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Simar Bajaj

New York, Washington, D.C.
As seen in: The New York Times, MSN, O Globo, The New York Times en Español, UOL, Yahoo Life, Estadão, MSN India, Nature, Post Outlook, Scribd and
Stanford Medicine '30 | Harvard '24, Oxford '25 | @KnightHennessy @NYTimes Fellow, @MarshallScholar, @ForbesUnder30, @AAASKavli, @SciCommAwards
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Racial bias is built into the design of pulse oximeters

Racial bias is built into the design of pulse oximeters

The Washington Post — One of the most indispensable devices of the coronavirus pandemic is the pulse oximeter, which clips onto a person's finger, shines out a light and reports back a blood oxygen percentage. Patients use pulse oximeters at home to monitor their conditions, while hospitals use them to identify and prioritize the sickest covid patients.
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Voting is significant determinant of health, US medical association declares

Voting is significant determinant of health, US medical association declares

The Guardian — Access to voting is now considered a health issue, according to the country's largest physician group. The American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates adopted a resolution calling voting a social determinant of health, a term used to describe non-medical factors that affect health and wellbeing.
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Why Did the First Human Patient to Receive a Pig Heart Transplant Die?

Why Did the First Human Patient to Receive a Pig Heart Transplant Die?

Smithsonian Magazine — Bartley Griffith is a cardiac surgeon at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, who says he's probably done over a thousand heart transplants over a career that has spanned four decades. But on January 7 of this year, Griffith performed an operation unlike any other. He transplanted a pig heart into a human for the first time.
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A blood-oxygen detector without racial bias

A blood-oxygen detector without racial bias

The Boston Globe — The traditional pulse oximeter is a small clip that attaches to your finger. One side of the clip shoots two wavelengths of light - red and infrared - into the finger while the other side registers how much light was absorbed inside.
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What You Need to Know About the History of Monkeypox

What You Need to Know About the History of Monkeypox

Smithsonian Magazine — Since it was first identified in a colony of monkeys in Copenhagen in 1958, monkeypox has been largely overlooked by the Western world. An infectious poxvirus that causes fever, chills and rashes, the disease is endemic, or consistently regionally present, in ten African countries.
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Paradox of telemedicine: building or neglecting trust and equity

Paradox of telemedicine: building or neglecting trust and equity

The Lancet Digital Health — Rigorous efforts to minimise disease transmission in the COVID-19 pandemic have catalysed the development of comprehensive telemedicine systems.1Beyond enabling contactless health care, telehealth increases the convenience of routine health care, expands access to specialty care, and allows for more diligent regimen monitoring. These transformational changes will probably endure, with the potential of an estimated US$ 259 billion in health care spending to be shifted to virtual health care.
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The Infrastructure Bill-Investing in Environmental Justice & Health Equity | Milbank Memorial Fun...

The Infrastructure Bill-Investing in Environmental Justice & Health Equity | Milbank Memorial Fun...

Milbank Quarterly — The connections between infrastructure and health are robust, from the benefits of green spaces, physical activity, and clean air to the consequences of water pollution, community severance, and environmental contamination.
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After centuries, we still can't perform animal-to-human transplants

After centuries, we still can't perform animal-to-human transplants

The Washington Post — In January, a team at the University of Maryland at Baltimore transplanted a genetically modified pig heart into a 57-year-old man with end-stage heart failure. David Bennett died on March 9, but it was revealed recently that Bennett had been infected with a pig virus, possibly contributing to his death.
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Building a pandemic supply chain - equity over equality

Building a pandemic supply chain - equity over equality

Nature Medicine — During the initial phases of the pandemic, politicians, celebrities and public-health leaders alike peddled a narrative of COVID-19 as the 'great equalizer'. Although disparities in COVID-19 vaccination rates, hospitalizations and mortality have emphasized this fallacy, an equality-first approach has largely guided the response to COVID-19 in the United States, from allocation of critical-care resources to vaccination.
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The Ukrainian refugee crisis and the pathology of racism

