Curtain Pulled Back on ‘Alarming’ Health Care Practices
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet or used by any means of social media sharing.)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
After 28 years in the health care business, Dr. David Wilcox has seen enough to realize that it truly is a “business,” as opposed to the kind-hearted healing service that most of us might imagine it to be. His new book reveals some unsettling facts.
“There is little to no transparency about procedures or billing,” Dr. Wilcox says, “and the average health care consumer doesn’t think about it until they have to access the healthcare system. That is a dangerous mentality, as we all will need health care at some point in our lives.”
In his book, How to Avoid Being a Victim of the American Healthcare System: A Patient’s Handbook for Survival, Dr. Wilcox offers information, facts and tips that can help patients and family members navigate through the morass.
“I have seen some alarming situations that nursing school never prepared me for,” Dr. Wilcox said. “Not being prepared and knowledgeable means you will have little control over the health care you receive.”
His goal in writing this book was to level the playing field, enabling consumers of health care to understand how to avoid getting caught in the systemic net.
In his own words, Dr. Wilcox’s book explores “what to do if you have to go to a hospital, how to handle an insurance company’s claim denial, how to find an alternative to high-priced prescriptions and why the current pay-for-fee system is inadequate. You will also discover the direction the healthcare system needs to move in, to holistically care for you, the patient … information that the health care entities would prefer you didn’t know.”
Dr. David Wilcox is a health care professional who believes proactive patient education enables those accessing the healthcare system to be better partners in their health care. He also believes that everyone has the right to access the American Healthcare System safely. A Doctorate-prepared nurse who also holds a Master’s in Health Administration and is Board Certified in Nursing Informatics, Dr. Wilcox has nearly three decades of health care experience as a bedside nurse, hospital administrator and in health care information technology, which has helped him to develop his unique perspective on the American Healthcare System. For more information, please visit https://drdavidwilcox.com/.
How to Avoid Being a Victim of the American Healthcare System: A Patient’s Handbook for Survival Publisher: Here for You Publishing ISBN-10: 0578878364 ISBN-13: 978-0578878362 Available now at https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578878364
How to Raise Resilient Children in Our Complex World
(This press release may be reprinted in part or in its entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet or used by any means of social media sharing.)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Being a teenager in today’s “age of anxiety” is scary. Being a parent of a teenager is even scarier. Zoomers may seem more together, more confident and more independent than prior generations, but in fact, they are more anxious, lonely and emotionally fragile, and less resilient to stress, says psychoanalyst, clinical social worker and parenting expert Erica Komisar.
“We are asking children to handle more — more stress, more stimulation, more pressure, more choices and more decisions — without giving them a secure foundation of support, emotional security, and real and meaningful connections,” says Komisar.
Her important new book, Chicken Little the Sky Isn’t Falling: Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety, is a comprehensive guide filled with compassionate and practical advice to help parents guide, educate and connect with their children on a range of current topics, including gender and sexual identity, anxiety and depression, disordered eating, ADHD, vaping, social media and bullying, to name a few.
Chicken Little also contains valuable insights intended to help readers prevent, recognize and address mental health disorders, as well as help their teens navigate academic and social pressures, social media and technology usage, increased social isolation and family pressures. With Komisar’s guidance and support, parents will learn how to be beacons of hope and change, as well as how to raise emotionally healthy, resilient adolescents.
About the Author Erica Komisar, LCSW, is a clinical social worker, psychoanalyst and parent guidance expert who has been in private practice in New York City for over 30 years. As a psychological consultant, she brings parenting workshops to schools, clinics, corporations and childcare settings. She is also a contributing editor to the Institute for Family Studies. She is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Daily News, The Washington Post and The Huffington Post.
Erica lives in New York City with her husband and is the mother of three adolescent children.
Chicken Little, the Sky Isn’t Falling: Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety Publisher: HCI Books Release Date: November 2, 2021 ISBN-10: 0757324002 ISBN-13: 9780757324000 Trade Paperback, 288 pages Available for pre-order on Amazon.com
Take Control of Your Health Care from a Place of Knowledge and Empowerment
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet or used by any means of social media sharing.)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
How much time have you wasted trying to resolve denied insurance claims, jockeying for lower priced prescriptions, or just Googling unfamiliar terminology and acronyms that your health care provider assumes you understand?
