April 12, 2024 | Vol. 53, Issue 7

The only bilingual Chinese-English Newspaper in New England

Health

man people woman street

A Healthcare Clinician and a Community Provider Fear for the America’s Women

Across the country, many people have been outraged by the U.S Supreme Court’s recent decision in overturning Roe v. Wade, an almost 50 year precedent. In the Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization decision, the Court ruled that “the Constitution of the United States does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.  Abortion was first legalized throughout the United States in […]

person holding test tubes

World Health Organization Declares Global Emergency as Monkeypox Spreads

It all started in Wisconsin. A three-year-old child was bitten by a prairie dog purchased from a local pet store. Shortly after, the child developed a high fever and a strange rash and had to be hospitalized. The child’s parents also developed the rash, but were otherwise asymptomatic. The Milwaukee Health Department tested the child and the prairie dog and confirmed that the cause of the child’s symptoms was the monkeypox virus, first discovered in crab-eating macaque monkeys in 1958. […]

man people woman street

How Massachusetts is Responding to the National Crisis in the Aftermath of the Dobbs Supreme Court Decision

In the first few days after the decision of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the landmark Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, thousands of Bostonians protested the ruling. They gathered in front of the State House and in Copley Square, marching and chanting across downtown Boston. They held signs displaying messages such as “guns have more rights than women in the U.S.A,” “bans off our bodies,” and “abortions save lives.” […]

Childhood Obesity Fueled By Consequences of the Pandemic

Politics, to paraphrase the philosopher John Gray, is nothing more than a series of imperfect remedies for recurring problems. No policy results in unmixed blessings; every decision we make has both good and bad consequences. So it is with the mandates and restrictions that have ruled our social life for the past two years. Lockdowns, school closures, and mask-wearing reduced the transmission of COVID-19 and prevented some serious illnesses and deaths. But two years on, we are vastly more knowledgeable […]

Banning Juul e-cigarettes: Government Intervenes to Protect Youth

“This really doesn’t make sense to me,” says Jenny (name changed by request), a rising senior at a Boston exam high school. “There are so many cannabis shops now all over the place. I’m too young for that, but I don’t want it. I don’t want pot or tobacco like my friends. Juul is convenient, affordable, and a better alternative to what my friends are doing. Why is it now being banned?” Jenny, who asked her name to be withheld […]

Sampan Analysis: What Abortion Ruling Means, What’s Ahead

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 24 upheld a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion. This ruling comes 49 years after Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that struck down a Texas law banning all abortions except those necessary to save the mother’s life. The Court had ruled in 1973 that criminal statutes that outlaw abortions at all stages of pregnancy violate the Due […]

Baby Formula Crisis Hits Minority, Immigrant Women

Since the shutdown of the Sturgis Michigan Abbot Laboratories plant in February 2022, mothers have been scrambling to find baby formula. That story is widely known. But what is less discussed is how acute the loss of formula has been felt by minority and immigrant women who depend so much on baby formula to go back to work. “My client, Mrs. Wong, began to worry (early on) when the cashier at Stop & Shop told her that she could only […]

Baby Formula Shortage and Minorities

“It’s so sad. It shouldn’t be like this. We need formula for our kid, and where is this formula going to come from?” This is a lingering question from mother of two, Capri Isidoro, struggling to breast feed her one-month-old daughter. After giving birth, the hospital gave her baby formula without consulting her on any wish to breastfeed first, a common occurrence among minority moms. The baby formula shortage puts Hispanic and Black women at risk the most. The CDC […]

As Court Decision Looms, Remembering Boston’s Abortion Rights Legacy

The relationship between medicine and law is complex and contentious. Rulings that have a finality in the public imagination are often put to the test in the real world, their consequences and exceptions worked out in a fashion far from ideal. The closing words of Supreme Court opinions – It is so ordered – suggest a solidity these rulings rarely have. Roe vs. Wade is no different. Just months after the Court released its opinion on the case, it was […]

Failure to Fund Successful Health Services Program Leaves 30,000 Vulnerable Residents, Communities of Color Without Vital Care

On March 29, 2022, ABCD—Action for Boston Community Development—received the shocking news that the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Office of Population Affairs, was terminating funding of the anti-poverty organization’s Title X Family Planning program as of March 31, 2022. For more than 50 years, in collaboration with a vital community health center network, ABCD has done an exemplary job of delivering critical health services to more than 30,000 low-income residents and communities of color. Where are our […]

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