CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Disc Medicine, a company dedicated to the discovery and development of novel therapeutic candidates for serious and debilitating hematologic diseases, today announced the appointment of Jonathan Yu as Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy and William Savage, MD, PhD as Vice President of Clinical Development. Together, they will work to build the company's portfolio and advance its pipeline of hepcidin pathway modulators toward the clinic to treat serious hematologic diseases.

"Both Will and Jonathan bring tremendous expertise to Disc Medicine, and I'm thrilled to welcome them to the team," said John Quisel, JD, PhD, Chief Executive Officer at Disc Medicine. "Will's experience in clinical hematology will prove invaluable as we advance our pipeline of novel therapeutic candidates targeting the hepcidin pathway into the clinic, and Jonathan's extensive business acumen will be a great asset as we continue to grow the company and our portfolio."

Mr. Yu brings his experience in corporate strategy, commercialization and operations to the Disc team. Prior to joining Disc Medicine, Mr. Yu was a co-founder and Vice President of Corporate Strategy, Finance and Operations for Qpex Biopharma. He has also served in various leadership roles at The Medicines Company, most recently as Vice President of Strategic Planning and Corporate Development, where he was instrumental in the divestiture of commercial-stage infectious disease assets to Melinta Therapeutics and the acquisition and subsequent integration of Rempex Pharmaceuticals. Mr. Yu has also held roles at Acceleron Pharma, SR One, and Johnson & Johnson, spanning commercial planning and assessment, business development and finance. Jonathan received an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and an AB in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard College.

"I'm thrilled to join Disc Medicine at such an exciting stage in its growth," said Jonathan Yu, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy. "This is a special opportunity to build on the work of an exceptional founding team and create an innovative company that is specifically for patients who are suffering from hematologic diseases."

Dr. Savage brings a decade of hematology and transfusion medicine clinical research experience, having worked across academic institutions, biopharma and biotech. Prior to joining Disc Medicine, he served as Senior Medical Director at Magenta Therapeutics, where he managed clinical development activities from preclinical through phase 2 and led regulatory interactions. Prior to Magenta Therapeutics, he was the Global Clinical Development Lead in Hematology at Shire/Takeda. Before transitioning to biotech/biopharma, Dr. Savage was an Assistant Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women's Hospital and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he trained in pediatric hematology/oncology and transfusion medicine. Dr. Savage received his BA in Biochemistry from Columbia University, his MD from Weill Cornell Medical College and his PhD in Clinical Investigation from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"Historically, patients with serious hematologic diseases have had limited treatment options, and the field has lacked innovation compared to other disease areas," said Will Savage, MD, PhD, Vice President of Clinical Development at Disc Medicine. "Disc's unique approach in targeting hepcidin regulation presents a compelling opportunity to bring meaningful new therapies to patients suffering from these conditions."

Disc Medicine is advancing two therapeutic programs focused on modulating hepcidin expression a novel, orally administered matriptase-2 inhibitor which increases hepcidin expression to treat iron loading anemias, and a hemojuvelin antagonist monoclonal antibody to reduce hepcidin expression and address anemia in a range of serious inflammatory and hematologic diseases.

About Disc MedicineDisc Medicine is a hematology company harnessing new insights in hepcidin biology to address ineffective red blood cell production (erythropoiesis) in hematologic diseases. Focused on the hepcidin pathway, the master regulator of iron metabolism, Disc is developing a portfolio of first-in-class therapeutic candidates to transform the treatment of hematologic diseases. For more information, visitwww.discmedicine.com.

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Disc Medicine Expands Leadership Team with Industry Veterans to Advance Hepcidin Modulating Therapies Toward the Clinic - PRNewswire

In late March, Scott Aberegg, a critical-care doctor at the University of Utah, was eating lunch in his hospital cafeteria. On his phone, he noticed an e-mail that was circulating among the trainees in his department. It was from the American Thoracic Society, a professional organization of physicians who treat lung disease and critical illness. As you have undoubtedly heard, there is a coronavirus surge in New York City, the message read. The situation is dire...and your colleagues need your help. The e-mail offered same-day credentialling and licensing, as well as free travel, housing, and meals to doctors who volunteered to work in the citys hospitals. The e-mail was so extraordinary that Aberegg wondered if it could be a scam.

Aberegg grew up on a small horse farm in Alliance, Ohio, about sixty miles southeast of Cleveland. His father worked in retail at Sears and later trained horses and sold livestock equipment; Aberegg was the first in his family to attend college. In the winter of 1997, when he was in his third year of medical school at Ohio State, he did a rotation with James Gadek, a legendary critical-care doctor. A few weeks in, Gadek heard that a trainees relative was dying in a hospital several hours away. The medical team there believed the case to be hopeless; Gadek rode down in an ambulance, brought the patient back, and started treatment himself, in his own I.C.U. The patient recovered. Watching his supervisor go to such lengths, Aberegg thought, I want to be like that guy. Now, in Salt Lake City, he replied to the e-mail from the American Thoracic Society, saying that he was available.

Around the same time, Tony Edwards, a third-year critical-care fellow who worked at Abereggs hospital, got the same e-mail. He and his wife, Ashley, a former I.C.U. nurse, had been working in Dallas in 2014, when the first Ebola patient on American soila man fleeing the outbreak in Liberiagrew sick there, and the virus threatened to spread. Tony was a medical resident in the infectious-disease service; Ashleys I.C.U. was chosen as the one to which Ebola patients would be sent if the outbreak grew. Though the virus was contained, a patient died and two nurses were infected. The Edwardses felt that theyd experienced a near-miss. We kind of went through the drill before, Ashley said. Being through that got us ready for this.

At dinner, Tony told Ashley about the e-mail. Shed seen it, too, and also wanted to go: the need for I.C.U.-trained nurses was, in many cases, even greater than the need for physicians. Soon afterward, the Edwardses learned that Aberegg had volunteered as well. The three began making preparations. Aberegg backed out of a family vacation. The Edwardses began arranging child care for their fourteen-month-old daughter. Tonys mother, Marianne, cried when she heard that theyd volunteered; she agreed to drive from Denver to Salt Lake City to take care of the baby. Before leaving, Tony and Ashley bought life-insurance policies, which wouldnt take effect for another month. They tried to make a joke out of it. Tony told his mother, If we get sick, make sure you keep us alive until then!

In early April, when New York City was recording around five thousand new coronavirus cases per day, I met Aberegg in a makeshift I.C.U. in the hospital where I work, on the East Side. We stood near the central nursing station. Doctors and nurses darted around us; alarms sounded; monitors flashed red warnings. The wooden doors on the patients rooms had been taken down and replaced with metal ones; they had large glass windows that allowed us to see the patients, connected to ventilators. On each window, dry-erase markers were used to record ventilator settings, oxygen levels, medication rates, and the number and location of the tubes and catheters keeping each patient alive. Aberegg, muscular and no-nonsense, seemed relatively at ease. When someone says they need help, you go help them, he told me, describing his decision to come. If they didnt need help, they wouldnt be asking. He had arrived a few days before, and was staying in a hospital-run hotel across the street, in a room two floors up from the Edwardses. He had already seen dozens of critically ill COVID-19 patients. In the mornings, he met Tony in the I.C.U., and they talked about what had happened overnight: some patients had improved and might be extubated, others had worsened and needed immediate attention. Then they started their rounds.

Later, I went to see Tony and Ashley in their hotel room, where we sat pushed back from the small dining table, six feet from one another, with our masks and surgical caps on. They recalled the frenzied week between their decision to volunteer and their arrival in New York. Ashley, who had changed her specialty from critical care to interventional radiology, had reviewed I.C.U. procedures online and in old textbooks; Tony, while caring for patients in his Utah I.C.U., had tried to sort out the requirements for New York State credentialling. Twelve hours before they were set to depart, the airline cancelled their flight. They scrambled to book another. On the way to the airport, Tony became apprehensive. He was freaking out, Ashley said. He was shaking and couldnt talk. Thats when I think it hit him.

On their flight, there were fewer than a dozen passengers, all wearing masks. There was no food or drinks service on board, and they were hungry when they landed at J.F.K., a little after midnight. As they walked through the empty terminal, past a lone T.S.A. officer sitting in a chair, their sense of unease grew. Their Uber driver seemed tense. At the hotel, they ate a pizza theyd ordered from a food-delivery app. Five hours later, Tony picked up his I.D. badge and got to work. Later, Ashley went to an office in midtown to complete her credentialling process. Afterward, she walked to Times Square. The lights were on and the signs were flashing, but the streets were deserted. Theyd been to New York before, but not this version.

For Tony, nervous energy quickly gave way to reflexive action. There was almost no time to meet his new colleagues. His first day was marked by a constant flow of patients: just as one was stabilized, another arrived, gasping for breath or already intubated. When a spare moment presented itself, he and his team would swap theories about the coronavirus and discuss the few studies that had been published. He felt disoriented, not just by the tumult of the ward and the uncertainties of the virus but by the unfamiliar faces and layout of a new hospital. One morning, he entered a break room and sank, exhausted, into a chair. Hey! Youre the Utah guy, one doctor said. Around him, many others were reviewing cases and debating treatments. He had known that all of the units on his floor had been transformed into COVID-19 wards; only now did he realize that the same was true of nearly the whole hospital. He took the stairs down to a surgical floor and made his way along a hallway with operating rooms on both sides. There, he got a hint of the pandemics true scale: in each room, rows of unconscious patients were connected to ventilators, their alarms echoing eerily down the empty corridor. It was straight out of a science-fiction movie, he recalled.

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Fighting the Coronavirus, from New York to Utah - The New Yorker

by Jacob Strier | 8/3/20 2:00am

Source: Courtesy of Solomon Rajput

Medical student turned progressive politician Solomon Rajput 14 is taking on an 87-year-old political dynasty in his campaign for Michigans 12th Congressional district, using TikTok and other platforms to amass supporters and volunteers. The primary election will take place on August 4.

Rajput is attempting to unseat incumbent Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI), whose family has held office since 1933. As a medical student at the University of Michigan, Rajput opted to take a leave of absence to dedicate all his energy to his campaign. He said a political science degree is not necessary to run, but rather the right values and a willingness to learn and listen. For Rajput, those values are progressive, including action on climate change and efforts to eliminate student debt. In medical school, Rajput said he has accrued some $100,000 in debt.

By now it is clear to everyone that we cant put band-aids on our broken systems, Rajput said.

University of Michigan student and communications director Kathryn Todd said the campaign has avoided smear campaigns against Dingell, instead focusing on the establishment which the incumbent congresswoman represents.

The establishment politics that runs amok in the United States is what led to Rep. Dingell being our representative now after her husband and her father, Todd said. There has been a Dingell in power for years in Michigans 12th district.

Rajput said a future in career politics is not his goal. Instead, he said he aims to go out and make change that he sees as long overdue.

