What accounts for large differences in life expectancy from one neighborhood to another? This post explains what our team has discovered so far using an “artificially intelligent” approach to understanding social risk at the local level. Where you live affects how long you live In 2018, when the National Center for Health Statistics released the… Read More » Author information Lisa Lines Health services researcher at RTI International Lisa M. Lines, PhD, MPH is a senior health services researcher at RTI International, an independent, non-profit research institute. She is also an Assistant Professor in Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Her research focuses on quality of care, care experiences, and health outcomes, particularly among people with chronic or serious illnesses. She is co-editor of TheMedicalCareBlog.com and serves on the Medical Care Editorial Board. She also serves as chair of the APHA Medical Care Section's Health Equity Committee. Views expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of RTI or UMass Medical School. | Twitter | LinkedIn | The post Artificially intelligent social risk adjustment appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

During the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted health inequality created by social determinants of health (SDoH) in the United States. SDoH include all aspects of the living environment, social support, safety, well-being, and resource availability, directly or indirectly influencing physical health outcomes. Consideration of SDoH is critical for successful comprehensive COVID-19 vaccine rollout.… Read More » Author information Erin Dobbins Erin Dobbins is currently pursuing her PhD in Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Public Health. Ms. Dobbins is a Public Health Analyst RTI International within the Center for Advanced Methods Development. Her primary research interests include evaluation of care quality and factors impacting health-related decision making and behavioral change in medical settings. | Twitter | LinkedIn | The post The Complexity of COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution in Rural Areas appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

Low-income households across the US are more likely to be uninsured or under-insured.  Medicaid Expansion paves a path for low-income Americans to obtain access to care.  Working-aged underinsured individuals tend to get later medical care and too little care–resulting in poorer health outcomes. Even insured individuals may delay necessary care because of cost. A 2018… Read More » Author information Dinesh Pal Mudaranthakam I am a Ph.D. student in the Department of Health Policy & Management at The University of Kansas Medical Center. Apart from being a student, my role at The University of Kansas is to serve as a Director of Research Information Technology. My interest and passion for science and understanding the healthcare system/delivery lead me to pursue my Ph.D. Research Interests: Population health, epidemiology, electronic health records, administrative claims data, observational study design, categorical data analysis, survival analysis, longitudinal data, System integration, Informatics Eco-system | The post Is Medicaid expansion enough to encourage people to get Mental Health care? appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

This past year at The Medical Care Blog has been quite an adventure. Like the rest of humanity, we were thrown into a whole new reality with the COVID-19 pandemic. Our first posts about SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus) and COVID-19 (the disease it causes) began in mid-March and haven’t stopped since. All told — across… Read More » Author information Lisa Lines Health services researcher at RTI International Lisa M. Lines, PhD, MPH is a senior health services researcher at RTI International, an independent, non-profit research institute. She is also an Assistant Professor in Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Her research focuses on quality of care, care experiences, and health outcomes, particularly among people with chronic or serious illnesses. She is co-editor of TheMedicalCareBlog.com and serves on the Medical Care Editorial Board. She also serves as chair of the APHA Medical Care Section's Health Equity Committee. Views expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of RTI or UMass Medical School. | Twitter | LinkedIn | The post End-of-year post: 2020 edition appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

This is Part 2 of my interview with Saira Haque, PhD a telehealth expert and the Director of RTI’s Data Interoperability and Clinical Informatics program, and Nick Richardson, PhD a research analyst in RTI’s Applied Justice Research division. Part 1 is here. What are the benefits to using telehealth? Dr. Haque: As mentioned earlier, it… Read More » Author information Alexa Ortiz Health IT Scientist at RTI International Alexa Ortiz graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2009 with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. Before receiving her graduate degree she was a practicing nurse for five years and has clinical experience in the field of both Cardiology and Neurology. In 2014 she received a Master of Science in Nursing specializing in nursing informatics from Duke University. Presently, she works as a Health IT Scientist at RTI International in the Center for Digital Health and Clinical Informatics. Despite no longer working in a clinical setting, she continues to maintain an active nurse license in the state of North Carolina. Her primary areas of research at RTI International focus on the clinical implementation of health information technology and the evaluation of consumer wearable devices. | Twitter | The post Telehealth in Jails and Prisons: Part 2 appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

