Table of Contents

Upcoming Events

Focus of the Week - Research

Announcements

Faculty Presentations/Publications

Frankly Speaking Podcast

Clinical Services Spotlight

Focus of the Week - Research

Department Research Forums

With September being right around the corner, we will be re-starting our monthly research forums to be held on the 3rd Friday of each month from 12:00 - 1:00pm. We have a few planned forums for this Fall, but welcome any suggestions you have for topics to be covered (e.g., a new methodology) or feel free to volunteer to present on your 'works in progress'. If interested in presenting, please contact Judy Savageau at [email protected].

Department Research Web Pages

With the start of the new academic year, we are updating our research web pages with new notations about grants, presentations, publications, faculty bio’s, student/faculty projects, and other tidbits. We take many of these updates from your submissions to the weekly Tuesday Talk as well as collecting CV’s and ‘word of mouth’ sharing. Please feel free to submit any new research activities and outputs for the Tuesday Talk editions and/or send your updates to Judy Savageau for inclusion in the next round of additions. A big shout-out to Mike Smith who is helping in a tremendous way by uploading all of our updates to these research web pages: http://umassmed.edu/fmch/research. 

Medical Student Summer Research Opportunities - 2022 

A number of our rising 2^nd year medical students were engaged in a variety of projects this summer under one of 4 categories: Research and Curriculum Exploration, Global Health, Clinical and Translational Research, and the Community Health Assistantship Program. Projects working with many of our faculty advising these students included:

• Physician Coaching Project – A Program Evaluation Scoping Review: Elisah Huynh (Advisors: Lisa Gussak, Judy Savageau, and Suzanne Mitchell)

• Oral Health Coverage in Primary Care in Peer-Reviewed Journals: Sumayyah Akhtar (Advisors: Hugh Silk and Judy Savageau)

• A Qualitative Study of Age and Aging in Adults Over 80 Years Old: Grace Mascha, Nick Kamkari, and Priscilla Lee (Advisors: Stacy Potts and Philip Day)

• Population and Community Health Clerkship Integrated Learning Modules: Linda Nguyen (Advisors: Suzanne Cashman and Heather-Lyn Haley)

• Examining Management of Mental Health Care in Rural New Hampshire: Sophie Barlos (Advisor: Suzanne Cashman)

• Impact of Community Engagement on the Scribe Experience and Connectivity to Worcester: Racquel Bitar (Advisors: Linda Cragin and Steve Earls)

• Worcester Healthy Baby Collaborative: Safe Baby Project: Rosemary Cobb (Advisors: Sara Shields and Kristina Gracey)

• Summer Assistantship at AIDS Project Worcester: Updating Naloxone Curriculum for Community Education: Patrick MacDonald (Advisors: Philip Day and David Hatem)

• The Farm to Health Center Initiative: If You Give a Patient a Bag of Produce: Jennifer Marino (Advisors: Melanie Gnazzo and Suzanne Cashman)

• Designing a Medical School Clerkship: Food Insecurity in Worcester: Siva Narasimhadevara (Advisor: Melanie Gnazzo)

• Indigenous Health Community Outreach / PCHC: Caroline Norton (Advisor: Heather-Lyn Haley)

• Benedict Family Medicine Food Insecurity Intervention: Connor Pauplis (Advisor: Brennan Dagle)

• EMR, Medical Language and Stigma: Derrick Tonto (Sponsor: AHEC Scholars Program)

You can view any of the above posters (plus those of all participating medical students) and listen to their recorded presentations at: Poster Session – August 12-19, 2022 (sharepoint.com).

Request for Publications and Presentations for our FMCH Research Web Pages

Several times a year, but especially as the new academic year begins, we update our department’s research web pages (www.umassmed.edu/fmch/research) with new grants, publications, presentations, student/faculty projects, and many other research-related activities. If you have published something in the past year that hasn’t gotten to the Tuesday Talk, or you’ve given a research presentation, please send those updates to Judy Savageau ([email protected]) and we’ll include them in the next set of updates. We would love to highlight all of your great work!

Research Support

A reminder that the Department offers support for FMCH faculty research leading to scholarly publications and/or presentations. You can find more information, including a form for requesting support, on the FMCH website: Research Initiatives - UMass Medical School - Worcester [https://www.umassmed.edu/fmch/research/research-initiatives].

Trying to Keep Up with the Literature?