If we are able to get all of this stuff done a Green New Deal, eliminate student debt, get money out of our political system I would not want to be a congressperson anymore, he said, noting that he also loves medicine.

While at Dartmouth, Rajput said he majored in biological sciences, and aside from one public policy class, did not take courses in political science. Rajput said his choice to major in biology came from a disillusionment with American politics.

I didnt want to get involved in a world at the bidding of the corporate elite, he said.

Rajput said his strategy to win involves amassing an army of young people, enlisting volunteers to knock on doors and, due to the spread of COVID-19, phone and text banking.

Congresswoman Dingell has all this money, but what is it going to get her? Rajput asked, We are focused on building people power.

The campaigns political director and Michigan undergraduate student Rachel Fagan said she has been with the campaign since its second week, helping Rajput write and research policy briefs. She has seen the campaign swell but said the community aspect remains the same. Part of the sudden growth has been due to robust social media outreach, according to Fagan.

At first I was skeptical of TikTok, because we want people to take us seriously, she said. We reached a lot of young people sitting in quarantine and wondering what they can do to help this burning world around us.

One August 1 TikTok by Rajput has registered nearly 500,000 views. The video shows what he plans to fight for if elected, including removing big money from politics and free college. In other TikTok videos, Rajput has utilized popular dance trends on the app, like the widely-known dance routine to Lottery by K-Camp, to inform viewers of his platform or remind them to vote.

Keshav Ramesh, a rising high school senior in South Windsor, CT, said he discovered Rajput on TikTok. Ramesh said the candidates values resonated with him as a South Asian and a student.

I am Indian and he is Pakistani, Ramesh said. He is from my region of the world and he is championing progressive values in Michigan.

Ramesh has since been hired as an intern for Rajputs campaign and calls potential voters four to five times per week, making some 25 calls per hour. He has also found a community of like-minded young people online in the group of Rajput volunteers, with whom he frequently has discussions or watches debates.

Solomon is a very different candidate, Ramesh said. There is no chain of command to contact him he talks with everybody and knows people by their first name.

Todd said the campaign had 300 to 400 interns, spread throughout the United States and Canada, working on Rajputs behalf. She said the campaign has grown beyond the borders of the 12th district.

My job was really difficult: nobody cared about this August election or this kid going up against an [87-year-old] dynasty, Todd said. All of a sudden I wake up to three new [press] emails.

According to Todd, the campaign has made over $100,000, while the Dingell campaign has earned well over $1.4 million.

Regarding finances, Rajput said his Dartmouth experience taught him innovation and entrepreneurship, and his campaign works to think critically about why campaigns have so much money. He added that his campaign has worked to execute strategies extremely cheaply.

Fagan noted that Rajputs campaign emphasizes the contributions of young people, noting she did not expect to be a political director on a congressional campaign as an undergraduate student.

He is a young progressive, and he knows people my age have been doing activism for years, she said, noting that on other campaigns, years of previous experiences are a prerequisite for upper-level roles.

Fagan, a rising junior, said the campaign includes many younger than herself.

It is a cool place for young activists looking to dip their foot in electoral politics, she said.

Fagan said she has learned about the political sphere while devising campaign strategy. She explained that Michigan is a swing state, diverse in both perspective and political ideology.

Fagan added that her hometown in the states 11th district, 40 minutes away, is solidly red.

In the 12th district, Fagan said groups ranging from student activists in Ann Arbor to large communities of Arab Americans in nearby Dearborn, MI, converge ideologically on progressive issues like union activism and U.S. military intervention. The district also includes a minority of conservative voters.

To Rajput, bipartisanship in Congress is appealing but elusive. He compared working across the aisle to a feel-good myth, which he has not seen materialize in his lifetime. Instead, Rajput said he seeks to challenge the narrative that policies face greater success if they are diluted to meet needs across the aisle.

According to Fagan, Rajput believes progressive policies represent the best policies for everybody.

He will be elected on the platform he is preaching, she said.

Original post:

Solomon Rajput '14 takes on Michigan incumbent for seat in Congress - The Dartmouth

The Bay State is full of valiant health-care workers and one, who faced fears of COVID-19 at home and in her busy emergency department, is being recognized as one of the nations hospital heroes in a list alongside the likes of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Thats Dr. Vonzella Bryant of Boston Medical Center, who earned a spot on the U.S. News & World Report list of hospital heroes. She told the Herald this week that connecting with her patients is the best part of the job, and what she relies on to push through the pandemic.

I just feel like youre there for all comers in the emergency department, and thats what keeps me going in emergency medicine, just being there for my patients and then also being there emotionally, Bryant said.

Bryant said she and her colleagues had watched the coronavirus whip around the world and knew it was set to slam Boston.

In the ED we were super nervous from what we were seeing and what we were reading, but we were getting ourselves ready we had weekly department meetings, Bryant said.

She took on an influx of sick patients, some with very low oxygen levels, while balancing her role at home as a wife, a daughter and mother to two young children.

The concern of bringing it to my family was there, said Bryant, adding that her mother came down with COVID-like symptoms in February after a trip abroad but was never tested.

Bryant was named a hospital hero, a designation given by U.S. News to honor countless unsung heroes who are stepping up often at great personal risk to keep patients alive and communities safe from COVID-19.

Her name is among more than 65 hospital heroes in the nation, including the countrys top infectious-disease doctor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and CNNs Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who were also awarded spots on the U.S. News list.

Bryant, 46, is the only doctor in Massachusetts to have made the hospital heroes list. Heroes can be nominated to the U.S. News editorial team and Bryant said she didnt even know she had been nominated until she was selected.

Its crazy, its so crazy. Me? Im just a girl from Kansas, said Bryant with a laugh. Now removed from Kansas, Bryant lives in Brookline Village and has been an attending physician in Massachusetts for 16 years.

Quoting the Pulitzer Prize-winning hip-hop musical Hamilton, Bryant said she is someone who always wants to be in the room where it happens.

Bryant, who works at Boston University teaching medical students who havent been allowed in the hospital since the pandemic, said she also loves her role as an educator.

Im just a hopeful person, Im always a hopeful person and to tell you the truth, working with a medical school keeps me going to work with the young people, said Bryant.

Bryant is teaching her students what it means to work with a diverse, vulnerable patient population and also works to increase diversity in the medical community.

Studies have shown that increasing diversity in medicine can definitely help with medical compliance, said Bryant, adding that having more doctors of color can decrease patient anxiety.

I really hope that there will be an investment in Black lives, said Bryant, noting supports such as education, housing and mental health care.

Bryant said she is proud of Boston Medical Center, the city of Boston and Massachusetts in general on how COVID has been handled.

You just do what you got to do. Theres opportunity there where I feel like I can make differences, Bryant said.

More:

Boston doctor named hospital hero relied on human connection to get through COVID peak - Boston Herald

The writer, a Los Angeles freelancer, is a former Detroit News business reporter who blogs atStarkman Approved.

By Eric Starkman

Dr. Jeffrey S. Fischgrund, M.D., is a man of many titles. Hes chief of clinical care programs at Beaumont Health. Hes associate chief medical officer at Beaumonts flagship Royal Oak hospital. Hes chairman of orthopedic surgery at Beaumont Royal Oak. And hes professor and chairman of orthopedic surgery at the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine.

Fischgrund obviously is a very big kahuna at Michigans biggest hospital network. With so many job responsibilities, one might expect he wouldnt have time to tend to a lucrative side business.

But he does.

Since 2013, Fischgrund has received $931,549.46 for consulting and other services from Stryker Corp., a Kalamazoo-based medical technologies firm. And wouldnt you know it, Beaumont in 2019 signed a contract with Stryker committing to use the companys medical implants for 75 percent of its orthopedic trauma procedures. In 2019 Fischgrunds payments from Stryker totaled $193,956.08, the most he received in a single year from the company.

Fischgrund in 2019 also received $156,000 in payments from Relievant Medsystems, a privately held company in Minneapolis that pioneered a minimally invasive procedure to treat lower back pain. The companys website features a product endorsement from Fischgrund, who served as principal investigator of its product trials.

Doctors serving as consultants to drug and medical device companies is common, particularly in orthopedics. But the moonlighting isnt without controversy. Thats why the government mandated that consulting fees paid to doctors be disclosed, so the public can see the financial relationships between manufacturers and hospitals and doctors. Fischgrunds Stryker and Relievant largesse is disclosed on cms.gov.

Beaumonts Stryker contract, which I understand would result in millions in rebates if Beaumont reaches the mandated 75-percent threshold, is controversial with the hospitals orthopedic trauma surgeons. Most of them prefer to use a rival product which they feel is far superior. Orthopods must get Fischgrunds permission to use non-Stryker products, and he asked that the requests be made on the phone, not in writing.

Fischgrund is a spine surgeon, a specialty using medical devices different than those used by orthopedic trauma surgeons. Stryker also has a comprehensive portfolio of spine products, which presumably Fischgrunds consulting work relates to.

Physicians as Consultants

Beaumont spokesman Mark Geary typically ignores my requests for comment or sends links to rival publications citing Beaumont statements. But when asked about Fischgrunds Stryker payments, Geary had something to say:

Almost all medical supply, device and pharmaceutical companies use physicians as consultants to help develop their products and advance their technology. This is particularly true in large academic medical centers.

These types of consulting arrangements allow physicians to provide valuable feedback about new technology and developments that could improve a patients experience. These arrangements are appropriate and legal as long as the consulting relationship does not result in an inducement to use a particular product. As you noted, there is quite a bit of transparency around these kinds of relationships that is publicly accessible.

Beaumont requires all physicians and key leaders to disclose any and all financial relationships or other potential conflicts they have with other organizations. These reports are reviewed by our compliance and research teams.

After issuing the statement, Geary sent a follow-up email saying the majority of approvals are done in writing, not orally.

Beaumonts orthopedic surgeons, ranked as the 11th best in the country in a closely followed U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals issue released last week, are not alone in being pressured to use products not of their choosing. Beaumont surgeons specializing on the intestinal system are required to use a stapler manufactured by a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary rather than one made by Medtronic, which many believe is far superior.

Beaumont about a year ago signed a contract with the Johnson & Johnson subsidiary to use its Ethicon stapler. Surgeons wanting to use the Medtronic stapler must get Fischgrunds approval.

According to his Beaumont profile, Fischgrund graduated from George Washington University medical school in 1987 and interned and did his residency at the University of Maryland. He did his fellowship in spine orthopedics at Beaumont.

Fischgrund succeeded Harry Herkowitz as chairman of Beaumonts orthopedic surgery in 2013 after Herkowitz died of a massive heart attack while waiting in line at the Starbucks in Beaumonts Royal Oak hospital. Underscoring how beloved and respected Herkowitz was among Beaumonts employees, the hospitals flags were flown at half-staff after his passing.

