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The COVID-19 pandemic has been disruptive and devastating for too many, including our school-aged children. Time will tell what long-term impacts the pandemic will have on our students, families and communities. This spring, as the governor and state legislature make decisions around investing additional federal COVID relief dollars, expanding the footprint of Ohio’s school-based health centers would be a smart use of these one-time funds. (James J. Berrens, 4/5)

We long ago lost the war on drugs. It’s time to make a tried-and-true change to methadone access for people who use opioids. I met a man I’ll call Mr. R on my hospital rounds. He had been hospitalized after being found unconscious at home. Decades of cigarette use meant he was on oxygen to prevent suffocation. Mr. R also had pain, emotional and physical, as a result of time he spent in the Army. Every day, Mr. R injected heroin to manage his pain. (Susan Calcaterra, 4/4)

Despite some recent baby steps, the untangling of the federal government’s enduring and preposterous opposition to cannabis as a medicine or recreational substance is going to take a long, long time. Nevertheless, I was delighted to read that the Senate had recently passed a bipartisan legislation loosening rules about cannabis research, “Cannabidiol and Marihuana Research Expansion Act.” (The strange spelling has an unfortunate historical precedent.) (Robin Abcarian, 4/6)

In its current format, I oppose SB 88, An Act Concerning Aid in Dying for Terminally Ill Patients because it does little to actually increase care and support the dying. Connecticut has an end-of-life problem where people with a terminal illness and prognosis of less than six months are currently not receiving the comfort care they need. I regularly speak with terminally ill people who request aid in dying. In so many cases their request is based on a lack of understanding of our healthcare system. Many people who request aid in dying from me do not even know palliative and hospice care exists. The pervasive misconception is that once people no longer want to be cured, our healthcare system will simply abandon them and “pull the plug.” However, whether you opt for curative care or comfort care, you will get medical care either way. We do not abandon you. (The Rev. Daniel Warriner, 4/6)

One nice thing about being a seasoned nurse is the fact that you have seen a whole lot of seasons. For me, I’ve been an RN since 1993. During my training and first few years in the profession, it was pounded into me that “pain is the fifth vital sign.” We were to ask a patient’s pain level every time we took a vital sign. For my job, I still have to do that. Not that it has any meaning anymore. We don’t treat pain the way we used to treat pain a mere 20 years ago. In my opinion, we did it better back then. (Allan Stellar, 4/4)

Sometime this spring, probably in late June, the US Supreme Court will hand down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an appeal testing the constitutionality of Mississippi’s 2018 law banning elective abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Upholding that ban would dramatically change America’s abortion rules. In Roe v. Wade and subsequent cases, the high court established an unfettered right to abortion until a fetus is “potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb,” which doesn’t occur until around weeks 22 or 23 of gestation. If Mississippi’s law is upheld, viability would lose the constitutional significance with which Roe invested it. States would no longer have to wait until a pregnancy is past the halfway mark before they could disallow abortion on demand. (Jeff Jacoby, 4/6)