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New York City’s top public health official resigned Tuesday, accusing Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) of sidelining medical experts in the midst of a pandemic that has hit America’s largest city especially hard. In an emailed resignation letter, Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot said she quit with “deep disappointment that during the most critical public health crisis in our lifetime, that the Health Department’s incomparable disease control expertise was not used to the degree it could have been.” (Wilson, 8/4)

As a global pandemic raged through New York City, one public official kept a notably low profile: Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot. At a time when Barbot should have been a public face of the city’s Covid-19 response, she was relegated to a near-invisible status, after a long-simmering feud with Mayor Bill de Blasio erupted over how to handle the fast-spreading virus. By Tuesday she’d had enough. (Eisenberg and Goldenberg, 8/4)

Dr. Leon McDougle, chief diversity officer at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, was appointed president of the National Medical Association, which represents African American physicians in the U.S. McDougle, who is the association's 121st president, was interested in the role in response to recent attention nationally to racial inequities. "Now more than ever, we must take a stand against the systemic racism in our nation's healthcare delivery system that negatively impacts the Black community and other underserved populations," he said in a statement. (Castellucci, 8/4)

A study of home healthcare workers (HCWs) in New York City published today in JAMA Internal Medicine found that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated challenges they already faced as a critical yet vulnerable and marginalized workforce at high risk for coronavirus infection. Led by researchers at Cornell University in a partnership with the 1199 Service Employees International Union, the study involved one-on-one semistructured interviews with 33 home HCWs employed by 24 different home care agencies from Mar 26 to Apr 30. (Van Beusekom, 8/4)