's patterns of health-seeking behaviors.