As a health care professional, Dr. David Wilcox says he was amazed by the lack of proactive, patient-friendly information available to the general public.
“When I finished my doctorate, I thought: what is the best way that I can arm Americans to navigate the complexities of the healthcare system?” Dr. Wilcox said. He chose to put pen to paper and share what he learned across nearly three decades in health care.
His eye-opening new book, How to Avoid Being a Victim of the American Healthcare System: A Patient’s Handbook for Survival, levels the playing field, enabling consumers of health care to understand how to avoid getting caught in the systemic net. After all, we will all be consumers of health care at some point in our lives.
In his own words, Dr. Wilcox’s book explores “what to do if you have to go to a hospital, how to handle an insurance company’s claim denial, how to find an alternative to high-priced prescriptions and why the current pay-for-fee system is inadequate. You will also discover the direction the healthcare system needs to move in, to holistically care for you, the patient … information that the health care entities would prefer you didn’t know.”
Early reviewers of the book give it high praise: “A must-read for every American citizen” … “Great information on navigating our complicated and ridiculous healthcare system” … “This is info everyone should know.”
Dr. David Wilcox is a health care professional who believes proactive patient education enables those accessing the healthcare system to be better partners in their health care. He also believes that everyone has the right to access the American Healthcare System safely. A Doctorate-prepared nurse who also holds a Master’s in Health Administration and is Board Certified in Nursing Informatics, Dr. Wilcox has nearly three decades of health care experience as a bedside nurse, hospital administrator and in health care information technology, which has helped him to develop his unique perspective on the American Healthcare System. For more information, please visit https://drdavidwilcox.com/.
How to Avoid Being a Victim of the American Healthcare System: A Patient’s Handbook for Survival Publisher: Here for You Publishing ISBN-10: 0578878364 ISBN-13: 978-0578878362 Available now at https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578878364
Doctor Exposes the Shadowy World of Health Care in America
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet or used by any means of social media sharing.)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Everyone needs health care at some point in their lives, and wouldn’t it be nice if navigating through the system was as easy as buying a new car? Actually, it should be even easier, right? Because car salespeople aren’t reputed to be the most trustworthy people in the world. Well, when you throw the covers off the American Healthcare System, you reveal a lot of shady individuals all vying for your health care dollars.
Dr. David Wilcox, with three decades of experience in health care, has a sharp warning for you: “Health care is complex, and that is not an accident. It is a strategy on the part of those who benefit from your health care dollars to keep the general public from knowing what is really going on in the healthcare system.”
His eye-opening book – How to Avoid Being a Victim of the American Healthcare System: A Patient’s Handbook for Survival – levels the playing field, enabling consumers of health care to understand how to avoid getting caught in the systemic net. After all, we will all be consumers of health care at some point in our lives.
In his own words, Dr. Wilcox’s book explores “what to do if you have to go to a hospital, how to handle an insurance company’s claim denial, how to find an alternative to high-priced prescriptions, and why the current pay-for-fee system is inadequate. You will also discover the direction the healthcare system needs to move in, to holistically care for you, the patient … information that the health care entities would prefer you didn’t know.”
Early reviewers of the book give it high praise: “A must-read for every American citizen” … “Great information on navigating our complicated and ridiculous healthcare system” … “This is info everyone should know.”
Dr. David Wilcox is a health care professional who believes proactive patient education enables those accessing the healthcare system to be better partners in their health care. He also believes that everyone has the right to access the American Healthcare System safely. A Doctorate-prepared nurse who also holds a Master’s in Health Administration and is Board Certified in Nursing Informatics, Dr. Wilcox has nearly three decades of health care experience as a bedside nurse, hospital administrator and in health care information technology, which has helped him to develop his unique perspective on the American Healthcare System.
How to Avoid Being a Victim of the American Healthcare System: A Patient’s Handbook for Survival Publisher: Here for You Publishing Available now at https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578878364 ISBN-10: 0578878364 ISBN-13: 978-0578878362
Should a Person with Autism Be Allowed to Become a Professional Boxer and Put His Life at Risk?