Every week, we get closer and closer to the day when the COVID vaccine will be available to the general population. When that day arrives, will the healthcare system be ready? Will the population be ready? A Logistics Challenge The most critical vaccine challenge is logistics. Not only do you have to get the vaccine

i Blog Post by Joe Babaian “Don’t give up” is my message today to you! We are facing unprecedented COVID19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, plus a serious coup attempt in the United States, as well as a looming mental health crisis from all of the above. What’s the good news then you may ask?! It

Welcome to 2021 everyone! I hope you had a safe and healthy Happy New Year. If all goes according to plan, we will be celebrating the 9th anniversary of HCLDR in August this year – a milestone I never thought we would see when we started this journey in August of 2012. I thought it

This next HCLDR chat on Tuesday December 22nd at 8:30pm EST (for your local time click here) will be the final one for 2020. We will return on Tuesday January 5th. Given the year we have all had, we thought it would be nice to take a 1 week break at the end of this

Supplemental #hcldr blog by Joe Babaian I am taking the opportunity to write up this update on my #COVID19 journey even as I have just started the long road to recovery both physically and emotionally. I hope this helps you or someone you love. This isn’t my normal style to post – but YOU NEED

The World Health Organization (WHO) today listed the Comirnaty, COVID-19 mRNA vaccine for emergency use, making the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine the first to receive emergency validation from WHO since the outbreak began a year ago.

In his end of year message for 2020, WHO Director-General says there is light at the end of the tunnel in the fight against COVID-19. But going into 2021, he urges countries and communities to work together, in solidarity, to overcome this and future health challenges.

Since the global youth movement, 1+1 youth Initiative was launched on World TB Day 2019, followed by the  adoption of the Youth Declaration to End TB at the first-ever Global Youth Townhall on ending TB, there has been significant progress over the past year. The 1+1 Initiative has expanded to include thousands of youth across the world in countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Indonesia, Philippines,  and Vietnam.The social media platforms set up as part of the 1+1 youth initiative are joined and followed by more than 15000 young people including WHO End TB forum. Similarly, Global TB Programme has established #Youth2EndTB Global Youth Network where more than 1800 youths from 95+ countries have already joined.  Besides, in order to recognise the youth efforts and encourage youth engagement on ending TB, youth story series was conducted.Moreover, 50 and more different youth-led activities and virtual events on ending TB have been conducted worldwide. This includes  sensitizing young people, peer education trainings in schools and universities,and encouraging them to become TB advocates, and supporting TB patients in the community with resources, advice, and encouragement. In addition, we are enthusiastic about cross country youth dialogue series that have been started where youths from different countries can participate and learn from each other.For instance, one of the inspiring examples is that of Nepal, young people in this country have established national and provincial youth networks to help young people, through capacity building and in ensuring their participation in policy making and community level awareness building programmes. Likewise, in March 2020, Vietnam National Tuberculosis program launched National Youth Movement against TB which aims on reaching 10 million young people as well as educating all primary school students with TB knowledge and good practices on combating TB and lung diseases.Another exciting example is from Indonesia. Their national youth movement against TB has been conducting Art exhibitions as well as creating TB awareness through social media campaign.Furthermore, WHO Global TB Program is currently developing training manual targeting End TB youth leaders, young survivors, and young health professionals. It will be available at End TB channel of Open WHO platform after completing it's six regional youth consultations.

The Behavioural Insights Unit of the WHO released a meeting report of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on the special session on acceptance and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines, held on 15 October 2020. The meeting report outlines the factors that drive people’s behaviour in relation to vaccine acceptance and uptake: an enabling environment, social influences and motivation. The image above is a visual narration that captures highlights of the meeting on 15 October 2020, during which the TAG on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health discussed behavioural considerations in relation to COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and uptake. The discussion was structured around three key questions. Download the graphic   

Global partners that are committed to ending paediatric AIDS have come together to call on countries to rapidly scale up access to optimal, child-friendly HIV treatment for infants and children.