A new assessment shows the NIH Child Care Services Program is successful in several ways, but could greatly benefit from more slots for kids in child care centers to alleviate an unusually long waiting list. To stay competitive, NIH should also have more family-friendly benefits like backup child care and paid time off or short-term disability for maternity leave, the research suggested.

In Dr. Robert Martensen’s life there are rivers within rivers, a confluence of the humanities—art, philosophy, history— with the practice of medicine. Now far from triage and trauma resuscitation, he’s reflecting on the experience of illness and his years in the ER, which is where, he says, “the rubber meets the road.”