Week-in-Review |January 3, 2025
Dear DGIM,
Kevin Volpp recently visited Dr. Edward S. Cooper at his home. Dr. Cooper is a living legend and the namesake for the DGIM Cooper clinic. The AHA set this up since Kevin was picked to win AHA Edward S. Cooper award at the AHA Heart Ball this coming March. Kevin is the first general internist to win the award. Congratulations Kevin. You can also read what Kevin thinks about GLP1 agonists for weight loss in this NYT article.
Congratulations to Rani Nandiwada and Patrick Sayre. Rani was elected President of the SGIM Mid-Atlantic Region and Patrick was elected to be the Secretary. They are now working to bring the regional meeting to Penn.
Congratulations to Jeff Jaeger. He received the Clinical Practice Award from the SE PA chapter of the ACP. This award was created to recognize a senior internist for service as an excellent clinical practitioner for patients, the community and the profession.
I am very pleased to announce that with the persistence of many people, both in and out of DGIM, we finally look set to launch diabetic retinal cameras in our primary care practices. Thank you, Gillian Lautenbach, Corie Rhodes, Marguerite Balasta, Gabe De Guzman, Mariel Harden, David Resnick, and Stephanie Subbio, for not giving up. This will help save people’s eyesight.
Rebecca ("Arden") Harris, collaborators, and I have a new article out in Addiction Science and Clinical Practice exploring how primary care organization affects early discontinuation of medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD). Through qualitative interviews with patients, primary care providers, and administrators, we identified several potential modifications to primary care delivery that could help reduce early MOUD discontinuation and its associated harms. These include: (1) implementing flexible scheduling systems with minimal impact on clinic efficiency, (2) establishing effective multidisciplinary care teams within existing resource constraints, and (3) prioritizing early intervention for patients with comorbid pain and polydrug use. Now we need to work out the operational details to pilot these interventions. I am looking forward to reporting back to you on this.
Pete Groeneveld has a new article in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality Outcomes with many Penn colleagues from Vascular Surgery and Cardiology, looking at pre-amputation vascular care. They find that in the year before a lower extremity amputation Black patients, patients who resided in rural areas, and patients who were on both Medicaid and Medicare (low SES), were less likely to have had care that might have saved the limb such as a visit with a vascular specialist, arterial testing, or a revascularization procedure. There populations all have higher rates of lower extremity amputations. Better, more equitable access to timely vascular care might help reduce these disparities.
Kavita Chapla has an article in Qualitative Health Research with collaborators from Hopkins and the UK describing how to apply reflexive thematic analysis to evidence-based co-design (EBCD). EBCD is a method for engaging clinicians, patients, and family caregivers to solve problems. In this article, Kavita and her co-authors argue for using reflexive thematic analysis in carrying out the EBCD steps as a means to keeping the voices of the EBCD participants front and center and empowering the participants to problem solve for themselves (rather than having it imposed on them by the research team). The paper is a step-by-step guide if you want to learn more.
Thank you to Yvette Stepteau for once again organizing another great DGIM party. I hope everyone had a nice holiday break and is ready for 2025.
Keep the news coming.
Judith
Judith A. Long, MD
Sol Katz Professor of Medicine
Chief, Division of General Internal Medicine
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
Core Faculty, VA Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion
Corporal Michael J. Crescenz, VA Medical Center