Exodus of Doctors

Beaumont, with 19 adult specialties ranked among the top 50 in the recent U.S. News Best Hospitals issue, is experiencing an acceleration of top surgeons and specialists leaving for other hospitals. The exodus began last fall when Marc Sakwa, chief of cardiac surgery at Royal Oak, and Jeffrey Altshuler, another prominent cardiac surgeon, resigned to join a hospital in Southern California.

In another major blow to Beaumonts highly lucrative and nationally ranked cardiology group, Michael Faulkner, chief of cardiac and critical care anesthesia at Royal Oak, is understood to have resigned. According to Faulkners Beaumont profile, he attended medical school at University of Michigan and did his residency and fellowship at Johns Hopkins, widely regarded as one of the most prestigious medical centers in the world.

Also departing is George Hanzel, who specializes in transcatheter aortic valve replacement, which involves replacing heart valves without open heart surgery. Hanzel is said to be joining Emory Healthcare in Atlanta.

Alan Koffron, Beaumont Royal Oaks chief of transplant, liver, and pancreatic surgery, and his spouse Julie, also a very accomplished liver and pancreatic surgeon, have let colleagues know theyve accepted positions elsewhere. More than 20 cardiology specialists at Beaumont Royal Oak and Troy are known to be actively negotiating to join rival Detroit-area hospitals.

Word of widespread dissatisfaction among Beaumonts elite specialists has spread nationally and leading hospitals are aggressively trying to poach them. Insiders say that Beaumont is in danger of losing internationally renowned plastic surgeon Kongkrit Chaiyasate, who was featured in an Detroit Free Press profile three years ago.

Beaumonts doctors, nurses, and other health care specialists are fed up with Beaumont CEO John Fox and COO Carolyn Wilson, who they insist are more focused on boosting profits at the expense of patient care. The final straw was Wilsons recent decision to give a contract to a low-cost outsourcing firm to oversee and manage anesthesiology services at most of Beaumonts hospitals, including Royal Oak and Troy. The contract is going to lead to the replacement of more than 100 anesthesiologists currently working at Beaumont hospitals, the majority of whom have advanced residency training.

Beaumont employees also are angered about Foxs plans to merge Beaumont into Advocate Aurora, a giant hospital network with dual headquarters in Illinois and Wisconsin. Few, if anyone, believes the merger will lead to improved patient care. None of Advocate Auroras more than 20 hospitals remotely have Beaumonts national prestige or are teaching centers.

The merger is expected to lead to a generous payday for Fox, who was earning close to $6 million in compensation annually prior to the pandemic.

A petition has been circulating among Beaumont doctors for weeks declaring no confidence in Fox and David Wood Jr., Beaumonts chief medical officer. Beaumonts board held an emergency meeting last Monday and doctors on Wednesday were asked to anonymously fill out a questionnaire about their confidence in management, their feelings about the proposed Advocate Aurora merger, and other questions.

Cardiology, surgical, and other specialty representatives are soon expected to make a presentation to the board. Its been communicated to the representatives the board has 100 percent confidence in Fox.

Indeed, despite Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel recently saying it would take her office six to nine months to closely scrutinize the Advocate Aurora merger, the union already seems likes its moving forward.

Advocate Aurora has posted an ad for a supervisor of surgical services in Detroit. The company doesnt have any publicly known facilities in the metro Detroit area. Fox has repeatedly maintained that Beaumont would retain its own name after it merges with Advocate Aurora.

Beaumont spokesman Geary said, "We are not working with Advocate Aurora in any capacity on these searches."

Reach Eric Starkman ateric@starkmanapproved.com.Beaumont employees and vendors are encouraged to reach out, with confidentiality assured.

Columns by this writer:

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Starkman: Beaumont Executive Paid $932000 by Hospital Vendor Whose Implants Were Pushed on Surgeons - Deadline Detroit

To safely reopen college campuses this fall, students need to be screened for SARS-CoV-2 infection every two or three days, finds a new study led by the Yale School of Public Health.

The research, published today inJAMA Open Network,comes asuniversities across the United States are grappling with whether and how to reopen for the fall 2020 semester. Residential campuses with their communal living and dining spaces, crowded classrooms, and populations of young adults eager to socialize pose a particular challenge. For many U.S. colleges, COVID-19 represents an existential dilemma: Either they open their doors to students in September or they face severe financial consequences.

Investigators led by Professor A. David Paltiel used epidemic modeling and cost-effectiveness analysis to assemble data on SARS-CoV-2 screening performance including frequency, diagnostic accuracy, turnaround time, and cost to design a monitoring program that would minimize cumulative infections and reduce strain on colleges isolation and quarantine capacities at a justifiable cost. With this new testing program, researchers found, most colleges would be able to prevent significant outbreaks of the disease.

It is possible to reopen U.S. residential colleges safely in the fall, said Paltiel, but it will require high-cadence screening in addition to strict adherence to masking, social distancing, and other preventive practices.

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School co-authored the study.

Two findings surprised the investigators. First, it is possible to screen too frequently. Too much screening overwhelms isolation facilities with false positive results, generating unnecessary expenditures, fueling anxiety, and undermining confidence in the ability of the university to keep its students safe, said senior study author Rochelle P. Walensky, chief of the Massachusetts General Hospitals Division of Infectious Diseases and professor at Harvard Medical School.

Second, the frequency of screening is much more important than the accuracy of the test. Testing every two days, even with a low-quality test (e.g., one the has a 70% chance of correctly detecting the presence of infection and a 98% chance of correctly detecting the absence of infection) will avert more infections than weekly testing with a higher-quality alternative (e.g., one that has a 90% chance of correctly detecting the presence of infection and a 99.8% chance of correctly detecting the absence of infection).

Due to the limitations on regulating student behavior on campus, it will not be sufficient for colleges to simply monitor students for the symptoms of COVID-19 and use signs of illness to trigger isolation and contact tracing, the researchers said.

You cannot move swiftly enough to contain an outbreak if you wait until you see symptoms before you respond, said co-author Amy Zheng of Harvard Medical School. This virus is too readily transmitted by highly infectious, asymptomatic, silent spreaders, especially if there might be sporadic parties that lead to outbreaks.

The researchers acknowledge thatthe findings of their study set a high bar logistically, financially, and behaviorally that may be beyond the capacity of many universities and the students in their care. Paltiel concedes that the analysis recommended protocolsmay not, in fact, befeasible. But, he adds, the adverse consequences of an outbreak will be disproportionately visited upon the non-student members of a college community its staff, faculty, and the more vulnerable members of the surrounding community.

Any school that cannot meet these minimum screening standards or maintain uncompromising control over good prevention practices has to ask itself if it has any business reopening, Paltiel said.

The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Steve and Deborah Gorlin MGH Research Scholars Award.

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Students need to be tested every 2-3 days for colleges to safely reopen - Yale News

Friday, July 31, 2020

GoLocalProv News Team

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Dr. Megan Ranney

"We are excited to announce the launch of the brand new Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health. This center represents a deep and innovative collaboration between our major university Brown and major academic medical center of Lifespan. Were excited to take digital health innovation to the next level here in Rhode Island," said Ranney, who is a regular guest on CNN as an expert on the response to the coronavirus.

"Now, more than ever, I think all of us know how important technology is to our life and so thinking about new ways that we can use this virtual world to help us stay healthy is just so important," she said.

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Collaboration as Key"We have a number of projects and services already in development and a number more under the planning stage," Ranney told GoLocal. "Right now, were working on things ranging from working with companies that are doing predictive analytics to decide if you actually have COVID symptoms or not; were working on projects with social media to try and identify when teens are in distress and need some extra help."

"We have projects working with telehealth in my own department Brown Emergency Medicine," she said. "We recently launched a new telecare initiative to try to extend access to care to Rhode Islanders so that they dont have to come into the emergency department for that initial evaluation."

"We have projects using wearables Fitbits and Apple watches to try and identify folks at risk of falls, to try to deliver in the moment interventions to help people be healthier. The idea is to get ideas that come from the community, from our patients, from our insurers, from the folks who are trying to deal with this new world and use the best science that Brown and Lifespan have to offer, to create products that really work and are enjoyable, so that we can maintain a connection to each other in the midst of COVID," said Ranney.

"There are so many exciting levels that we can expand to so the first step is getting all of us on zoom or on the phone and comfortable for both the doctors and the patients with doing these visits virtually," said Ranney. "The next step is remote monitoring, so ways for us to keep track of you at home and ways for us to keep track of you at home and ways for us to check in to do again check-ins through an Apple watch or through an app to see how you're doing to see if you need some extra care."

"There's some work going on at Lifespan right now with doing telehealth for hospice and for palliative care which especially in the midst of COVID-19 is just so critical because we don't want to expose vulnerable patients to folks coming into their home if we don't have to so there's a lot of exciting directions it can go in," said Ranney. "Again to me the best part of it is going to be when we get all these different modalities to work together -- when we use social media, when we use our Apple watches and our smartphones and when we use the best of video and telehealth into one seamless product that can help us to extend our workforce and keep people safe and keep people connected."

Equity at Center"Equity is a key pillar of our new center and has been from my work for over a decade," said Ranney. "It's one of the reasons that actually a lot of our research looks at how we can use text messaging to improve and change and support healthy behavior because we know that 99 percent of Rhode Islanders that have a phone use text messaging."

"We also know from surveys of our patients that most everyone in Rhode Island has a smartphone, but not everyone is linked up to cell service -- but most of us have a smartphone that we use on wi-fi when we go to McDonald's or to Dunkin' or in normal times to the local library," said Ranney.

"So using that smartphone can be a way to handle that digital divide and make health products available to people who may have other kind of economic challenges," she added. "It's also why it's important for us to work with the community part of our work at the Center for Digital Health is setting up a community advisory board to make sure that health equity is baked into every product that we developed because this is useless if it's only for people on the East Side right or only folks that live in East Greenwich -- we need it to be applicable to all of our citizens whether they live in Pawtucket, in Warren, in Coventry right?

Many of my collaborators actually work across the world so some of our folks at the center for digital health are doing work in Rwanda and Bangladeshand other countries with even lower connectivity than we have here in Rhode Island." The Center has already built partnerships with the New England Medical Innovation Center, Ada Health, and Mosio to name a few.

"So that is a big part of our consideration of how do we make things that are cheap and accessible and that don't ask folks who are already living in a time of economic uncertainty to have to extend themselves further we want to make it easy for people to stay healthy," said Ranney.

Innovation in Rhode Island"I have to say that the mere creation and support of the Center for Digital Health by Brown and Lifespan is in and of itself innovative and nimble right? The organizations have not traditionally worked together and so this shows the path towards a new academic medical center and towards a new way of working," said Ranney.

