Healthcare News

President Biden released the National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness on January 21, 2020. It is an ambitious attempt to decrease the spread of the novel coronavirus and get hundreds of millions of Americans immunized. This COVID-19 vaccine plan, however, is missing a key element. Namely, primary care. An incomplete national strategy for… Read More » Author information Jack Westfall Director - Robert Graham Center at AAFP Jack Westfall is a family doctor in Washington, DC and Director of the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care. He completed his MD and MPH at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, an internship in hospital medicine in Wichita, Kansas, and his Family Medicine Residency at the University of Colorado Rose Family Medicine Program. After joining the faculty at the University of Colorado Department of Family Medicine, Dr Westfall started the High Plains Research Network, a geographic community and practice-based research network in rural and frontier Colorado. He practiced family medicine in several rural communities including Limon, Ft Morgan, and his home town of Yuma, Colorado. Dr Westfall was on the faculty of the University of Colorado for over 20 years, including serving as Associate Dean for Rural Health, Director of Community Engagement for the Colorado Clinical Translational Science Institute, AHEC Director, and Sr Scholar at the Farley Health Policy Center. He just completed two years as the Medical Director for Whole Person Care and Health Communities at the Santa Clara County Health and Hospital and Public Health Department. His research interests include rural health, linking primary care and community health, and policies aimed at assuring a robust primary care workforce for rural, urban, and vulnerable communities. | LinkedIn | The post Time for the COVID-19 vaccine plan to include primary care appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

Last week, we discussed three noteworthy trends from the past decade in treating the opioid crisis. The first was recognizing medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) as the standard of care. The second was formalizing an addiction medicine specialty. And the third was expanding the availability of MOUD. This week, we’ll consider three additional trends in… Read More » Author information Rebekah Rollston Rebekah L. Rollston, MD, MPH, is a Family Medicine Physician at Cambridge Health Alliance, Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Affiliate Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Primary Care Blog, Visiting Scholar in the Northeastern University Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, and Health Equity & Communications Physician Consultant at Bicycle Health. She earned her Medical Degree from East Tennessee State University Quillen College of Medicine and her Master of Public Health from The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. Her professional interests focus on social determinants of health & health equity, gender-based violence, sexual & reproductive health, addiction medicine, rural health, homelessness & supportive housing, and immigrant health. | Twitter | The post Treating the Opioid Crisis: Current Trends and What’s Next, Part 2 appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

Throughout the past decade, the U.S. has seen a dramatic shift in addiction medicine research, clinical practice, and related stigma in seeking care. In a pair of blog posts, we will explore the top six trends related to treating the opioid crisis. And we’ll consider what may be next. The Opioid Epidemic Opioid addiction has… Read More » Author information Rebekah Rollston Rebekah L. Rollston, MD, MPH, is a Family Medicine Physician at Cambridge Health Alliance, Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Affiliate Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Primary Care Blog, Visiting Scholar in the Northeastern University Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, and Health Equity & Communications Physician Consultant at Bicycle Health. She earned her Medical Degree from East Tennessee State University Quillen College of Medicine and her Master of Public Health from The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. Her professional interests focus on social determinants of health & health equity, gender-based violence, sexual & reproductive health, addiction medicine, rural health, homelessness & supportive housing, and immigrant health. | Twitter | The post Treating the Opioid Crisis: Current Trends and What’s Next appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

We have reached a 30-year high in the rate of suicide in the United States. Suicide risk and prevention efforts among women are the focus of a recent Medical Care supplemental issue. Efforts at prevention and recovery have been especially important for the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. As mentioned in the introduction to… Read More » Author information Jess Williams Assistant Professor at University of Kansas Medical Center Jessica A. Williams, PhD, MA is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Dr. Williams has been a member of the editorial board since 2013. Her research examines how workplace psychosocial factors affect the health and well-being of employees. Specifically, she investigates the role of pain in work disability and well-being. In addition, she researches the utilization of preventive medical services. She holds a Doctorate in Health Policy and Management from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, a Master's in Economics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a BA in economics from Stanford University. | Twitter | LinkedIn | The post Suicide Risk and Prevention Among Women appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

The Call for Abstracts for the 2021 Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association is out now! Abstracts are due March 21, 2021. To help you prepare your abstract for submission, the APHA MC Health Equity Committee presented a webinar on the topic of Making Your Abstract Awesome + Getting It Accepted. We had… 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 Awesome Accepted Abstracts Webinar Materials appeared first on The Medical Care Blog.

Last week I saw a news piece about the plight of nurses of Filipino descent. Even though they make up just 4% of the nursing workforce in the US, they account for 30% of the COVID-related deaths. I also read an article about how nurses are quitting in record numbers due to stress, burnout, lack

Blog by Joe Babaian In healthcare, the last mile is the link between you and the healthcare network touch point – where care is delivered – the entire healthcare system of people, services, goods, and organizations. This last mile can be as simple and critical as a ride to the clinic or as complex as the smooth exchange

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been meeting with and hearing from many companies that are doing interesting things in the Remote Patient Monitoring and medical device space. There are some truly mind-blowing innovations coming that will make self-care and care-at-home more viable than ever. My recent experience got me thinking about our dependence on

Blog post by Joe Babaian It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. ~ Warren Buffett This week on #hcldr let’s talk about something we all think about – sometimes directly, other times more passingly, but we all know it

The COVID pandemic has laid bare the inadequacies in long-term care (LTC) facilities. It is time to rethink our approach to how these facilities are designed, operated and staffed. According to the latest numbers from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF): 5% of all cases of COVID-19 in the US are residents of LTC facilities (approximately

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.