Is It Time to Say Goodbye to BMI? A Commentary.

The linkage between weight and health is complicated and our current body of evidence is inconsistent. We cannot have a discussion about weight without understanding the larger context of our antifat society and the influence of the diet industrial complex. Weight bias and a focus on weight in health care produce known harms. Additionally, clinicians often recommend losing weight without a nuanced discussion of the evidence showing that most people are unlikely to be successful with sustained weight loss. In this piece, I argue that using our precious time with patients and health care dollars to focus on health behaviors with indisputable evidence such as increasing physical activity and promoting smoking cessation is a more effective use of resources and more closely aligns with our ethical obligation to "do no harm."

Genotoxic aldehyde stress prematurely ages hematopoietic stem cells in a p53-driven manner.

Aged hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) display diminished self-renewal and a myeloid differentiation bias. However, the drivers and mechanisms that underpin this fundamental switch are not understood. HSCs produce genotoxic formaldehyde that requires protection by the detoxification enzymes ALDH2 and ADH5 and the Fanconi anemia (FA) DNA repair pathway. We find that the HSCs in young Aldh2-/-Fancd2-/- mice harbor a transcriptomic signature equivalent to aged wild-type HSCs, along with increased epigenetic age, telomere attrition, and myeloid-biased differentiation quantified by single HSC transplantation. In addition, the p53 response is vigorously activated in Aldh2-/-Fancd2-/- HSCs, while p53 deletion rescued this aged HSC phenotype. To further define the origins of the myeloid differentiation bias, we use a GFP genetic reporter to find a striking enrichment of Vwf+ myeloid and megakaryocyte-lineage-biased HSCs. These results indicate that metabolism-derived formaldehyde-DNA damage stimulates the p53 response in HSCs to drive accelerated aging.

Motivations Behind Lifestyle Changes.

Lifestyle modification has been demonstrated as a powerful tool in combating the morbidity and mortality of disease. Due to lack of training or education not enough physicians are discussing lifestyle changes with patients. The objective of this study was to determine what influenced participants to make lifestyle changes, and if it was a physician, what was said or done to motivate that decision. Inclusion criterion was participants were enrolled in a program dedicated to dietary modifications. One hundred participants were surveyed. Eighty-eight percent were over the age of 50; 78% were female; 92% were White; and 70% had a bachelor's degree or higher. Sixty-eight percent felt they had not been educated by their health care provider about nutrition; 41% of participants felt information provided was the most impactful statement; 60% of participants noted that their medical diagnosis had a moderate to significant impact on their decision to make a lifestyle change. This study emphasizes that dietary modifications are not being discussed enough to alter the health decisions of patients in the clinical setting. Furthermore, it is paramount physicians take into account patient motivations when discussing lifestyle changes, as well as the role that proper patient education plays in motivating patients to make a change.

Addressing Sexual Harassment and Gender Bias: Mandatory Modules Are Not Enough.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Despite decades of new policy guidelines and mandatory training modules, sexual harassment (SH) and gender bias (GB) continue in academic medicine. The hierarchical structure of medical training makes it challenging to act when one experiences or witnesses SH or GB. Most trainings designed to address SH and GB are driven by external mandates and do not utilize current educational techniques. Our goal was to design training that is in-person, active, and directed toward skills development. METHODS: Our academic family medicine (FM) department began by surveying our faculty and residents about their lived experiences of SH and GB. We used these data, incorporating principles of adult learning, to deliver voluntary, experiential, interactive workshops throughout 2019. The workshops took place during faculty development meetings and an annual retreat. We used interactive techniques that included case-based and Theater of the Oppressed formats. OUTCOMES: Eighty percent of faculty and residents participated in at least one of our voluntary training sessions. In April of 2020, we administered a retrospective, pre/postsurvey on confidence in recognizing, responding to, and reporting SH and GB. We found significant improvements in all domains surveyed; many participants reported using the skills in the 6 months prior to completing the surveys. CONCLUSION: We demonstrated that voluntary, interactive training sessions using the recommendations of the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine Report on the Sexual Harassment of Women improve participants' reported confidence in recognizing, responding to, and reporting SH and GB in one academic FM department. This training intervention is practical and can be disseminated and implemented in many settings.

Addressing COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in rural communities: A case study in engaging trusted messengers to pivot and plan.