"The other part is is that because we do sit in between the two organizations, one of the things that we're working on is creating 'shark tank' type seed funding sources, so that we can quickly fund and get off the ground those MVPs, those minimum viable products, that can be proof of concept that can then be launched into either larger grants or into commercial entities in a way that cuts through red tape," said Ranney.

"We can provide the expertise to allow that testing and development to happen and then through working with Brown's technology innovation office, through working with the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship, and by working with our local community -- Rhode Island Bio, Rhode Island Commerce, that we can use the best and brightest of science and healthcare and launch it quickly out into the world and that's the whole idea of the center."

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Taking Medicine and Tech to the Next Level: Ranney on New Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health - GoLocalProv

A senior white physician stands by silently as a white patient uses a slur to describe a Black nurse.

A middle-aged doctor asks a Black student why the lower-income Black patients in the clinic arent able to speak and act the way she does.

Several young doctors make fun of Black-sounding names in a newborn unit and speculate when each infant will later enter the penal system.

Instances of racism like these are happening in medical schools across America today, just as they happened when I was a medical student 20 years ago.

I still vividly recall the afternoon many years ago when a patient angrily suggested that I go back to Africa and stay there, and the shrug that my white supervisor offered when I told him what happened. Ill also never forget when a Muslim students name was openly mocked by a senior doctor who questioned whether he was a terrorist. Nor will I forget the moments I saw Black patients intelligence, motivation and truthfulness derisively questioned.

Facing the power of those above us, I remember many of my peers and me putting our heads down, just enduring, on our way to becoming full-fledged doctors. The stings never faded.

Now, however, many future physicians of color and their white allies are doing what we were too afraid to do: They are speaking up and demanding change. And medical school leaders are being forced to listen to them. Medicine, like other institutions in society, is now being called to task by its own for the role it has played in perpetuating the longstanding inequities that have led us to this moment.

The conversation took on new energy at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, which exposed racial health disparities dating back to the origins of our country. And it became inflamed in the aftermath of George Floyds video-recorded murder.

I see myself in all of the dimensions of this overdue conversation: I am the medical student facing discrimination, a Black man with pre-existing health conditions and a medical school professor forced to face the cold reality that I have not done nearly enough to help my patients or my students of color.

On so many levels, Black patients and Black doctors are perpetually fighting upstream. Covid-19 has killed Black people at a rate roughly two times greater than would be expected based on their share of the population. Still, diabetes, heart disease and many cancers have disproportionately ravaged Black families for much longer. Leading medical journals across all clinical specialties have chronicled these stark realities for years. But wide-scale interventions are scarce.

Racial health disparities cant change until the health system changes itself. Starting that transformation means shifting the way that medical students are taught the interplay between race and health. For far too long, medical schools have neglected to tackle the full complexity of race in their curriculums. And two problematic, longstanding prejudices have filled that vacuum and impeded progress.

One is the focus on race as a category signifying distinct biological difference, a belief that dates back to slavery, where it was used as justification to maintain the practice. Yes, Black people are much more likely to have sickle cell anemia, just as white people are more likely to have cystic fibrosis. But these and other diseases that closely, but not precisely, track with race (or more accurately, ethnic origin) represent a very small fraction of what is encountered in medicine.

Still, distinctly race-based biology remained mainstream medicine throughout much of the 20th century. And this allowed for some of medicines most egregious sins: As recently as the 1970s, Black people were experimented upon under the guise of scientific study and sterilized without their consent.

While those blatant horrors of the past are gone, the ideology that fueled those actions stubbornly lingers.

A 2016 study at one institution found that half of the medical students and residents surveyed agreed with one or more false statements about biological differences based on race, such as the idea that Black people had thicker skin and less sensitive nerve endings than their white counterparts.

The study only buttressed earlier surveys in which white physicians consistently categorized Black patients as less intelligent. Such false beliefs, left unchallenged, or worse, tacitly reinforced by professors, can lead a new generation of doctors to perpetuate discriminatory practices. To name just one example: Black patients are prescribed less pain medication for injuries comparable with those of their non-Black counterparts.

The other major flawed way in which medical education has historically been wrong on race is in its eagerness to ascribe health differences primarily to Black peoples supposed pathological misbehavior.

Too often, physicians assume certain groups of people bring an array of maladies or misfortunes upon themselves with intentional bad choices. During my residency training in psychiatry, a doctor I worked with suggested that Black men were more likely to have poor judgment (excluding me of course, he quickly added) and that this explained why they faced higher rates of involuntary hospitalization and the potentially negative consequences that come from it.

The overlapping prejudices embedded in the medical establishment are ultimately harmful not because they hurt feelings but because they alienate patients who need help and lead to bad medicine. They are biases that prevent the profession from taking a more accurate and enlightened view that emphasizes the pervasive environmental and economic roots of patients health problems.

Covid-19 has highlighted these issues. Pathologizing Black behavior leads to blaming Black patients, like the theory of an Ohio physician and politician who publicly speculated last month whether Black people are more susceptible to Covid-19 because they dont wash their hands enough.

A more nuanced approach, informed by public health, leads to exploring the real, underlying reasons the coronavirus has caused more destruction in Black communities: crowded multigenerational housing arrangements, more frequent use of public transportation and employment in newly hazardous front-line service jobs.

In recent years, many medical schools have begun broadening curriculums to include implicit bias and the social factors that influence the health of diverse patient groups. But even the most dynamic lecture can be easily drowned out by the hundreds of hours students spend experiencing the broader informal curriculum in clinics and hospital, where myths about biological difference and behavioral pathology still linger.

So its essential that we set up ways to ensure physician-educators are also trained and periodically evaluated in a tangible and accountable way. That way they can pass along a more empathic and open-minded approach to treating patients. And its a task too important to be relegated to a certain lecture or delegated to Black faculty. If it doesnt involve every component of the medical school, we will continue to perpetuate the problem.

Thanks to the work of brave young medical students who have pushed us to have this introspective discourse and re-examine our practices, medicine is being presented with an opportunity to reckon with its troubled past and redefine its societal role.

A profession sworn to heal can no longer passively accept the inequities it has witnessed for decades or the hand that it has played in them.

Damon Tweedy is an associate professor of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine and the author of Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctors Reflections on Race and Medicine.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Medical Schools Have Historically Been Wrong on Race - The New York Times

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COVID-19, emergency medicine match

The match has evolved technically and culturally since 1952 into one of the most important and anxiety-provoking rituals of medical school education. Third-year medical students prepare their applications to the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) at great personal expense, not just in money but in time and effort.

Information technology since the turn of the millennium has had an enormous impact on how the NRMP operates. The increased efficiency of an internet-based application process created an unintended consequence not possible when I attended medical school. The application process back in the 1980s used paper forms and snail mail. Consequently, logistical barriers limited the number of programs to which someone could apply, but the instantaneous digital movement of data now only requires applicants to make an extra click to apply to one more program. The only real barrier is the additional cost charged by the NRMP to send the information.

The number of applications submitted per U.S. medical student to EM programs increased by a whopping 93 percent from 2011 to 2020. (Association of American Medical Colleges. https://bit.ly/3cUZv3J.) This year alone, U.S. medical students applied to an average of 58 programs, the AAMC reported, at a total cost of $1187. I can tell you from personal experience that the vast majority of applicants on our rank lists for the past two decades got one of their top three or four choices. What is driving this?

The complete answer lies in a combination of variables, but a significant component is the anxiety created by social media and the 24-hour news cycle. (Verywell Mind. March 25, 2020; https://bit.ly/2MVfaFv; NBC News. Dec. 16, 2017; https://nbcnews.to/3fgbnPr.) The perception of scarcity drives up demand, and humans naturally pay more attention to bad news than good; we are always on the lookout for threats, and we willingly overcompensate to avoid pain. Medical students hear from a variety of sources about a few unlucky medical students in the past who did not match, and they panic that they could be one of them. A colossal student debt burden and no job terrify them. But 58 applications?

Enter COVID-19. What will be the ramifications of the first match during a pandemic? The possibilities for chaos seem endless. Every organization involved in emergency medicine education (AAEM, ACOEP, ACEP, CORDEM, EMRA, SAEM, etc.) signed a joint consensus statement with guidelines for the 2021 match, and every EM training program is playing along. (https://bit.ly/2YtMrx9.)

For starters, all interviews will be virtual. Medical students have traveled throughout the country to visit and interview with programs for almost seven decades. This is expensive and time-consuming, but what rational person doesn't want to see where he might spend three to four years of his life and meet who he will entrust with making him into a competent physician? Nonetheless, the consensus statement says that all interviews, even those for an applicant's home institution, should be done virtually.

It stands to reason that applicants who do not have to travel for interviews will be able to interview at even more programs. The consensus statement, however, also requests that medical schools encourage their students to limit the number of interviews at EM programs to 12 with a hard stop at 17. More than 95 percent of all applicants (allopathic, osteopathic, and international medical graduates) who interview with at least 12 programs are successful in the match, according to the statement. Exceptions are allowed for couples matching into programs that traditionally prove to be difficult combinations.

The consensus statement also asks that EM applicants be limited to rotating at their home institution unless their school does not have an EM program. Emergency medicine has a long tradition of applicants participating in at least one off-campus EM rotation at another program. Some applicants do as many as four. Not this year. Following this guideline, each applicant will submit only one standard letter of evaluation (SLOE) instead of the typical two or three.

No doubt, the results of the 2021 match will generate many interesting questions. An obvious one is whether banning travel to interview locations will encourage more graduates to train at their home institution. Another will be the effect of using virtual interviews in the future. Will those applicants who match sight unseen into a residency program prove to be as satisfied with their decision as those who visited in person? Will virtual interviewing become a first step in the interview process and subsequently generate an in-person visit? This seems to be beneficial for applicants looking at programs a long distance from where they attend school.

Finally, will those academic institutions with superior resources for producing marketing content find a strategic advantage in their pursuit of more desirable applicants? Cash-strapped institutions or those with weak information technology may find themselves at a critical disadvantage when trying to lure tech-savvy medical students accustomed to stylish online content designed to influence their decisions. As with many businesses in the digital age, online prowess is a substantial advantage over traditional ways of doing business in medical education.

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Comments? Write to us at emn@lww.com.

Dr. Cookis the program director of the emergency medicine residency at Prisma Health in Columbia, SC. He is also the founder of 3rd Rock Ultrasound (http://emergencyultrasound.com). Friend him atwww.facebook.com/3rdRockUltrasound, follow him on Twitter@3rdRockUS, and read his past columns athttp://bit.ly/EMN-Match.

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After the Match: The Match in the Age of COVID-19 : Emergency Medicine News - LWW Journals

Im a Temple lifer, as they say. Im in my seventh year of schooling here, currently as a student at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine. I love Temple, so I write with great consternation as the university barrels forward with a reopening plan that seems destined to go awry.

