Healthcare News

The Biden Administration’s proposed infrastructure investments are an example of an upstream effort to address disparities related to social determinants of health (SDOH). As mentioned in our previous blog post, SDOH are the conditions or circumstances within which people live, and these differ based on the distribution of power, money, and resources. The systems and… Read More » Author information Amy Chepaitis Amy Chepaitis is a public health systems researcher at RTI. She has more than 20 years of diverse and complementary experience in health care management, policy, research, consulting, and technical assistance/capacity building. Her training and experience provides a unique perspective on and understanding of varied aspects of health and social care. Her research and evaluation projects have focused primarily on health care reform, community health care, and the integration of health, social and supportive care for the underserved. She is an organizational theorist and qualitative methodologist. Her current project roles, all for large-scale federal evaluations, include leading major tasks of an evaluation of state-level demonstrations for the dually eligible population, and co-leading three awardee teams for an evaluation of a nationwide initiative focusing on social determinants of health. | The post Infrastructure investments, SDOH, and equity appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

Long-term services and supports (LTSS) for older adults and persons with disabilities have become a policy priority. The American Rescue Plan and the proposed American Jobs Act aim to increase LTSS spending through the Medicaid program, particularly for Home- and Community-Based Services (HCBS). These measures would address the need for wider service availability, while presenting… Read More » Author information Lawren Bercaw Lawren E. Bercaw, a researcher at RTI International, has over 15 years of professional research experience in public and social policy issues, specifically aging in place, disparities and social determinants of health, housing, and services and supports for older adults. Dr. Bercaw has led numerous policy implementation and program evaluation tasks and teams, including projects targeting home-based primary care, CLAS Standards implementation, senior housing, and nutrition for low-income older adults. Dr. Bercaw has experience with quantitative research methods, including survey design and analysis, as well as numerous qualitative research and leadership experiences, conducting interviews, leading focus groups, and coordinating technical expert panels (TEPs) with older adults, families, caregivers, physicians, nursing facility staff, and others who support older adults. Dr. Bercaw holds a PhD in Social Policy, with a concentration in Assets & Inequalities, as well as a Master's in Public Policy. | The post How to Reduce Medicaid HCBS Disparities Using an Assets Framework appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

During its recent mid-year meeting, the American Public Health Association’s Medical Care Section was honored to hear from two physician leaders serving at the heart of the fight against COVID-19. Hailing from opposite ends of the country, Drs. Atul Nakhasi (California) and Ayne Amjad (West Virginia) shared their insight about teamwork in a public health… Read More » Author information Tiffany Johnson Tiffany Johnson is currently a medical student at the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine. She holds a Master's degree in Public Health from the University of South Dakota and a Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Sciences from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. She is a member of the Medical Care and Epidemiology sections of the American Public Health Association. Some of her interests include healthcare optimization, health policy, and health equity. | LinkedIn | The post From Policy to Practice: Teamwork in a Public Health Crisis appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

Randomized control trials are the commonly held gold standard clinical trial design. The randomized controlled trial (RCT) is the gold standard of clinical research. However, researchers are increasingly asking: must they be? Webster-Clark, Jonsson Funk, and Stürmer discussed single-arm trials: administering a drug to an experimental group and using real-world data (RWD) to select an… Read More » Author information Kieran Tebben I am an MSTP student at University of Maryland, Baltimore in my first year of graduate school in the Microbiology and Immunology program. I have an undergraduate degree in Microbiology and a masters degree in Epidemiology. I currently study malaria transcriptomics and am interested in how pharmacogenomics influences infectious disease treatment and prevention. | The post Single-arm trials for COVID-19 vaccines appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

The United States is currently experiencing multiple, simultaneous epidemics that claim thousands of lives every week. According to the CDC, over 81,000 drug overdose deaths occurred between June 2019 and May 2020. That’s the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period. An estimated 93,000 Americans die annually from alcohol-related causes. Many… Read More » Author information Lisa Lines Senior 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 Monitoring EMS data for substance use appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

There is a game we used to love playing when I was a kid – Game of Life. In it, you would randomly spin for a career that would dictate the amount of money you would collect as salary throughout the game. The career that everyone wanted to get was “Doctor” because it had the

I had an interesting conversation with someone the other day about the “right” to complain. Here was the scenario: They bought something online and it took 3 weeks longer than expected to arrive. The product was fine, no issues there, but they had to wait a total of 5 weeks for it arrive. My friend

Blog Post by Joe Babaian This week I felt it would be a great opportunity to call out the best examples of leadership in healthcare that you have seen during 2021. Leadership can take many forms as we tackle this next, new normal. Sharing factual news and updates Working on the front, middle, and backlines

Memorial Day in the US is the unofficial start of summer – celebrated with hot dogs, BBQs and gatherings with friends over a long weekend. This year’s celebrations will be even more special given the loosening of pandemic mask requirements and physical distancing protocols. It is also a day on which those who died in

Blog By Joe Babaian It’s been five months since my inpatient stay for COVID-19 and the associated COVID pneumonia. Sometimes, I can’t even fathom that the experience was real and other times, when I review the ongoing financial cleanup and monthly medications, it becomes all too real. This week on #hcldr I hope to spark

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.