The pandemic declaration of COVID-19 in 2020 presented unique challenges, lessons, and opportunities for public health practice in the United States. Despite clear evidence of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness, vaccine uptake and vaccine confidence remained low in many regions. Vaccine holdouts, or those who are vaccine hesitant, have been an increasingly difficult population to reach. Several factors influence vaccine hesitancy and behavior in rural areas, including health care access challenges, misinformation, political loyalties, and concerns regarding the perceived lack of trustworthy evidence and knowledge of long-term effects. In March 2021, the Finger Lakes Rural Immunization Initiative (FLRII) engaged stakeholders to address vaccine hesitancy in a nine-county region of rural New York known as the Finger Lakes. Driven by data collected from community partners, physicians, and local health departments regarding their biggest barriers and greatest needs, the FLRII team created an interactive program for trusted messengers (TMs) including a stakeholder panel, called the Trusted Messenger Forum (TMF). The TMF met every 2 weeks from August 2021- August 2022 to engage local TMs and disseminate up-to-date knowledge in real time. During forum sessions, TMs shared detailed accounts of their experiences combating vaccine hesitancy in their communities and supported one another in their efforts through positive interaction and reaffirming conversations. Collaborations between community stakeholders can form a scaffolding to support a rapid response to a variety of public health problems and result in impactful change. For researchers implementing community-based research projects, modeling stakeholder panels after trusted messenger forums can be effective for diversifying the scope of the project and reacting to emergent problems in real-time.

How to overcome hesitancy for COVID-19 and other vaccines.

These evidence-based strategies (and list of do's and don'ts) can help you to increase the likelihood of vaccine uptake in hesitant patients.

Sexual Harassment and Gender Bias in Family Medicine: Divergent Experiences of Men and Women.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Awareness of sexual harassment (SH), gender bias (GB), and gender discrimination (GD) has spread throughout popular culture and has been highlighted at universities across the United States. More nuanced data is needed to inform policies that address these issues. However, there are currently limited qualitative studies examining the nature of SH, GB, and GD in academic medicine, particularly family medicine. METHODS: In 2018, we conducted a series of gender-specific focus groups with faculty and residents in a department of family medicine (DFM) to understand their experiences with and responses to SH, GB, and GD. The focus groups were transcribed verbatim. We used immersion-crystallization and an adapted SH Experiences model to review the transcripts and identify patterns or themes during the immersion process. RESULTS: Participants identified the potential for patients, colleagues, faculty, and themselves as perpetrators and victims of SH, GB, and GD. Results suggested that GB was often implicit. SH was experienced verbally and physically. Women participants, especially, reported that both SH and GB occurred frequently and had lasting psychological effects. Gender, age, and position (faculty vs trainee) moderated SH and GB experiences. The effects seemed to be mediated by moral distress. CONCLUSIONS: This study emphasizes the importance of recognizing differences in experiences across gender, age, and position of SH, GB, and GD in academic family medicine. Our findings can be leveraged to develop antiharassment policies and set cultural expectations.

Implementation of a self-determination based clinical program to reduce cardiovascular disease risk.

Health behaviors are the cornerstone of cardiovascular risk reduction but change is challenging and maintenance is uncommon. The use of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) can promote long-term change however the pathway is uncertain related to cardiovascular risk reduction. A multi-disciplinary clinical team trained in SDT counseled 294 individuals with high cardiovascular risk. Our participants had a significant decrease in cholesterol as well as a significant increase healthy diet and motivation measures. Autonomous motivation was a critical element in the pathways. We demonstrated that a SDT team-based clinical intervention can promote cardiovascular risk reduction through autonomous motivation.

The family physician's role in long COVID management.

A paucity of both data and therapeutics presents obstacles to care and makes your role in symptom management, psychological support, and referral-all described here-essential.

Increasing Access to Medications for Opioid Use Disorder in Primary Care: Removing the Training Requirement May Not Be Enough.

BACKGROUND: Substance use disorders, including opioid use disorder (OUD), are understood as chronic diseases with a relapsing and remitting course and no known cure. Medications for OUD (MOUD) are well established with decades of evidence supporting their safety and efficacy; however, treatment access remains poor and inequitable. Buprenorphine is an MOUD that can be prescribed in a primary care outpatient setting, although regulatory and administrative challenges are a barrier to prescribing it. Recent regulatory changes offer an opportunity to expand the number of family doctors who treat OUD. METHODS: We offered free, easily accessible buprenorphine "x-waiver training" led by a team of primary care clinicians. In addition, we provided wrap-around support for MOUD clinical questions and administrative needs with experienced family medicine mentors. RESULTS: More than 400 clinicians attended our trainings, including medical students, residents, and attending physicians. Of the 101 attending physicians who completed our trainings, only 30 went on to apply for an x-wavier, and of those only 7 were currently prescribing when contacted 12 months later. CONCLUSION: Our experience indicates that removing the training requirement is a necessary first step but is unlikely to result in major changes to rates of prescribing without other significant cultural changes.