The administration has decided to welcome students back to campus for the fall semester. At the medical school, that begins less than one week from today.

Weve been given assurances every effort has been made to follow state, local, and federal safety guidelines. Theres updated layouts with reduced capacity for classrooms and lecture halls to ensure physical distance, masking is required in all buildings, and there will be temperature screening, among other key measures.

I dont doubt these steps will meaningfully reduce the risk of viral transmission on campus. But what happens off campus?

Though Philadelphia is in a (modified) Green phase of reopening, we cant have a false sense of security that the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is past us. Our nation still has daily caseloads, hospitalizations, and deaths that would represent enormous spikes in most other countries. Philadelphia and its suburban counties have been improving, with the total number of deaths mercifully dropping to only a handful per day across the area.

For comparison, that puts the Delaware Valley on the same level as Germany with regard to lives lost. Not Berlin, Frankfort, or Munich our regions coronavirus death count is the same as all of Germany, pop. 83,000,000.

The desire evinced by some to stroll through reopening reflects the unseriousness of our countrys approach to the virus from the start. Political machinations, starting at the top and trickling downward, have constrained our public health systems ability to execute a coherent response. Even public officials who have readily embraced the advice of their health departments face political pressure to pare back distancing regulations. This leads us to take half-measure after half-measure as we muddle through with COVID metrics that have snapped other countries back to strict lockdown. We open up when nothing has changed, retrofitting our targets as needed, lurching towards a semi-open, semi-masked, semi-sensible reality.

While Temple puts on the finest hygiene theater across its campus, its foolish to assume the return of students to North Philadelphia isnt bringing a massive dose of exogenous risk to the communities bordering our school.

I dont single out college students or young adults as particularly unlikely to abide by social distancing protocols. Indeed the near-universal masking at recent racial justice protests have demonstrated many young people are committed to such measures.

Rather, its the fact that any activity resulting in greater interaction between people like, say, several thousand students moving back to an area with one major grocery store, or beginning to regularly ride public transit will increase the risk of transmission.

The bill for all this is unlikely to come due for Temple students themselves, or, by extension, for the university itself. With the exception of some who may have personal or familial health concerns, undergraduate and graduate students are generally young and healthy. However, experience proves the virus can still debilitate young, healthy people; that alone should be enough to give the university pause.

Its the people Temple considers neighbors (though the feeling is often not mutual) who are most likely to suffer all so college students can study fruit flies and discuss Jane Jacobs in person.

Due to decades of oppression, the communities that Temples Philadelphia campuses exist within have disproportionately borne the brunt of COVID. These are the homes of essential workers, of multi-generational families, and of many at high risk due to years of neglect by our healthcare system.

It doesnt seem too much to ask that the university advocate for and protect its neighbors. It doesnt seem unfair to ask that Temple would take steps beyond the meager expectations set forth by a nation that hasnt even come close to combating this pandemic effectively. It seems that a medical school, of all places, would stress the physical health of a neighborhood over their own financial health.

There is supposedly a carefully laid plan, and the university says its doing all it can to protect the community. And if it goes awry, whats one more affront to North Philly?

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North Philly coronavirus risk: Temple University's return to campus is irresponsible - On top of Philly news - Billy Penn

Newswise Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) have for the first time identified stem cells in the region of the optic nerve, which transmits signals from the eye to the brain. The finding, published this week in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(PNAS), presents a new theory on why the most common form of glaucoma may develop and provides potential new ways to treat a leading cause of blindness in American adults.

We believe these cells, called neural progenitor cells, are present in the optic nerve tissue at birth and remain for decades, helping to nourish the nerve fibers that form the optic nerve, said study leaderSteven Bernstein, MD, PhD, Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Without these cells, the fibers may lose their resistance to stress, and begin to deteriorate, causing damage to the optic nerve, which may ultimately lead to glaucoma.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Healths National Eye Institute (NEI), and a number of distinguished researchers served as co-authors on the study.

More than 3 million Americans have glaucoma, which results from damage to the optic nerve, causing blindness in 120,000 U.S. patients. This nerve damage is usually related to increased pressure in the eye due to a buildup of fluid that does not drain properly. Blind spots can develop in a patients visual field that gradually widen over time.

This is the first time that neural progenitor cells have been discovered in the optic nerve. Without these cells, the nerve is unable to repair itself from damage caused by glaucoma or other conditions. This may lead to permanent vision loss and disability, said Dr. Bernstein. The presence of neural stem/progenitor cells opens the door to new treatments to repair damage to the optic nerve, which is very exciting news.

To make the research discovery, Dr. Bernstein and his team examined a narrow band of tissue called the optic nerve lamina. Less than 1 millimeter wide, the lamina lies between the light-sensitive retina tissue at the back of the eye and the optic nerve. The long nerve cell fibers extend from the retina through the lamina, into the optic nerve. What the researchers discovered is that the lamina progenitor cells may be responsible for insulating the fibers immediately after they leave the eye, supporting the connections between nerve cells on the pathway to the brain.

The stem cells in the lamina niche bathes these neuron extensions with growth factors, as well as aiding in the formation of the insulating sheath. The researchers were able to confirm the presence of these stem cells by using antibodies and genetically modified animals that identified the specific protein markers on neuronal stem cells.

It took 52 trials to successfully grow the lamina progenitor cells in a culture, said Dr. Bernstein, so this was a challenging process. Dr. Bernstein and his collaborators needed to identify the correct mix of growth factors and other cell culture conditions that would be most conducive for the stem cells to grow and replicate. Eventually the research team found the stem cells could be coaxed into differentiating into several different types of neural cells. These include neurons and glial cells, which are known to be important for cell repair and cell replacement in different brain regions.

This discovery may prove to be game-changing for the treatment of eye diseases that affect the optic nerve. Dr. Bernstein and his research team plan to use genetically modified mice to see how the depletion of lamina progenitor cells contributes to diseases such as glaucoma and prevents repair.

Future research is needed to explore the neural progenitors repair mechanisms. If we can identify the critical growth factors that these cells secrete, they may be potentially useful as a cocktail to slow the progression of glaucoma and other age-related vision disorders.Dr. Bernstein added.

The work was supported by NEI grant RO1EY015304, and by a National Institutes of Health shared instrument grant 1S10RR26870-1.

This exciting discovery could usher in a sea change in the field of age-related diseases that cause vision loss, saidE. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs, UM Baltimore, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean, University of Maryland School of Medicine. "New treatment options are desperately needed for the millions of patients whose vision is severely impacted by glaucoma, and I think this research will provide new hope for them.

Now in its third century, the University of Maryland School of Medicine was chartered in 1807 as the first public medical school in the United States.It continues today as one of the fastest growing, top-tier biomedical research enterprises in the world -- with 45 academic departments, centers, institutes, and programs; and a faculty of more than 3,000 physicians, scientists, and allied health professionals, including members of the National Academy of Medicineand the National Academy of Sciences, and a distinguished two-time winner of the Albert E. Lasker Award in Medical Research. With an operating budget of more than $1.2 billion, the School of Medicine works closely in partnership with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Medical System to provide research-intensive, academic and clinically based care for nearly 2 million patients each year. The School of Medicine has more than $540 million in extramural funding, with most of its academic departments highly ranked among all medical schools in the nation in research funding. As one of the seven professional schools that make up the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine has a total population of nearly 9,000 faculty and staff, including 2,500 student trainees, residents, and fellows. The combined School of Medicine and Medical System (University of Maryland Medicine) has an annual budget of nearly $6 billion and an economic impact more than $15 billion on the state and local community. The School of Medicine faculty, which ranks as the 8thhighest among public medical schools in research productivity, is an innovator in translational medicine, with 600 active patents and 24 start-up companies. The School of Medicine works locally, nationally, and globally, with research and treatment facilities in 36 countries around the world. Visitmedschool.umaryland.edu

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Researchers Discover Stem Cells in Optic Nerve that Preserve Vision - Newswise

ACE2 receptors perform important functions, such as regulating blood pressure, so the goal is not to eliminate them, Ruggles said. She is using three websites designed to identify microRNAs with the potential to target the ACE2 protein. So far she has identified 59 such RNAs.

Nor is inhibiting ACE2 receptors likely the most efficacious approach to battling COVID-19, largely because it is difficult to deliver microRNAs in the body, her professor said. But its always nice to have a backup plan, Ruggles said. Its also good just to expand our knowledge for future instances.

Said Chopra: Our focus is not to worry about delivery in the clinic. Our focus is to find the microRNA that someone else will eventually, someday, use in the clinic. There are over 3,000 microRNAs. Our goal is to figure out which one or two or three will target ACE2.

Both students are science research fellows, enabling them to collaborate one-on-one with a faculty member on a summer research project. They connect remotely with their professors, sometimes several times a day.

Professor Shifa has taught me so much already, Stanley said. I feel very fortunate that my research even got to happen this summer because most peoples was cancelled. I think I was the only biochem major who picked math research, but it worked out.

Shifa said that Stanley is a wonderful, wonderful young lady. She is a great learner. She is one of the most hard-working students I have ever had.

Stanley and Shifa plan to co-author a paper on the research and submit it to a scientific journal.

Ruggles hopes that, by the end of summer, she will have identified a potential microRNA that she can then test in the laboratory.

The remote learning actually was beneficial in this certain scenario because, in the first half of research, we were just reading articles and learning all about coronavirus and then we were learning about the history of coronavirus; we were learning about the ACE2 protein, she said. We took a week about microRNA. So we were able to slowly learn a pretty in-depth knowledge about each of these things in order for my mind to wrap around it.

(Another student, Yangjie Tan 21, has been studying microRNA this summer as it relates to traumatic brain injury.)

Chopra said that, in summer research, a student is in the driving seat and can take control or derail the project. It can be a difficult lesson and a challenging burden for some students. Molly has risen to the challenge and succeeded. Shes driving the project and coming up with new ideas every day. Its been fantastic to watch.

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Pre-med students spend the summer studying COVID-19 - DePauw University

The following is an excerpt froma June 2020 article republished with the permission of GOOP.

Black Americans aredisproportionately infected with and dying from COVID-19. In a report from the largest health care system in Louisiana,70 percent of the people who were killed by COVID-19 were Black, even though Black people make up only 31 percent of the systems population. In his recent book "Blacks in Medicine," Richard Allen Williams, MD, the founder of the Association of Black Cardiologists, discusses the health of Black Americans from the point of view of doctors and patients and digs deep into the history thats led to todays disparities. (Williams is also currently a clinical professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.)

His history of Black medical practitioners in the U.S. is fascinating and disturbing, starting with the remarkable contributions that Black people made to medicine even while enslaved. Here, Williams explains how a long tradition of discrimination and racial segregation has resulted in inequality in health outcomes for Black people in the U.S. And he tells us why hes hopeful for the future.

