Student and Alumni Opinion in The Inquirer

Current students Utsha Khatri and Shoshana Aronowitz teamed up with mentor and MSHP alumna Eugenia South to write an Op-Ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer . In the piece, they tackle problematic theorizing of the "protective" properties of under-treating patients of color that result from racial bias. "Racism in health care still exists and is by definition harmful", they write, "...to suggest otherwise will stop us from developing effective strategies to help all Americans struggling with addiction". It is wonderful to see this kind of collaboration happening across specialty and across generations of MSHP students.

Katherine Courtright and Gary Weissman Co-Principal Investigators

In November, the University of Pennsylvania became the only US University with two NIA Roybal Research Centers. MSHP Alumni Katherine Courtright '15 and Gary Weissman '17 are co-Principal Investigators on the first two pilot projects awarded by the new center. The National Institute on Aging's Roybal Centers are designed to create research infrastructures for assembling multidisciplinary teams of scientists to solve practical problems in aging-related areas of health care. "The prevalence of Alzheimer’s and related dementia disease is high and growing," Courtright continued. "The use of residential nursing homes is also high and these are facilities that historically weren't designed and equipped with both the staff and expertise to address the end-of-life care and planning needs for this population."

Select Alumni Publications

In a piece for Pediatric Critical Care Medicine , Charley Woods-Hill '19 et al found that s ending blood cultures in children at low risk of bacteremia can contribute to a cascade of unnecessary antibiotic exposure, adverse effects, and increased costs. In a cross-sectional electronic survey of 15 pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) enrolled in the Bright Star collaborative , they explored typical blood culture practices, attitudes and beliefs about cultures, and potential barriers to changing culture use in a PICU setting. They found notable variation in blood culture practices in the PICU, with no standard approach to culture source or frequency. They found that fear of missing sepsis and reflexive habits (ordering cultures in response to fever without evaluating other patient data or performing a physical exam) are common drivers of cultures. In part due to these findings, Bright Star collaborative has now done Delphi consensus work to develop more standardized guidelines for blood culture use in critically ill children.

Jessica Dine '09 had a recent article with David Asch , Lisa Bellini, and MSHP Co-Director Judy Shea in JGIM looking at dissatisfaction with medical and surgical residency training. This data was collected as part of two large trials testing different residency work hour models (over 6000 surveys were collected). Women were more dissatisfied with all aspects of their training regardless of type of residency. Read more at the link above.

We hope that 2020 is off to a fantastic start for all.

Warm regards,