Last week, Hurricane Michael struck the Florida panhandle and parts of Virginia, killing at least 16 people and leaving behind a trail of devastation. In the wake of the storm, Americans have done what they always do after large-scale traumatic events—they have mobilized their resources to help the victims, donating money, blood, food, and time, to aid recovery efforts.

Such charity is a fairly common American response to witnessing the need of others, one that is widely shared. In the corporate world, for instance, we often see high-profile examples of charity, where the powerful use their resources to assist those who lack wealth and influence—from Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation to help New Jersey schools, to the Giving Pledge, a commitment by the world’s wealthiest people, including the late Paul Allen, to use their money for philanthropy. And setting aside those who have great wealth, most of the rest of us also feel the urge to do good, and will give generously to improve life for the people we encounter.

In the United States, we place a high premium on freedom, and on the legal extension of that freedom—rights. It is telling that the Tea Party resistance to the agenda of Barack Obama, and the progressive resistance to the Trump administration, while sharing little in common ideologically, are united by their reverence for rights, and by their concerns about losing them. In the case of the Tea Party, these rights notably include the right to bear arms and the right to assemble and speak freely; on the left, the emphasis has been on issues like the right to safe reproductive care and pay equity, and the right of workers to unionize. Notably, all of these rights are rights “to”—this is to say, they represent our freedom to perform an action or access a resource that benefits us, and, in most but not all cases, enriches our civil society. But there is another kind of right—rights that are founded on the basis of freedom “from.” These include the right to live free from socioeconomic insecurity, or from the threat of environmental disaster, or from the hazard of preventable injury and disease.

This November, Massachusetts voters will be given the chance to repeal a state law banning discrimination against transgender people in places of public accommodation.

The law, passed in 2016, guarantees transgender people the same access to spaces like bathrooms, sports arenas, restaurants, movies theaters and parks enjoyed by populations who are less vulnerable to exclusion and harassment. The option of repeal will be presented to voters as Question 3 on the Nov. 6 ballot. A “no” vote will repeal the law, a “yes” will keep it in place.

Health care in the United States is long overdue for an upheaval. The mismatch between costs, by far the highest in the world, and health outcomes, among the worst in the high‐income world, has long been glaring. Perhaps the good news is that the time for such an upheaval has come. At least 4 forces have been gathering steam, each promising to change the nature of health care and, in so doing, influence population health.

The opioid epidemic is the public health crisis of our time: with 64,000 annual deaths, it has surpassed the peak losses of all other epidemics, including HIV/AIDS. The financial toll is staggering: over $500 billion annually. Myriad solutions have been proposed, some implemented. And yet, the overall national response remains tepid.

We believe that a major reason for this is the prevailing tendency to see the opioid epidemic as a problem of the other. Elevating the human dimension of the crisis, and recognizing that this is not about them, but about us can go a long way towards redressing our predicament. Fortunately, a vast literature exists to aid our efforts because some of the most eloquent literary minds have written about addiction to opioids.