The Ukrainian refugee crisis and the pathology of racism

British Medical Journal — War has catastrophic impacts on human health, but the risks facing those fleeing violence are made all the more dangerous when compounded by racism, say Simar S Bajaj and Fatima Cody Stanford In just the first 12 days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, more than two million people fled
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The Enigma of Stigma

The Enigma of Stigma

Tarbell — Where NICU nurse Donna Schmidt worked, the earsplitting shrill of alarm bells was only sometimes drowned out by the tears of patients sobbing for help. Since June 2020, Schmidt has been fighting on the frontlines of the pandemic, but her biggest battle started on August 26th-when New York State implemented its COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
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Vaccine apartheid: global cooperation and equity

Vaccine apartheid: global cooperation and equity

The Lancet — Widening gaps in global vaccine equity have led to a two-track pandemic with booster COVID-19 vaccinations proliferating in high-income countries (HICs) and first doses not yet reaching all populations in low-income countries (LICs). Early in the pandemic, the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (COVAX) promised equitable vaccine supplies for all countries.
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COVID-19: LMICs need antivirals as well as vaccines

COVID-19: LMICs need antivirals as well as vaccines

Nature — In the battle against COVID-19, there must be global equity in the distribution of antiviral drugs such as molnupiravir and nirmatrelvir. These are potent public-health tools beyond disease mitigation and vaccination (see, for example, ). Cheap and easy to use, these pills are well suited to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
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All Infrastructure Is Health Infrastructure

All Infrastructure Is Health Infrastructure

American Journal of Public Health — Flint's water crisis. Texas' power grid failure. Miami's Surfside tower collapse. The nation's crumbling infrastructure has brought bipartisan consensus for legislation to modernize America.
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Global health responsibilities in a Taliban-led Afghanistan

Global health responsibilities in a Taliban-led Afghanistan

Nature Medicine — To the Editor - The Taliban seizure of power in Afghanistan has intensified an already dire humanitarian crisis. Although media attention has been focused on the evacuation from Kabul's international airport, the collapse of the Ashraf Ghani government and the Taliban advance have brought about a public health catastrophe.
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Superhuman, but never enough: Black women in medicine

Superhuman, but never enough: Black women in medicine

The Lancet — Historically, Black women have long been disregarded in the USA. The Three-Fifths Compromise of the US Constitution discounted Black women as only "part" of a human being, to be counted for congressional representation and direct taxation but nothing more. Even in prominent social justice movements, Black women have been excluded.
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Health-based civic engagement is a professional responsibility

Health-based civic engagement is a professional responsibility

Nature Medicine — To the Editor - Since the 2020 US presidential election, there has been a nationwide assault on voting rights, with 18 states enacting 30 new laws that restrict voting access, and hundreds of similar bills marching through state legislatures. Recent restrictions draw comparisons with the literacy tests and poll taxes of the Jim Crow era.
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The 2021 USPSTF lung cancer screening guidelines: a new frontier

The 2021 USPSTF lung cancer screening guidelines: a new frontier

The Lancet Respiratory Medicine — In March, 2021, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) updated their lung cancer screening guidelines. This marks the first change in the guidelines since screening with low-dose CT was initially recommended by the USPSTF in 2013. The new guidelines reduce the lower limit of the screening age from 55 to 50 years and the minimum smoking history from 30 to 20 pack-years.
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Beyond Tuskegee — Vaccine Distrust and Everyday Racism

Beyond Tuskegee — Vaccine Distrust and Everyday Racism

The New England Journal of Medicine — J.Marion Sims. Henrietta Lacks. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study. With two authorized SARS-CoV-2 vaccines now available, particular concerns have emerged regarding whether Black communities will choose to be vaccinated. In a pandemic that has disproportionately burdened Black Americans, experts have been scrambling to send targeted public health messages and reduce skepticism.
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