The department pulls together the tables of contents (TOCs) for about 15 medical journals and distributes this bundle monthly to a select listserv that people can easily sign up for. The TOCs include 4-5 FM journals, JAMA, NEJM, AJPH, Health Affairs, Medical Care, JGIM, Am J Prev Med, key Pediatrics and key OB/Gyn journals, Addiction Medicine, and many more – lots of great articles that can easily be accessed through links within the bundle. We are also open to adding more journals if there’s an interest expressed! Take a look at what's been posted in the past several months by going to the department's web pages under the section on Research. You will see a tab in the left-hand margin for these TOC bundles that we post monthly: (www.umassmed.edu/fmch/research). If you’d like to be on the distribution list, please send an email to Judy Savageau at ([email protected]).

Faculty Presentations/Publications

Sandra Gray from the UMass Chan Communications division published an article on our 100 MMC (100 Million Mouths Campaign). The project was named 100 Million Mouths because 100-plus million people do not visit a dentist in any given year but are likely to visit their primary care provider. Learn about how Hugh Silk, Judith Savageau, and other members of the Center for Integration of Primary Care and Oral Health are working to implement oral health curricula in every health school in the U.S.

100 Million Mouths, other initiatives putting oral health at forefront of primary care (umassmed.edu)

The New England AIDS Education and Training Center (NEAETC), under the leadership of Philip Bolduc and Vanessa Carson-Sasso, recently presented two sessions (Where There is No Classroom: Remote Learning Transformation during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Designing and Implementing an HIV Community Health Worker Advisory Group: An EHE Initiative in Massachusetts) and three posters (Implementing an HIV Ambulatory Curriculum in Internal Medicine Residency Programs, Staff in Ryan White Centers Demonstrate Improved Awareness Related to PrEP, and Practice Transformation: Improvements in Outcomes Along the HIV Care Continuum at Clinics in New England) at the 2022 National Ryan White Conference on HIV Care & Treatment August 23-26.

Frankly Speaking Podcast

A weekly Podcast series covering newsworthy topics in primary care medicine.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/frankly-speaking-about-family-medicine/id1194659367.

Please join us for an overview: This brief podcast discusses the prevalence of egg and nut allergies in children, how to lower the risk of developing these allergies, and which patients are at greatest risk. Hear how to best counsel parents about their child's allergies and help them anticipate their child's future health. Guest: Jill M. Terrien, PhD, ANP-BC, presents: "When Do Food Allergies Resolve?". - Frankly Speaking Ep 290.

CLINICAL UPDATES

COVID-19 in US

• The average COVID deaths in the US is 400 per day.
• More than 88 percent of COVID cases are the BA.5 subvariant.
• Total cases worldwide are 600,782,010; total deaths 6,471,637.

COVID-19 MA

• There were 8,224 new cases in the last week.
• There are 1,830,211 confirmed cases in MA, with total confirmed deaths 20,025.
• The 7-day average positivity is 7.34%.
• Current hospitalizations: 176 with COVID as the primary diagnosis of 582 hospitalized with COVID.

COVID -19 UMMMC

• The current 7-day average percent positivity is 11.7%.
• In-house cases: 34 with 62% fully vaccinated.

COVID Vaccines in the News

• Vaccines for Omicron-specific COVID are coming soon.
• The COVID vaccine is available for everyone aged 6 months and above.
• Current vaccines in the US include:
• Pfizer-BioNTech
• Moderna
• Novavax (Only recommended as primary vaccination with two doses. The is not used as a booster)
• Johnson & Johnson's Janssen
• The US government has secured 66 million doses of the Moderna Omicron variant-specific vaccine for fall 2022.
• The US government is considering shifting the cost of COVID vaccines back to the healthcare industry.

Monkeypox

• There are 114,115 cases in the US to date, with 243 cases in MA.
• There are 3 minor children in the US diagnosed with Monkeypox.
• The top 3 states for Monkeypox in the US are New York, California, and Florida.
• There is no specific treatment for Monkeypox.
• Monkeypox can spread from the time the rash begins until the rash has fully healed. This can be 12-14 weeks.
• The spread of Monkeypox is by direct skin-to-skin contact but also by touching objects and fabrics that have been touched by someone with Monkeypox.
• The Monkeypox virus can be spread during pregnancy to the fetus.
• The virus can be spread to humans from infected animals and by contact with respiratory secretions.
• Recovery usually takes 2 to 4 weeks.

https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/transmission.html