An important part of medicine and compassion is to use oneâs knowledge of medicine to ease or prevent suffering in others. As some of you may know, in addition to being the head of the Medicine and Compassion Project, Iâm still working as a doctor. My specialty is travel medicine â seeing people before they go on trips to resource-poor countries and treating people for diseases that they may have picked up while traveling. As you would imagine, people have not been traveling very much in the past year due to the pandemic. In relation to the pandemic, I wanted to share some thoughts with you. Itâs been a difficult year for many people â isolated from older parents, from grandchildren, not able to attend school in person and see friends, not able to plan for the future, not able to work or travel, maybe getting sick and even losing a loved one.