GOOP: A powerful letter of yours was published in theLos Angeles Timeson June 2, 2020. Can you tell us about the events of the 70s and 80s that you wrote about?

Dr. Williams: I was the assistant medical director at the brand-new Dr. Martin Luther King Medical Center in Los Angeles, having just come across the country from Harvard Medical School, where I had completed my cardiology fellowship. I came into a hospital that was built on the ashes of the Watts uprising. I saw a great deal of police brutality going on, especially toward the Black population. A number of Black men were dying from what is called the chokehold, a carotid restraint method administered by police, which was highlighted most recently in the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. This restricts blood flow to the brain and also can cause a drop in blood pressure and heart rate such that the individual dies.

I noted that sixteen men had died from the chokehold in a few months. Twelve of those sixteen gentlemen were Black. So I was amazed when I got a call from police chief Daryl Gates asking me if I agreed that the susceptibility, as he put it, of Black people to this chokehold was due to a weakness in their anatomical structure. He was basing this request on a book that I had written, "The Textbook of Black-Related Diseases," which described differences in health care delivery and responses to medications being different for Black people than for White people.

I refuted this vehemently and called a press conference. This issue came to the attention of the Los Angeles police commission and it led to a banning of the chokehold in the city of Los Angeles. What George Floyd experienced was not something new, and this problem could very easily be eliminated. All that is needed is for mayors and police commissions to say that no longer will the chokehold be accepted. I was at a meeting with assemblyman Mike Gipson, who has sponsored a bill for the purpose of banning the chokehold throughout the state of California. Governor Newsom has promised to sign it.

GOOP: You went through your medical training in the 60s. How did the civil rights movement impact your career in medicine?

Dr. Williams: I was involved in petitions to open up Harvard Medical School to a greater degree of diversity. I was the first Black postgraduate trainee at Harvard Medical School in its entire history. I was surprised when I learned that and started a push for change that was very successful. I teamed up with the dean of the medical school, Robert Ebert, for a rather unusual get-together, so to speak, with members of the Black Panther party and Black Muslims. We had a historic meeting in Roxbury at a Muslim temple. The dean of the medical school came, and I presented the case that Harvard wasnt admitting any Black people into its medical training programs and was not turning out any Black doctors into the community. We got Harvard to contribute a large amount of money for me to start a recruitment drive, which I went on throughout the country, recruiting Black medical students and interns and residents to apply to Harvard. We started admitting our first residents and interns during the time I was in my training program there. In 2004, I was given a lifetime achievement award by Harvard for the efforts that I had made in opening the institution up to diversity.

GOOP: How well represented are Black medical doctors in the US now?

Dr. Williams: The number of Black doctors in this country is about 6 percent of the total, which is ridiculous because approximately 13 percent of the population is Black. Thats something that Im working very diligently on now, with efforts to get Black students into medical school, as well as providing scholarship funds. Ive established seven scholarships to fund Black students going into medicine.

GOOP: You wrote "The Textbook of Black-Related Diseases" in 1975 what was the impetus at the time?

Dr. Williams: I wanted to do something significant in regard to what I had found were severe medical problems with my people, with Black people. And thats when I discovered that there was really no literature on the medical problems of Black people. It was assumed either that Black people should be treated the same as White people or that Black people did not have a need for treatment for certain conditions. At that time, heart attacks and hypertension were not thought to be problems that Black people suffered from. I decided that none of that was true and that we had to start to bring the truth to light. Dr. George W. Thorn, my boss at Brigham and Womens Hospital, encouraged me to write a pamphlet about it, which grew into an 850-page book, "The Textbook of Black-Related Diseases," published in 1975. I dont know whether I wouldve had much of a chance to get published without his help because there wasnt much interest in a book like that at the time.

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The Author of Blacks in Medicine on Race, Racism, and Health Outcomes - KCET

If you watch Kings of Pain on the History Channel, you know the hosts, Adam Thorn and Rob Alleva, handle some pretty amazing animals and insects. They get bitten, scratched, and exposed in almost every show. Their medical care on the show is provided by Ben Abo, DO. Abo is an EMS physician in Florida, a paramedic, and an expert in wilderness medicine with a keen interest in snakes. He is also director of the elite Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and Lake County Fire Rescue Venom 1 and Venom 2 teams. We caught up with Abo.

EMS World: You are nationally known as an authority on snakes and snakebites. How did you get started in this very niche segment of EMS and emergency medicine? What is important for providers to know about snakes?

Abo: Back when I was a resident, I actually had a phobia of snakes, but I had tremendous respect for nature and venom. I started learning from and working with Miami-Dade Fire Rescues Venom 1 team as I realized how many people were treating this incorrectlyand what a tremendous time to be able to put a halt to permanent pain, permanent disability, and permanent disfigurement! I completely owe my diving in to those that were on Venom 1, like Chuck Seifert, Scott Mullin, Lisa Wood, and Jeff Fobb. I find it especially important with my austere-medicine work and honestly my international public health work as well. I would say its especially important to remember that what you used to be taught may not be right, and by golly, dont kill or capture the snake!

You currently serve as medical director for Floridas Venom 1 and Venom 2 unitsvery unique assets. Can you tell us a little more about these units, what they do, and how they operate?

Abo: Venom 1 has been around for about 21 years now. It is the largest public access antivenom bank, with antivenom for everything from scorpions to cobras to box jellyfish to black widow spiders. Venom 1 not only provides a 24/7 dedicated person to deliver the appropriate antivenom, but they also serve as an expert set of eyes for poison control and me, as well as bedside teaching for those uncomfortable with treating envenomation. Venom 2, housed 24/7 by Lake County Fire Rescue, started a couple years ago, modeled after Venom 1, but we only house domestic antivenoms for now. That being said, our first call literally was for a cobra bite from Tallahassee, and they helped me get antivenom from Miami-Dade delivered during bad storms.

Youve been a big part of a TV show this past season, working on the History Channels Kings of Pain. What was it like being part of such a high-profile and high-risk TV show and medical environment?

Abo: Working on that television show was quite a blast. Id served on Shark Week as a safety expert already, but for this not only did I have to prepare as a wilderness EMS expert for international travel and safety for any sicknesses or accidents but also approve and fact-check for other injuries in the middle of jungles and beaches worldwide! Not to mention, Im used to treating pain and being empathetic, but here I would much rather be sympathetic! We are talking about standby for known injuries hours from clinics, but also clearing wild areas for spitting cobras and watching out for king cobras in the wild. Not your typical EMS call for sure!

Between medical school and your residency, you started a nonprofit in Africa to decrease maternal and neonatal mortality and trauma. What drew you to that? Are you still involved? Is there a way folks can support it?

Abo: Life has been quite the journey. Ive always been one to try to do the most good, because, honestly, why not? During medical school I saw an opportunity to efficiently make a difference to provide education for public and healthcare workers in Africa, so I did it with some others. I took a year off and delayed residency training. What an experience! And we did a lot of good, but more always needs to be done.

I have since folded the nonprofit, technically, so I could regroup and reframe. However, there is more work to be done, and Im still in close touch with my contacts there and plan on returning soon. To help? The biggest would be financial support or basic medical supplies, as I plan on introducing more dirt bike sidecar ambulances again, especially in the outskirts of Jimma, Ethiopia.

In your publications and social media posts, you often note the power humor has to disarm as well as help heal. What are your favorite ways to bring humor into emergency medicine? And can you tell us about the banana phone?

Abo: Humor is so important! A smile and laughter are genuine and international without a need for translation. It really depends on the situation, but definitely some go-tos for me include the banana phone, puns, and good old goofiness while still showing Im there to help. I actually get deep into this with my TEDx talk and a podcast with Medic Mindset, as well as a keynote speech Ive given.

Oh, the good old banana phone. At every age I have always had a great reaction to that randomness, whether from patients, family, or staff. It started as a light joke to consult with another EMS physician, mentor, and friend, Ben Lawner. After a month of it I thought Id decided to do my last post with a banana when I had my last ICU shift as a resident, but there was literally such a universal response to it. I still love getting random banana phone calls from former patients and my friends children.

In emergency medicine and disaster work, we see a lot of good and a lot of evil. To survive the negative stressors, we need to see the light and the reminder that light comes in many forms.

Barry A. Bachenheimer, EdD, FF/EMT, is a frequent contributor to EMS World. He is a career educator and university professor, as well as a firefighter and member of the technical-rescue team with the Roseland (N.J.) Fire Department and an EMT with the South Orange (N.J.) Rescue Squad. He is also an instructor for the National Center for Homeland Security and Preparedness in New York.

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Five Questions With: Dr. Ben Abo on Snakes and Television - EMSWorld

Social distancing dividers for students are seen in a classroom, July 14, 2020.

Lucy Nicholson | Reuters

Parents everywhere are grappling with the question whether it's safe tosend their children back to school.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released guidelines emphasizing that students get back to the classroomfor the sake of their own emotional well-being. But not every student, parent, or teacher is comfortable with that. Some school districts will likely continue with remote learning or some hybrid blend of in-person and remote.

The situation is highly confusing and the guidelines seem to be shifting. So we asked twenty doctors, public health experts and epidemiologists with school-age children if they're sending them to school this fall.

We got a wide range of responses, which were highly dependent on their location, personal risk tolerance, degree of support at home, the measures taken at the individual school, and the age of their children.

Six of the medical experts felt confident about sending their kids back. Eight were in "wait and see" mode. And a final six were leaning strongly towards remote learning and were not comfortable with the prospect of having kids in school -- at least for the beginning of the year.

Things could certainly change as the start of school approaches. As Boston-based emergency medicine physician Dr. Jeremy Faust put it, "the answers will entirely depend on how well Covid-19 is being controlled" as we move into the fall.

Here's a summary of what each group had to say.

Principal Pam Rasmussen (L) takes the temperature of arriving students as per coronavirus guidelines during summer school sessions at Happy Day School in Monterey Park, California on July 9, 2020.

Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images

Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, is feeling confident that his three kids will return to their schools in Massachusetts this fall. But it's likely that their school will embrace more of a hybrid model, meaning some combination of remote and in-person learning.

Jha isn't wholly convinced the hybrid approach is necessary. "Our infection numbers are relatively low," he said. "And there's enough capacity to create safe spaces."

Jha says there's some evidence that kids are less likely to catch the virus and less likely to spread it. But he acknowledges that the data is still limited, particularly given that countries like Sweden that kept schools open for young kids throughout the pandemic didn't do a thorough job collecting the data. So while he thinks it's possible for many schools to safely open up, but believes that much more should have been done on a federal level to help them prepare.

"If you open up without a good plan in a place that isn't safe, you'll get outbreaks and you'll shut down," he explained.

While Jha is leaning to sending his own kids back, he wouldn't recommend that every parent return children to school. He would look at the community spread in the region first before making a decision. "If I were in Dallas, for instance, which is experiencing an active outbreak, I'd strongly recommend against it."