Attending a Biopsychosocially Focused Buprenorphine Training Improves Clinician Attitudes.

Objective: Substance use disorders remain highly stigmatized. Access to medications for opioid use disorder is poor. There are many barriers to expanding access including stigma and lack of medical education about substance use disorders. We enriched the existing, federally required, training for clinicians to prescribe buprenorphine with a biopsychosocial focus in order to decrease stigma and expand access to medications for opioid use disorder. Methods: We trained a family medicine team to deliver an enriched version of the existing buprenorphine waiver curriculum. The waiver training was integrated into the curriculum for all University of Rochester physician and nurse practitioner family medicine residents and also offered to University of Rochester residents and faculty in other disciplines and regionally. We used the Brief Substance Abuse Attitudes Survey to collect baseline and post-training data. Outcomes: 140 training participants completed attitude surveys. The overall attitude score increased significantly from pre to post-training. Additionally, significant changes were observed in non-moralism from pre-training (M = 20.07) to post-training (M = 20.98, p < 0.001); treatment optimism from pre-training (M = 21.56) to post-training (M = 22.33, p < 0.001); and treatment interventions from pre-training (M = 31.03) to post-training (M = 32.10, p < 0.001). Conclusion: Increasing medical education around Opioid Use Disorder using a Family Medicine trained team with a biopsychosocial focus can improve provider attitudes around substance use disorders. Enriching training with cases may improve treatment optimism and may help overcome the documented barriers to prescribing medications for opioid use disorder and increase access for patients to lifesaving treatments.

Responding to an Emerging Need: Implementing Telehealth in Acute Hospital Rehabilitation.

This article outlines a multidisciplinary approach to implementing a telehealth program in the acute care hospital setting during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Telehealth has been used in many practice areas, although it can be a particular challenge to establish in an acute care hospital given the fast-paced environment. However, the COVID-19 pandemic presented a unique situation. In-person treatment interactions became increasingly high risk for both patient and provider, and there was an emerging need to conserve personal protective equipment and limit exposure. In response to these developments, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech language pathologists treating an adult population turned to telehealth to supplement in-person treatment. This article outlines the clinical reasoning and practical application to implementing a telehealth program in an acute care hospital and includes regulations, identified successful strategies, barriers, considerations, decision-making algorithms, and discipline-specific interventions.

"Am I Making More of It Than I Should?": Reporting and Responding to Sexual Harassment.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Health professionals may face sexual harassment from patients, faculty, and colleagues. Medicine's hierarchy deters response to sexual harassment. Current evidence consists largely of quantitative data regarding the frequency and types of sexual harassment. More information is needed about the nature of the experience and how or why professionals choose to report or respond. METHODS: We developed and administered a semistructured interview guide to elicit family medicine faculty and residents' experiences with sexual harassment and gender bias. Facilitators led a series of focus groups divided by faculty (N=28) and residents (N=24). We ensured voluntary consent and groups were audiotaped, transcribed and deidentified. We coded the transcripts using immersion-crystallization theory to identify emergent themes. RESULTS: Sexual harassment from patients and colleagues was described as witnessed or personally experienced by faculty and resident participants in 100% of the focus groups. Respondents identified the presence of mentors, clear reporting process and follow-up, history of good organizational response to reporting, and education and training as facilitators to reporting sexual harassment. Barriers to reporting included fear of retaliation, lack of trust of the system to respond, lack of clarity about "what counts," and confusion with the reporting process. CONCLUSIONS: It is important to capitalize on facilitators to reporting sexual harassment, starting with acknowledging the frequency of sexual harassment and gender discrimination. Addressing barriers to responding through education and training for our learners and faculty is critical. Clarifying the reporting process, having clear expectations for behavior, and a continuum of responses may help increase the frequency of reporting.

What Now for Rehabilitation Specialists? Coronavirus Disease 2019 Questions and Answers.

