Top 55 Leana S. Wen Quotes

Birth control is an important part of women’s healthcare. It allows women to plan and time their pregnancies, and reduces preterm births and maternal complications.

A cancer diagnosis is a wakeup call that our time is limited.

Improvements in global public health must begin locally, and must be driven by leaders who will learn the hard lessons from COVID-19.

Routine pap and HPV screenings save thousands of women from dying of cervical cancer every year.

Violence can be understood as a public health issue: It spreads from person to person and it can be prevented and treated.

Primary care providers and community health centers can do more to provide the full range of reproductive healthcare in their clinics. In turn, reproductive health providers should also look to expand their services to cover patients’ primary care concerns.

While I am passionately committed to protecting abortion access, I do not view it as a stand-alone issue.

As an emergency physician, I can tell you that the best health insurance in the world means nothing if patients can’t reach a hospital in their moment of need.

The controversial idea of abolishing private insurance in favor of a single, government-run program certainly deserves some rigorous back-and-forth. But not at the expense of issues with a much greater impact on our health.

Abortions are safe.

When hospitals close, ambulance times can increase dramatically, and the additional wait often means the difference between life and death.

If you suspect that the doctor is going through a checklist of yes/no questions, try to get her to focus on you by adding personal elements to your answers.

As a public health official, paid sick leave is first and foremost an issue of health – of people’s lives.

Driving is an activity that carries risk, which can be reduced by following the speed limit and wearing a seat belt.

When I was 16 and I wanted information about birth control, Planned Parenthood was the first and only place that I could think of going for my health care and education.

In my life as an immigrant living in low-income communities, as an emergency physician and as a public health advocate, I have seen more preventable deaths than I can count or recall.

Doctors have limited time to listen to your story, but you must make sure they understand why you’re there. Don’t just say that you have chest pain – explain when it started, what you were doing, and how it felt. Write down key elements. Practice until you can tell it in 30 seconds or less.

After eight years of fighting, and multiple rounds of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, my mother lost her battle with cancer. I think about her every day. I miss her terribly, and wish she were there to walk me down the aisle at my wedding and to cheer when my sister received her college diploma.

While women’s healthcare extends far beyond reproductive healthcare, its politicization is harming women’s overall health and well-being.

As an emergency physician, I have seen my patients forgo needed treatment because they are afraid they will lose their jobs.

Listening leads to better care, and your doctor should make an effort to hear you out and learn about you.

Continuing the legacy of Elijah E. Cummings requires that we fulfill our destiny to fight for the world as it should be.

Simple health interventions such as lead paint abatement and home visiting for pregnant women result in not only improved health for children but also higher rates of graduation, reduced crime, and a more robust workforce.

My mother cleaned hotel rooms and worked in a video store. My father delivered newspapers and washed dishes in restaurants.

In order to improve maternal health, we have to focus on improving all women’s health and access to care – not just during labor and delivery, but before and after pregnancy, and throughout our lives.

To be clear, from an epidemiological perspective, there shouldn’t be any mass gatherings during a pandemic.

Asking for help doesn’t mean your doctor is incompetent; rather, it should increase your faith in his or her abilities and humility.

Public health is hard. Nobody goes into it for the money or the acclaim. People work many long hours.

When I finally addressed my stuttering – I was almost through with medical school by the time that I finally sought therapy for speech – one of the exercises was making sure that we say what we want to say and not substitute words.

There is so much information on diagnostics and treatments – one person cannot possibly know everything. A good doctor is one who isn’t afraid to admit that he or she doesn’t know everything.

People depend on Planned Parenthood for breast exams, cervical cancer screenings, H.I.V. testing and family planning.

Paid sick leave is a public health necessity. Not only does it allow employees to seek medical care promptly and appropriately, it reduces the chance of spreading infectious diseases to others and enables caregivers to provide for their loved ones.

It is imperative that we address the barriers to access and the systemic racism that we know is contributing to our astronomically high maternal mortality rates. The onus must be on the health care system to make necessary changes.

Growing up, I always thought of hospitals as having a certain mystique that was impenetrable to the outside world. White-coated figures paraded through long hallways and entered doorways marked ‘restricted access,’ behind which I imagined miracles happened.

I had this childhood dream that I wanted to be a doctor, but I came from a neighborhood and an environment where nobody around me was a doctor. I literally didn’t know how one goes from studying in college to becoming a doctor.

Working with the psychiatrist and then a mental health counselor helped me understand my own thought distortions.

Your risk of acquiring covid-19 is additive for every person you come into close contact with. Many people must return to work, but they can still reduce their risk overall by not having social gatherings outside of work. Choose the activities most important to you.

Sound health policy is about so much more than the mechanics of insurance. Let’s stop letting ‘Medicare-for-all’ dominate the conversation.

In many patients, covid-19 causes a bilateral pneumonia affecting both lungs. Air sacs in the lungs become inflamed and filled with fluid, leading to breathing difficulties and low oxygen saturation. If the pneumonia becomes extremely severe, patients need to be intubated and put on a ventilator.

What needs to happen in a public health crisis? The federal government must establish a national roadmap with clear goals and evidence-based policy guidance.

Over and over again, I have also seen our health care system fail women because of discriminatory policies.

We need to stop treating those whose views differ from our own with scorn and suspicion, and instead work together to safeguard our health, our rights and our future.

Every time I am on air, I will receive actually quite a few messages that specifically tie me to the Chinese Communist Party – which is ludicrous because my family left on political asylum from China – or that will blame me and ‘my people’ for the coronavirus.

Public health relies on public trust. Admitting mistakes and explaining prompt corrective actions engender that trust.

Let’s focus on the real causes of violence, poverty and health disparities to heal Baltimore and transform it into a successful and positive model for others to follow.

Of the many lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic thus far, two of the most critical are the need for effective national leadership and clear, consistent communication. Countries that fared well had both in abundance; those that didn’t often faltered.

We really need to be talking about the COVID vaccine the same way that we talk about other vaccinations – which is that it’s safe, effective, life-saving and essential for the public’s health.

When I was 10 years old, my neighbor died in front of me of an asthma attack, because he and his family were undocumented immigrants and his grandmother was afraid of what would happen if they called an ambulance for help.

Abortions that occur late in pregnancy are often due to extreme, extenuating circumstances such as when a woman’s life is in danger, when there has been a severe fetal diagnosis, or when the pregnancy is not viable.

In December of 1990, just before my eighth birthday, I left China for the United States. My father was a political dissident, and after he was released from prison, we joined my mother in a little town in the mountains of Utah. It was quite a change from my hometown of Shanghai, a city of 25 million people.

In my work as an emergency physician, I know that checklists can be helpful. They ensure complex procedures are done thoroughly and provide an extra assurance for safety. But they can also result in a ‘cookbook’ approach, where you get the same recipe of tests and medications as everyone else.

Planned Parenthood’s work – bringing affordable and accessible health care to as many women (and men and all people) as possible – isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s the urgent thing to do.

For millions of women, health centers that provide reproductive healthcare are the only place they ever see a doctor or nurse. When abortion politics force health centers to close, women – particularly low-income women and women of color – suffer.