Likewise, John Brownstein, an infectious disease epidemiologist and the chief innovation officer of Boston Children's Hospital, is helping his kids' school come up with a plan for how to re-open. A lot of the parents are doctors and infectious disease experts, he notes, given the sheer number of universities and academic medical centers in the area. So many are recommending social distancing, masks and other protocols. His kids, who are aged 9 and 10, will go back to school unless community transmissions spike in the area.

Children in an elementary school class wear masks and sit as desks spaced apart as per coronavirus guidelines during summer school sessions at Happy Day School in Monterey Park, California on July 9.

Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images

Physicians in states that are seeing lower rates of infectionstended to be more in favor of sending their kids to school. Dr. Mary Beth Miotto, a pediatrician and public health advocate based in Massachusetts, has thought a great deal about whether she's comfortable sending her youngest child to Williams College as a freshman. She ultimately decided in favor of in-person learning because the college, which is in a relatively remote area, had systems and processes in place to keep the kids safe. But she didn't take the decision lightly.

"Aftercarefully examining the systems to control and respond rapidly to change, yes, I'm sending him because it's a developmentally appropriate step and important socially-emotionally," said Dr. Miotto.

Others were deferring their decision to the school. Dr. Dan Buckland, an emergency medicine doctor at Duke, feels relatively confident about sending his kids back to school if the right steps are taken to keep them safe.

"For a lot of people, especially with kids under the age of 10, It's not sustainable to continue to work and take care of them at home," he shared. That said, Dr. Buckland would keep his kids home if there were a significant danger to the staff, teachers and support personnel. "I don't think we should obligate them to put themselves at risk," he said.

For single parents, the equation might be different.

"I am a single mom of a child adopted from foster care. I would accept the risks of infection to send her back to school," said Carolyn Cardamone, a Physician Assistant with One Medical. Cardomone noted that her child needs help with social and development skills, which she can gain by learning alongside her peers. "She is entering fifth grade this year and the idea she will miss this year of in-person instruction, then go straight to middle school, is terrifying."

School children working from home during the Coronavirus lockdown on April 06, 2020 in New York, NY.

Peter Titmuss | Education Images | Getty Images

Many of parents were still on the fence.

Dr. Esther Choo, an emergency medicine physician at Oregon Health & Science University, has four school-age kids. She's leaning towards distance learning because her school is asking parents to decide within a few weeks if they plan to return their kids by September. For Choo, that's a big challenge as there's no way to know yet whether Covid-19 cases will spike by then.

"What I struggle with is schools needing us to commit now," she said.

Likewise, Aaron Miri, a chief information officer for UT Health Austin in Texas, said it would all depend on the plan in place. He's hoping there will be adequate personal protective equipment available and whether there's testing and/or contact tracing to track potential exposures to the virus. Right now, he's not feeling confident. And his wife is a fifth-grade teacher, which makes the issue more complex for him. "If they can't give assurances soon, I think lots of folks will say 'no thanks' to in-person," said Aaron Miri.

Texas, where Miri lives, is still struggling to get Covid-19 under control. The situation starting to level off in Austin, he notes, although it's unclear how things will be in the fall.

For many of the doctors, it's a challenge to look at the public health data objectively because they're also parents. And as parents, they feel their kids would be best served by being back in school.

Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency medicine physician at Rhode Island Hospital, recognizes the challenges for so many of her peers trying to juggle work with kids at home. She feels fortunate to have some child care support, but recognizes that it isn't easy to recreate the stimulation that her two kids -- ages 8 and 11 -- are getting at school.

"I believe so strongly in getting kids back, but it has to be done in a way that is safe for the kids and the teachers," she said by phone, while her son reminded her that it's time to play Roblox.

Ranney said she plans to send her kids back if there are protocols in place, like proper ventilation, masks and smaller class-sizes. But she has warned her kids that she anticipates a scenario where the situation doesn't last because of an outbreak. She personally doesn't expect life to return to normalcy until next spring. "I want them back but with the state of public school funding and the state of Covid-19, I don't know how it's going to be possible," she said. "But in Rhode Island, I think we at least have a chance."

Montgomery county school officials demonstrate how they plan to keep students apart on county busses during a reporters tour of College Gardens elementary to show room arrangements, sanitizing stations, and other measures that the system hopes will prevent the spread of the coronavirus when school reopens in August in Rockville, MD on July 09.

Bill O'Leary | The Washington Post | Getty Images

For Katie McMillan, a public health expert with a digital health consultancy firm, it doesn't feel like the right time to send her three-year-old back to pre-school. Cases in North Carolina, where she lives, are continuing to rise. McMillan said she initially pulled her daughter out in March and then fully un-enrolled her in June. McMillan's husband works at a hospital in the area, so they were also concerned about putting others at risk if he got sick -- although he's taking steps to mitigate that possibility by using proper protective gear and leaving his scrubs in the garage.

For the fall, she may enroll her daughter in a school that offers smaller classes fully outdoors "from a sanity standpoint," but says it's unlikely. McMillan, with the help of her childrens' grandparents, keeps up with her own work as best she can. It's a struggle because her youngest is only eight months old.

Many parents face a similarly tough road because their shifts are long and it's a challenge to find childcare.

"I need them back in school yesterday," said Dr. Jon Steuernagle, who's currently separated from his partner and is looking after the kids most of the time on his own. But he probably won't return them to school anytime soon. He fears for the teaching staff who might be highly vulnerable to getting sick from Covid-19. And he recognizes the challenges with maintaining social distancing when it comes to young kids.

Some of the doctors say they don't have much of a choice.

Dr. Jane Van Dis, an obstetrician-gynecologist, was planning to send her kids back but in California it's unlikely to happen because most schools have been ordered to start with remote-learning only.

"Even though I feel like in my area and school district, people are following the guidelines," she said. "But I live in Los Angeles County, which is so big, and I wonder if there's a chance that we can bring the numbers down to allow for in-person school."

Many agreed that they are privileged as doctors and academics to be able to afford help when it's needed. Dr. Jonathan Slotkin, vice chair of neurosurgery at Geisinger based in Pennsylvania, is keeping his five-year-old at home. But he recognizes that he's in a fairly unique position to be able to do so. Still, with Covid-19 still spreading in the United States, it's a firm "no" for him.

The entrance to Public School 159 is seen in the Queens borough of New York City, New York, U.S., July 8, 2020.

Shannon Stapleton | Reuters

Even the parents who are planning to send their kids back to school in the fall are expecting that there could be a bump in transmissions. So families should be aware of the risks, they say, while weighing them against the benefits of socialization.

Moreover, school districts might react differently if there is an outbreak. Some might shut down, while others attempt to continue if they have the resources to do so.

"I'm concerned our numbers in the community will dramatically change -- and that could change my comfort levels with my own kids," said Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson, a pediatrician based in Madison, Wisconsin. She feels confident about the plans underway at her own school, but it's hard to know what the future will hold.

"No place can guarantee zero transmission," she said. "And there's no guarantee that going back to school is as safe as not going back, but there's always that difficult balance of risks and benefits."

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We asked 20 medical experts whether they're sending their own kids back to school. Here's what they had to say - CNBC

NYU Long Island School of Medicine held a White Coat Ceremony todaya rite of passage for students entering medical schools the world overexcept this years initiation was unprecedented, coming on the heels of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Adapting to this environment, the medical school has developed a hybrid curriculum for the upcoming semester: a combination of in-person and tele-education training that may serve as a microcosm for how many colleges will model their curriculums for the upcoming school year.

More than 4,200 students vied for the 24 admitted slots for NYU Long Island School of Medicinewhich offers full-tuition scholarshipsillustrating the unwavering dedication of these individuals entering the field of medicine during this challenging time.

Our students are entering this field with a great solemnity and clarity of purpose, with the pandemic energizing them even more so to help advance medical care, says Steven Shelov, MD, MS, founding dean and chief academic officer at NYU Long Island School of Medicine. Our hybrid curriculum is unique to medical schools, from the very outset integrating basic science with clinical experiencesa bench-to-bedside approach where classroom learning transfers directly to clinical cases.

As part of the hybrid model, tele-educational aspects will include weekly prerecorded lectures by faculty followed by twice-weekly, virtual question and answer sessions. For in-person classroom training, the school will adhere to the strictest of infection prevention protocols, allowing for critical learnings such as anatomy and the delivery of outpatient clinical care. Personal protective equipment (PPE) will be provided and utilized, including face shields as appropriate for up-close educational sessions. In-person learning sessions will be problem-based, with small groups of about eight students each pursuing medical case scenarios to collaboratively identify and diagnoses illnesses. Students will virtually research relevant medical issues on their own to contribute to in-person discussions.

The schools new White Coat Ceremony included students reciting a version of the Hippocratic Oath acknowledging their commitment to serving humanity with honor, compassion, and dignity. During the ceremony, each student donned a white medical coat in a ritual that could be seen by family and friends via Zoom.

Medicine is about lifelong learning, and the path to becoming a physician is not linear, saysRobert I. Grossman, MD, the dean of NYU Grossman School of Medicine and CEO of NYU Langone Health. To succeed requires enormous knowledge and understanding of diseasesand the ability to rapidly adapt to evolving medical sciences. NYU Long Island School of Medicine will provide our students with the capacity to create a legacy of significant accomplishment in all of these regards.

Incoming students come from all over the country, with 17 from the tristate areaincluding 3 from Long Islandand others from Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Virginia, and beyond. They hail from top universities such as Brown, Columbia, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and NYU, as well as schools in the CUNY and SUNY systems such as City College of New York, Brooklyn College, and Stony Brook. Ten students are male, including 1 who is an award-winning K12 school nurse, and 14 are female. Eight students entering the school are the first in their families to graduate from college; one shared a story about how a dearth of medical care in his rural, West Africa home region inspired him to become a primary care physician so that he could help keep patients healthy.

NYU Long Island School of Medicine, which initiated its inaugural school year last summer, is a partnership between NYU and NYU Langone Health, situated on the campus of NYU Winthrop Hospital. The school offers full-tuition scholarships with an innovative, accelerated three-year curriculum exclusively devoted to training primary care physicians. The curriculum is concentrated on internal and community medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, and general surgery, and contrasts with more traditional four-year schools that tend to focus on specialty medicine.

Its an inspiring time to study medicine, says Andrew Hamilton, president of NYU. The past six months have given us all a renewed appreciation for the heroism of doctors and nurses, and essential seems too weak a word to describe the work that we are training NYU Long Island School of Medicine students to perform. In particular, they will be fulfilling a pressing need for primary care physicians in this country.