Recognizing a need for more guidance on the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, members of the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Editorial Board invited several clinicians with early experience managing the disease to collaborate on a document to help guide rehabilitation clinicians in the community. This consensus document is written in a "question and answer" format and contains information on the following items: common manifestations of the disease; rehabilitation recommendations in the acute hospital setting, recommendations for inpatient rehabilitation and special considerations. These suggestions are intended for use by rehabilitation clinicians in the inpatient setting caring for patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19. The text represents the authors' best judgment at the time it was written. However, our knowledge of COVID-19 is growing rapidly. The reader should take advantage of the most up-to-date information when making clinical decisions.

The MLH1 polymorphism rs1800734 and risk of endometrial cancer with microsatellite instability.

Both colorectal (CRC, 15%) and endometrial cancers (EC, 30%) exhibit microsatellite instability (MSI) due to MLH1 hypermethylation and silencing. The MLH1 promoter polymorphism, rs1800734 is associated with MSI CRC risk, increased methylation and reduced MLH1 expression. In EC samples, we investigated rs1800734 risk using MSI and MSS cases and controls. We found no evidence that rs1800734 or other MLH1 SNPs were associated with the risk of MSI EC. We found the rs1800734 risk allele had no effect on MLH1 methylation or expression in ECs. We propose that MLH1 hypermethylation occurs by different mechanisms in CRC and EC.

Using a group medical visit model to promote healthy behaviour change with an underserved population.

BACKGROUND: Models of care are needed to address physical activity, nutrition promotion and weight loss in primary care settings, especially with underserved populations who are disproportionately affected by chronic illness. Group medical visits (GMVs) are one approach that can help overcome some of the barriers to behaviour change in underserved populations, including the amount of time required to care for these patients due to socio-economic stressors and psychosocial complexities (1). GMVs have been shown to improve care in coronary artery disease and diabetes, but more evidence is needed in underserved settings. OBJECTIVE: This project sought to evaluate a GMV incorporating a physical activity component in an underserved patient population, measuring biometric and motivation outcome measures. METHODS: This project used a pre-post intervention study design through patient surveys at baseline and 12 weeks. We included validated motivational measures along with self-reported demographic information. A GMV intervention promoting physical activity and nutrition to promote weight loss was delivered by an interdisciplinary primary care team and community partners in a Federally Qualified Health Center in Rochester, NY. The intervention consisted of six, 2-hour sessions that occurred every other week at the clinic site. RESULTS: Participants lost a significant amount of weight and maintained the weight loss at 6 months. In addition, there was a significant improvement in motivation measures. CONCLUSION: This study provides preliminary evidence that our GMV model can improve weight loss and autonomous motivation in an underserved population. This project has potential for scalability and sustainability.

Hormone receptor expression and outcomes in low-grade serous ovarian carcinoma.

OBJECTIVE: Low-grade serous ovarian carcinomas (LGSC) are frequently ER/PR positive, though the mechanisms by which ER/PR regulate prognosis or anti-estrogen treatment efficacy are poorly understood. We studied ER/PR expression in LGSC tumors and cell lines to evaluate patient outcomes and cellular treatment responses. METHODS: LGSC tumors and patient-derived cell lines were studied from patients with advanced-stage (III/IV) disease. Tumor samples and clinical data were obtained from the Canadian Ovarian Experimental Unified Resource (COEUR-tissue microarray) and the Ovarian Cancer Research (OvCaRe) tissue bank. ER/PR expression was assessed by both Western blot and immunohistochemistry (IHC). Two different IHC scoring systems (simple and Allred) were used. Cox regression was used to identify factors (age, disease residuum, ER/PR status, etc.) associated with progression-free (PFS) and overall survival (OS). Estradiol and tamoxifen proliferation and viability experiments were performed in LGSC cell lines. RESULTS: In 55 LGSC cases studied, median follow-up was 56 months (range 1-227). Fifty-three (96%) cases strongly expressed ER whereas 37 (67%) expressed PR. Cox-regression analysis showed that residuum (p < 0.001) was significantly associated with PFS, whereas both ER Allred score (p = 0.005) and residuum (p = 0.004) were significant for OS. None of the LGSC cell lines expressed PR. Loss of PR and ER expression over time was detected in LGSC tumors and cell lines respectively. Estrogen and tamoxifen treatment did not alter LGSC cell proliferation or viability in-vitro. CONCLUSIONS: In patients with advanced LGSC, higher ER Allred scores were significantly associated with better overall survival. ER/PR expression changed over time in both LGSC tumors and cell lines. Better translational research models are needed to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of ER/PR signalling in LGSC.

Is it time to taper that opioid? (And how best to do it).

This guide will help you to determine when to start an opioid taper and how to do so while maintaining pain control and minimizing the risk that the taper will fail.