According to two national surveys by researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School, US teens and young adults are engaged in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with most being knowledgeable about the disease, concerned about its impacts on others, and practicing social distancing.
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Members of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and its health system developed and implemented a new model of collaborative care called The Penn Integrated Care (PIC) program. PIC includes a resource center to support intake, triage and referral management and collaborative care services in primary care practices. PIC was created to increase access to and engagement with mental health professionals to improve mental and physical health outcomes. Primary care physicians were able to refer patients with any mental health symptom or condition to PIC. In 12 months, 6,124 unique patients were referred from eight primary care clinics to either the PIC Resource Center or were connected with a mental health professional. Most were triaged to collaborative care or specialty health care with active referral management.
Intervention research focusing on patients with multiple, simultaneous chronic illnesses is a priority for health organizations such as the National Institutes of Health and Canadian Institutes of Health Research. This is important as physicians seek to better understand how one disease may influence the course of another coexisting one, and how to best care for patients who are battling multiple health issues.
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For the drug approval process in the United States, investigators have been expanding clinical trials to sites outside the country. However, a new study indicates that this trend may be widening racial disparities in patient enrollment in cancer clinical trials. The study is published by Wiley early online in
CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.
Without adequate representation in clinical trials, it is difficult to assess whether a medication will be safe and effective for all populations. Unfortunately, Black individuals have historically been poorly represented in clinical trials of anticancer medications, and their inclusion has been decreasing in recent years. Globalization of cancer clinical trial enrollment may play a role in this trend: to reduce costs and expedite patient enrollment, trials have increasingly enlisted clinical sites outside the United States.
Credit: International Center for Equity in Health
The Lancet today published the latest Series on Maternal and Child Undernutrition Progress, including three new papers that build upon findings from the previous 2008 and 2013 Series, which established an evidence-based global agenda for tackling undernutrition over the past decade. The papers conclude that despite modest progress in some areas, maternal and child undernutrition remains a major global health concern, particularly as recent gains may be offset by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Series reiterates that previously highlighted interventions continue to be effective at reducing stunting, micronutrient deficiencies, and child deaths and emphasizes the importance of delivering these nutrition interventions within the first 1,000 days of life. However, despite this evidence, program delivery has lagged behind the science and further financing is needed to scale up proven interventions.