Anne Kazel-WilcoxPhone: 516-663-4999anne.kazel@nyulangone.org

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NYU Long Island School of Medicine Is First School on Long Island to Start 202021 Term, May Be Microcosm of 'Hybrid' Class Model - NYU Langone Health

Diane B. Wayne Marianne Green Eric G. Neilson

In current circumstances, one rightfully wonders if persistence of SARS-CoV-2 will fundamentally alter the landscape of medical education and hospital training. Because of the absence of a vaccine, the prevalence of this virus adds to annual respiratory illnesses caused by seasonal influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, rhinoviruses, and other coronaviruses. Faced with a looming new normal, many educators are ruminating on how best to ensure rigorous medical training that produces a steady stream of competent physicians.

By way of background, the umbrella of medical education covers a highly structured curriculum in a variety of preclinical and clinical environments whose architecture and requirements are set by the Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME) (1) and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) (2). These requirements reflect established habits for producing quality outcomes. Capricious changes to these requirements can alter the carat of each uncut gem matriculating to medical school. For this reason, students follow inviolate course work to their doctorate. Graduates can apply for state licensure to become physicians after receiving accredited training as interns and residents. Only later when seen serving a public good are physicians fully vested professionals. Such training can last 7 to 10 years.

Modern training encompasses a well-thought out system of educational milestones that are highly interactive, increasingly team-based, and guided by educators who have mastered their craft. Competent physicians are not born; they are madetaught to integrate the language of science with recent concepts of disease, diagnosis, treatment, and empathy. A gradual move to some outcome measures now provides a few entrustable professional activities and procedures that students must master before residency training (3). Technology also plays an increasingly important role in teaching core clinical skills as simulation centers and computerized anatomy laboratories become more prevalent (4). Patient histories and physical examinations, how hospitals and medical records work, and the art of detective conversations can only be honed, however, in supervised settings that engage real patients.

This spring, medical education in many institutions experienced abrupt disruptions in the face of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Teaching hospitals encountered a rapidly expanding illness, shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), and growing concern for exposures to asymptomatic carriers. At Northwestern Medicine, our least experienced clinicians, the medical students, were removed temporarily from direct patient care. The preclinical curriculum was migrated online with evidence of similar or improved learning compared to prior years. Students on hospital rotations completed virtual clerkships and clinical skill assessments and participated in newly created online electives. Interdisciplinary faculty similarly launched COVID-19 courses focusing on the pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment of the infection, as well as the health disparities and ethical considerations associated with pandemics.

While marching along this curriculum, medical students also channeled their energy and concern through community service. They led donation efforts for PPE, set up food drives, participated in patient education at community sites, worked with clinicians to contact patients diagnosed with COVID-19 to assess their health status, and made food and prescription deliveries to senior citizens and others needing help across Chicago. Through these experiences, students learned about health inequities and social determinants of disease in a manner not easily addressed in the classroom.

Several months into this disruption, our focus has shifted toward creating a new normal. While a return to contact patient care and teaching remains highly desirable, we are carefully evaluating various formats for delivering other parts of the curriculum. What seems certain is that a return to a typical preCOVID-19 teaching platform is unlikely, and that many creative changes are here to stay. Large-scale adoption of online education during the pandemic shows that it is possible to achieve a number of teaching objectives virtually. Faculty previously resistant to technology-enhanced learning now have evidence of its ability to meet the needs of preclinical students who value adaptive and self-directed study; some may need to review specific content several times, whereas others will proceed more rapidly. Augmented intelligence and machine learning will support this model by achieving the goal of a more tailored outcomes-based education. Undoubtedly, this undertaking will result in additional innovations, flexibility, and experimentation in areas such as anatomy, problem-based learning, clinical skills education, assessment of student well-being, and mentorship or career advising.

Many improvements to medical education are a natural consequence of disruptive moments. As we reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic, changes to the medical curriculum that ensure more focus on infection control, pandemic modeling, population and public health, telemedicine, and health equity are desirable. New learners need modern tools to prepare for a response to unexpected medical events in the future. In addition, we have witnessed the spreading value of resilience, grit, and tolerance for uncertainty on the front lines of patient care. We must continue to select for these qualities in future matriculants.

Despite the temptation for unfettered innovation, we also know that some elements of the curriculum cannot change. The heroic actions of health care workers currently treating patients with COVID-19 reaffirm professionalism and community service as core attributes of a well-taught student. Clinical competency also depends on reliable assessment tools that ensure that our graduates are prepared to enter residency training with the knowledge and skills to provide safe and effective patient care.

Sinek reminds us that working hard for something we dont care about is called stress, while working hard for something we love is called passion (5). The latter is achieved by witnessing selflessness and a desire to make a difference, core traits that inspired our students to pursue careers in medicine in the first place. As we look toward the future, medical education may never be the same again, and our accrediting agencies will have to join in the adaptation. We now have an opportunity to create a better medical school experience with improved flexibility and outcomes that still ensures competence from this increasingly complex effort.

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Medical education in the time of COVID-19 - Science Advances

We at NJMS pride ourselves on cultivating a close-knit and supportive environment where students have access to outstanding clinical and research opportunities, community outreach initiatives, patient centered learning, and student centered support.

The mission of our admissions committee is to select a diverse class of talented students who vigorously contribute to and care for the school community and society as a whole. In evaluating candidates we give balanced consideration to a range of attributes such as academic excellence, lived experiences, resilience, personal growth and maturity. We consider various other dimensions of an applicant such as socioeconomic status, languages spoken, gender, race and ethnicity. Qualities of integrity, humanism, and passion are considered as these factors may influence an applicant's potential to succeed in medical school and are critical to their growth as physician-leaders. We are committed to fostering diversity in medicine and actively recruit a class that resembles the diversity of the patient population.

Thank you for your interest in Rutgers New Jersey Medical School!

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Rutgers New Jersey Medical School

(Bill Oxford, Unsplash)

This article was exclusively written forThe European Sting by Ms. Anushree Burade, a fourth year medical student studying at ESIC Medical College, Bangalore, India. She is affiliated to the International Federation of Medical Students Associations (IFMSA), cordial partner of The Sting. The opinions expressed in this piece belong strictly to the writers and do not necessarily reflect IFMSAs view on the topic, nor The European Stings one.

India is the 2nd most populous country in the world. That being said, it is extremely diverse in terms of sub ethnicities, races, religions and languages spoken. Almost 19,500 different languages are spoken across entire India. And thus, this is one big barrier in providing efficient health care services to patients by health care professionals.

Ive grown up in the central region of India geographically speaking. And my entire life Ive been speaking English, Marathi and Hindi. I joined a medical university in the southern part of India. The day I joined the university, I was taken by surprise with the amount of differences I witnessed. Students and staffs mainly communicated in English and Kannada. I was absolute rookie to kannada language. I enthusiastically tried to learn kannada and some of my beloved friends cheerfully helped me as well.

1st year of medical school was comparatively easy to me because I just had 3 subjects to study anatomy, physiology and biochemistry. Real struggle I faced when I actually entered in 2nd year when clinical postings started. I was completely shunned down by the native language speaking students. I tried my best to learn the language in order to make my patients comfortable. Studying entire language along with the vast syllabus of medicine is difficult and gradually, my grades dropped due to that frustration.

But hey, honestly language barrier was never the issue. Real problem was the discrimination I faced because of this language barrier. Many professors prejudice that north Indians and central Indians students are mischievous and dont study adequately as compared to south indian students. Often before testing our knowledge and clinical skills or even our name, they would ask us the region we belong to. Some would even take the liberty to show their prejudice by their expressions and tone of talking. Some native language speaking students would even giggle at our rookie attempts to speak the local language.

Incidences like these demotivates incoming students, discourages them to involve into academic activities without any fear of being judged by the people around them. Medical School do not even provide basics of local language education to immigrant students in the medical curriculum. They are often judged by their skin colour as well. A fair skinned person is prejudiced to be belonging from northern India and dark skinned person from southern India. Same goes with the name, religion and accents. Groups are formed within the classes and students are addressed as entire group rather than being addressed individually.

Our fight was never against the variety of languages, races, ethnicities or religions. The unity in this diversity is what makes India great, they are part of it and we accept all of it gracefully. Our fight is against discrimination which leads to havocs and despairs amongst everyone including medical students. And we solemnly swear to fight until we make this world free of discrimination.

About the author

Anushree Burade is a fourth year medical student studying at ESIC Medical College, Bangalore, India. She is the current NEO GA for this term of 2020-21. She is passionate about making this world a better place to live free of racism, discrimination, and inequality by voicing herself in the form of her writings and poems.

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Discrimination in the medical curriculum: are medical schools providing students with equal access to the medical profession? - The European Sting

HUNTINGTON Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine was selected as one of nine medical schools to offer a new scholarship for veterans pursuing a career in medicine.

The Veterans Affairs Mission Act of 2018 created several programs to assist veterans in paying for medical school through scholarships and loan repayments, including the Veterans Healing Veterans Medical Access and Scholarship Program (VHVMASP).

Beginning with the incoming class of students in 2020, Marshall University was selected to award up to two scholarships per year to qualifying veterans. To qualify for VHVMASP, applicants must have completed their military service no more than 10 years from the time of application. They cannot receive the GI Bill or Vocational Rehabilitation funding while receiving the scholarship.

The scholarship is renewable for up to four years and covers tuition, fees, equipment and books; a stipend; and costs for two rotations at a Veterans Affairs (VA) facility during the senior year of medical school. In return, recipients must meet several obligations, including agreeing to complete residency training in a specialty that is applicable to the VA and become board-eligible in their specialty. They must also agree to become a full-time clinical provider at a VA facility for at least four years after their training.

As a state medical school, we are always working to identify mechanisms for recruiting students from diverse backgrounds or with unique life experiences, said Bobby L. Miller, M.D., vice dean of medical education at the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. This scholarship provides us the opportunity to recognize individuals who have served our country while continuing to demonstrate our strong ties to the VA, upon which our medical school was founded.

Matthew W. Werhoff Jr., an entering first-year medical student, is the first recipient of the scholarship at Marshall University. Werhoff is a native of Martinsburg, West Virginia. He earned his Bachelor of Science in exercise physiology from West Virginia University in Morgantown. He joined the U.S. Army immediately following high school graduation in 2011 and served until 2019 as a member of the Military Police Corps.

The Marshall School of Medicine was established in 1977 through federal legislation, known as the Teague-Cranston Act, that authorized the creation of five new medical schools in conjunction with existing VA hospitals. Marshall maintains its partnership with the VA through pre-clinical and clinical learning opportunities for medical students.

Other schools of medicine participating in the VHVMASP include the Texas A&M College of Medicine, University of South Carolina College of Medicine, Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University, Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University, Howard University School of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, Drew University of Medicine and Science, Morehouse School of Medicine.

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Marshall School of Medicine 1 of 9 schools to offer Mission Act scholarships to veterans - Huntington Herald Dispatch