Mark Harris
YOU WOULD never think that a 1988 American Heart Association (AHA) conference would set the stage for decades of debate around of all things sodium and race. But that’s where Clarence Grim, M.D., seeded a theory about Black health that has been difficult to uproot ever since.
Dr. Grim, then the director of the hypertension research center at the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles, hypothesized that high rates of hypertension among African Americans were due to the horrors of slavery, including the Middle Passage, the mass transport of slaves from West Africa to North America from roughly 1600 to 1800.
Photo by Spencer Platt / Getty Images
When pharmacist Erin McCreary moved to Pennsylvania in 2018, she didn’t anticipate ever having to administer vaccines. She’d taken a vaccination certification course back in pharmacy school six years earlier, but it wasn’t part of her job description as an infectious diseases pharmacist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. That’s why she wasn’t concerned about the state pharmacy board rule that pharmacists had to file their certificate within two years of receiving it or they’d have to take the course again.
“Well, now, of course, COVID-19 happened,” McCreary told
Chatbots, texting campaigns help manage influx of COVID vax questions
Chatbots, texting campaigns help manage influx of COVID vax questions
UPFRONT HEALTHCARE
DuPage Medical Group in December started sending text and email messages to its patients as part of a COVID-19 vaccine education campaign.
As health systems ramp up their COVID-19 vaccination programs, they’re tasked with not only administering the vaccines, but also answering a barrage of questions from patients.
Emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and natural language processing, are helping some hospitals manage that.
Novant Health has been adding COVID-19 vaccine information corralled by the system’s medical experts to a web chatbot. The Winston-Salem, N.C.-based system started vaccinating healthcare workers in December and patients age 75 and older in January. But patient groups across the board have had questions.
Natal â Lysenko / EyeEmGetty Images
After decades of anti-smoking campaigns, cigarettes are decidedly passé. Except.they’ve been replaced with more futuristic electronic smoking devices: battery-powered pens that could pass as USBs and hold pods of liquid that contain nicotine, CBD, THC, and other chemicals. In case you’ve been living under a rock, “vaping” or inhaling the vapor created by these electronic smoking devices is the new smoking.
Even as traditional cigarette and tobacco use has dropped by 67 percent among adults,
according to the American Lung Association, worldwide vaping sales reached $15.7 billion in 2019 and are expected to reach $39 billion by 2030,