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing.)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
It’s a struggle that parents of children with special needs face every day and well into that child’s adulthood: how much decision-making latitude is safe?
NOKI is an empowering story from Douglas Farrago, MD, about a young man with autism who wants to become a professional boxer. Life’s circumstances have dictated the reason for him choosing this path. The lawless world of boxing has its reasons for embracing Noki and his abilities. And they are not good ones. So, the debate wages on: Should Noki be allowed to make the life-altering decision to enter the ring and put his life on the line?
Meanwhile, what few know is that Noki is actually a savant and can imitate and transform himself into any legendary boxer he wants — a plot twist that allows NOKI to pay homage to some of the greatest boxers of all time.
Dr. Farrago draws upon his experiences as an All-American collegiate boxer, a sports medicine trainer for professional boxers in Houston and his decades-long career in medicine during which he worked with autism patients to lend authenticity to his characters and narrative.
“Noki becomes somewhat of a hero to those with special needs in this story, which I think is pretty cool,” he said. “I felt it would be nice if a story showed that those with autism don’t need to be anything but themselves, and maybe it is the rest of us who need to change.”
Ultimately, NOKI is a heartwarming story that will spark real conversations about the limits that society places on people with special needs. Knowingly or not.
Author Douglas Farrago, MD, is board certified in the specialty of Family Practice. Recently retired, he had a large following of autistic and special needs patients in his career. Dr. Farrago is the inventor of the Knee Saver, which is currently in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Knee Saver and its knock-offs are worn by many major league baseball catchers. He also invented the CryoHelmet, used by athletes for head injuries as well as migraine sufferers.
Dr. Farrago received his Bachelor of Science from the University of Virginia in 1987, his Master of Education degree in Exercise Science from the University of Houston in 1990 and his Medical Degree from the University of Texas at Houston in 1994. His residency training occurred way up north at the Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. Dr. Farrago still blogs every day on his website Authenticmedicine.com and lectures worldwide about the present crisis in our healthcare system and the effect it has on the doctor-patient relationship. Dr. Farrago has written six books to date, his latest one being NOKI.
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing.)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Your veterinarian chose to dedicate his or her life to the altruistic pursuit of tending to the health and lives of pets. What you may not have considered is that the health and life of your veterinarian also needs protecting: he or she is nearly four times more likely to die by suicide than someone among the general population. But there are ways you can help.
Sandy Weaver, author of the groundbreaking new book Happy Vet Happy Pet: Caring for Your Pet’s Caregiver, is on a mission to ease the lives of veterinarians, one client’s heart at a time.
“I’ve known for years, as have those in the veterinary field, that there was an issue with suicide and veterinarians,” Sandy says. “Then in early 2019, the CDC report on veterinary suicide was published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, and what had been anecdotal became data: male veterinarians are 2.1 times more likely, and female veterinarians are 3.5 times more likely, to complete suicide than their non-veterinarian peers.”
Happy Vet Happy Pet is a distillation of Sandy’s research into neuroscience, neuroplasticity and positive psychology mixed with data from the CDC report. The result is an impactful approach that weaves easy-to-understand science with stories that touch the minds and the hearts of pet owners — empowering them to be part of the solution.
Chapters dive deep into topics all pet owners should understand, including:
The heart, mind and life of a person who decides to become a veterinarian;
The very human, very vulnerable person behind the scrubs;
The ways clients unknowingly mistreat their pets’ caregivers;
Three simple rules to follow to help your veterinary team; and
What to do if you feel that someone near you is facing suicidal desperation.
Happy Vet Happy Pet shares Sandy’s unique point of view that it takes a village to save a veterinarian. “Making pet owners mindful of how their behavior impacts their veterinarian mobilizes the village to help solve the problem,” she adds.
This book will change your relationship with your veterinarian and their team forever. And what you learn in this book could save your veterinarian’s life.
Author Sandy Weaver is an expert speaker, trainer, mastermind facilitator and lover of all things dog.
