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The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study that the authors reference and model their call to action around is the worlds' largest scientific effort to quantify trends in health. It is lead by the Institute foe Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. It began in 1990 as a World Bank-commissioned study and is known for having introduced the disability-adujusted life year (DALY) as a new metric to quantify the burden of disease, injuries, and risk factors (or determinants), and enable comparisons. 

The 1990s were  a turning point for global health structures of governance and knowledge production, which the GBD study exemplifies. Global health experts began increasingly reframing health and healthcare in technical terms like DALY, removing health from public governance in ways that complemented and bolstered structural adjustment policies that were introduced in the 1980s (Janes 2004). As a result of these policies, the size, scope and reach of healthcare delivery and public health services were steadily reduced and downgraded. Anthropologists have been critical of these processes and other perceived failures in global health: the collapse of primary care initiatives fostered at Alma Ata in 1978, the resurgence of selective forms of primary care and vertical public health programs, and the ascendency of the World Bank as the principal health policymaking institution (Janes 2004, 2009).

Janes, Craig R (2004). "Going global in century XXI: medical anthropology and the new primary health care." Human Organization 63, no. 4: 457-471.

Janes, C. R., & Corbett, K. K. (2009). Anthropology and global health. Annual Review of Anthropology, 38, 167–183. doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-091908-164314

1) “Repeatedly, I have been surprised by the impact that even lightly sketched case histories can have on readers.”

2) “But even the manifesto conceded that less formal expertise would remain important in the areas of practice that had not been subject to high-level testing. THAT confession covers much of the territory.”

The author conducted his research by personal experience and reference to case examples.

The main point of the article is that doctors need individual stories about patient success stories but that the current medical community has largely done away with this. His argument is that that are needed because of their impact on patients, their use in identifying problems like depression, knowing others have felt the same or have the same condition can give hope, and they can inspire research agendas.

Dr. Kramer refers to various people in various medical cases but redacts their names.

The Journal of the American Medical Association and the medical community as a whole embraced “evidence based medicine” back in the 90s and claimed that individual case stories were inferior, antiquated, and a thing of the past.

Oxford University press and the New England Journal of Medicine started writing case reports embracing stories.

The author addresses public health by making the case that “evidence based medicine” is not always there for every type of case nor is it always infallible. This effects emergency response where there are so many variables and there are no datasets, protocols, or studies for some cases.

1) “Repeatedly, I have been surprised by the impact that even lightly sketched case histories can have on readers.”

2) “But even the manifesto conceded that less formal expertise would remain important in the areas of practice that had not been subject to high-level testing. THAT confession covers much of the territory.”

I looked into how EMS operates in situations that are beyond protocols, standing orders, and medical control. I also looked into how story cases are used by other medical professionals. Further I looked into how “evidence” based approaches are formulated for studies and research.

• "For a variety of reasons, including a heightened awareness of medical error and a focus on cost cutting, we have entered an era in which a narrow, demanding version of evidence-based medicine prevails. "
• "No formal research can offer a 40-year lead-in or a 19-year follow-up. Few studies report on both symptoms and social progress. Research reduces information about many people; vignette retains the texture of life in one of its forms."
• "Beyond its roles as illustration, affirmation, hypothesis-builder and low-level guidance for practice, storytelling can act as a modest counterbalance to a straitened understanding of evidence."
• "We need storytelling, to set us in the clinical moment, remind us of the variety of human experience and enrich our judgment."

The author is a psychiatrist who specializes in clinical depression. He conducted his research for this article with anecdotes and personal experience. He references other studies regarding clinical depression and refers to doctors that used stories and personal experiences to help shape their diagnosis.