As the Program Director of the Center for Workplace Happiness, Sandy creates the training programs, workshops, mastermind groups and keynotes that help people lead happier, more successful lives. She is also a citizen-scientist in the fields of neuroscience, neuroplasticity and positive psychology. In 2019, she took the resilience tools and strategies she’d been teaching to general audiences and crafted programs specifically for veterinary teams. Her goal is to touch the life of every veterinarian and technician in a way that helps them avoid the pain and despair that comes with an inability to manage stress.
Now in her 40th year of Siberian Husky ownership, Sandy is a passionate advocate for veterinarians and their teams and an ongoing donor to Not One More Vet.
Now, More Than Ever, Fighting for Our Children’s Needs Must Come First
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing.)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Children dream without boundaries; they aspire to become paleontologists, astronauts, doctors and teachers without considering socioeconomic barriers, discrimination, disease outbreaks, violence or any one of a host of other challenges impacting their likelihood of success. It’s up to us, as a society, to help each and every child fulfill his or her potential. In fact, the future of our nation depends on it.
NBC/MSNBC public health analyst, pediatrician and activist Dr. Irwin Redlener delivers a potent wake-up call that compellingly underscores the urgency with which we must work toward fulfilling the potential of all children in his inspirational call to action, The Future of Us: What the Dreams of Children Mean for Twenty-First-Century America, which contains a new preface and afterword addressing COVID-19 and its impact on kids.
Inadequate education, barriers to health care and crushing poverty make it overwhelmingly difficult for many children to realize their dreams — and these issues have been dramatically compounded by the pandemic. Finding ways to alter these trajectories is serious, grown-up business, Dr. Redlener emphasizes, and it’s time for us to act.
“We need heartstrings to be tugged by the folks who work on the front lines … But we also need the hard-core, take-no-prisoners types who demand that those empowered to determine priorities and allocate resources understand and respond to the needs of children,” he writes.
In The Future of Us, Dr. Redlener draws upon his four decades of professional experiences to examine our nation’s health care safety nets and special programs that are designed to protect and nurture our most vulnerable kids, but that too often fail to do so.
The book follows Dr. Redlener’s long, colorful career, from his work as a pediatrician in the Arkansas delta, to treating child abuse in a Miami hospital, to helping children in the aftermaths of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. He has served on the board of USA for Africa, cofounded the Children’s Health Fund with Paul Simon (and persuaded Joan Baez to play a benefit concert) and dined with Fidel Castro. He once sat across the table from Michael Jackson, and he has traveled with presidential candidates. But his most powerful source of motivation remains the children who face terrible adversities yet dream of becoming paleontologists, artists and marine biologists. Their stories are his springboard for discussing larger policy issues that hinder us from effectively eradicating childhood poverty and overcoming barriers to accessible health care. Persistent deprivation and the avoidable problems that accompany poverty ensnare millions of children and impact the health, prosperity and creativity of the adults they become. Dr. Redlener argues that we must drastically change our approach to meeting the needs of children ― for their sake and to ensure America’s resiliency and influence in an increasingly complex world.
It is Dr. Redlener’s hope that readers will emerge optimistic about our future, with a deeper understanding of how investing in children today will increase our chances of a successful tomorrow. Fighting for our nation’s children is far from a lost cause, and nothing could be more important.
Author Irwin Redlener, M.D., is a pediatrician and founding director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, which works to understand and improve the nation’s capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. In 2020, Dr. Redlener created the Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative at Columbia. He is a public health analyst for NBC and MSNBC, and recently partnered with Cher in CherCares, a new program that assists communities struggling with COVID-19.
Dr. Redlener is also President Emeritus and Co-Founder of the Children’s Health Fund, a philanthropic initiative that he created with singer/songwriter Paul Simon and Karen Redlener to develop health care programs in 25 of the nation’s most medically underserved urban and rural communities. He currently serves as a special advisor on emergency preparedness to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, and regularly communicates with leadership in U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, as well as Homeland Security.
He is also the author of Americans at Risk: Why We Are Not Prepared for Megadisasters and What We Can Do Now. For more information, please visit www.irwinredlener.org.
The Future of Us: What the Dreams of Children Mean for Twenty-First-Century America Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN-10: 0231177577 ISBN-13: 978-0231177573 Available from Amazon.com
by 
