“The fact that every fourth baby in the world is born too soon or born too small is a concern for human rights, public health the national economy, and development. By not addressing this priority, we are jeopardising our collective future.”
The lives of more than a million babies a year could be saved across the developing world if mothers were given access to simple, low-cost health measures such as vitamins, antimalarials and aspirin, a new analysis has found.
The study, focused on the “silent public health disaster” of babies being born “too small or too soon”, comes as the United Nations warns that progress on reducing newborn deaths and stillbirths has flatlined since 2015, and that patchy, underfunded antenatal care is partially to blame.
The authors of the analysis, published in the Lancet, estimate that 476,000 newborn deaths and 566,000 stillbirths could be avoided every year if a handful of predominantly antenatal measures were fully implemented in 81 low- and middle-income countries.
Learn more on Small Vulnerable Newborns via The Lancet.
Background: We explored health care services in three supportive housing sites in Kelowna, British Columbia, to identify tenants’ health needs and determine whether their needs were perceived as being met, and, if their needs were perceived as not being met, which health areas were being underserved.
Methods: We invited all tenants and staff at the supportive housing sites to provide information on their health needs and related support. In-depth interviews were conducted between 1 August and 2 September 2020, including both closed-ended and open-ended questions.
Results: In total, 42 tenants (38%) and 30 staff members (75%) were interviewed. Seventy-two percent of tenants interviewed had unmet health needs; those with developmental disabilities experienced the highest percentage of unmet needs. Long-term conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and liver disease were also associated with unmet needs. Tenants were often unaware of available health care services or were unwilling or unable to access them. Both tenants and staff emphasized that stigma and discrimination within health services are a barrier to receiving care. Existing health services were also seen as ill-equipped to deal with concurrent conditions, such as mental health issues, substance use, and/or physical disability.
Conclusions: We recommend that further research be conducted on the needs of other populations in supportive housing across BC and that additional funding be provided to create a wide range of housing options to address the diverse health, social, and other needs of tenants.
Read more on Health care in supportive housing facilities via BCMJ.
May 5 marks the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit people (MMIWG2S) in Canada, also known as Red Dress Day. The day is about building awareness and honouring those who were lost and their families.
Remembering and acknowledging the injustices, the lack of follow-up, the lack of resolution. These families have lived with this for years, and in some cases for decades. And so having a Red Dress Day, and recognizing that these stories occur. That these families are still looking for answers, and that this can’t continue to happen. That is what we are doing today: trying to address a wrong that has taken place for many years and many decades.
As Canadians commemorate Red Dress Day in Canada, local government leaders are keen on addressing the national inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) and the report’s 231 Calls for Justice.
Indigenous women and girls are five times more likely to experience violence than any other population in Canada, and Indigenous women make up 16 per cent of all female homicide victims and 11 per cent of missing women, despite representing just 4.3 per cent of the population, the organization says.
For many years, government policy in regards to Indigenous people has been more reactive than preventative, and policy with regards to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMING) is no exception.
Imagine that your daughter or sister or mother disappeared – and when you asked for help from police, your concerns weren’t taken seriously. Then, a week later her body is discovered. While the exact details of the story may vary, this is the current scenario for thousands of family members of missing and murdered Indigenous women. After years of advocacy and emotional turmoil, a national inquiry has finally been struck to find out what went wrong and how to fix it.
Question Can an artificial intelligence chatbot assistant, provide responses to patient questions that are of comparable quality and empathy to those written by physicians?
Findings In this cross-sectional study of 195 randomly drawn patient questions from a social media forum, a team of licensed health care professionals compared physician’s and chatbot’s responses to patient’s questions asked publicly on a public social media forum. The chatbot responses were preferred over physician responses and rated significantly higher for both quality and empathy.
Meaning These results suggest that artificial intelligence assistants may be able to aid in drafting responses to patient questions.
Learn more on Comparing Physician and Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Responses to Patient Questions Posted to a Public Social Media Forum via JAMA.
“Deep generative networks in recent years have reinforced the need for caution while consuming various modalities of digital information. One avenue of deepfake creation is aligned with injection and removal of tumors from medical scans. Failure to detect medical deepfakes can lead to large setbacks on hospital resources or even loss of life. This paper attempts to address the detection of such attacks with a structured case study. Specifically, we evaluate eight different machine learning algorithms, which include three conventional machine learning methods (Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, Decision Tree) and five deep learning models (DenseNet121, DenseNet201, ResNet50, ResNet101, VGG19) in distinguishing between tampered and untampered images. For deep learning models, the five models are used for feature extraction, then each pre-trained model is fine-tuned. The findings of this work show near perfect accuracy in detecting instances of tumor injections and removals.”
Myles Sergeant, a family physician in Hamilton, Ont., launched one such effort to cultivate partnerships on climate action across healthcare facilities, called PEACH.
He was inspired by a paper published in TheLancet Planetary Health which showed that more than 60% of the emissions generated by England’s National Health Service were related to the supply chain, rather than the delivery of care (24%), or travel by staff, patients, and visitors (10%).
Looking further into the issue, PEACH developed a checklist of the 20 most impactful actions hospitals could take to reduce their carbon footprint – in some cases, at low cost or savings. These include divesting foundation funds from fossil fuels, implementing Choosing Wisely programs to reduce waste, using reusable gowns and linens, adopting sustainable prescribing strategies, increasing plant-based food options for patients, and weighing sustainability in procurement contracts.”
How Canadian hospitals are decreasing carbon emissions via CMAJ.
Registration is now open for Okanagan Orchards on Saturday, May 27th at the Marriott Grand Okanagan Resort! This is the annual Family Practice Postgraduate faculty development and appreciation event.
We will have a morning of workshops, followed by some options for outdoor activities in the afternoon (wine touring, cycling and hiking), and will wrap up with an appreciation dinner in the evening. It’s a great opportunity for some networking and support, and we have a lot of fun too!
Please see details below (and attached) and register via the link provided.
A $300 travel reimbursement will be availableafter the eventto eligible out-of-town preceptors needing to travel a distance of more than one hour.There are a limited number of guest rooms held atMarriott Grand Okanagan Resortin Kelowna.
Larissa McLean, BA, MHA Manager, Rural Education & InitiativesFaculty of Medicine | Department of Family Practice, Postgraduate Program The University of British Columbia larissa.mclean@ubc.ca
“A new gene connected to hereditary breast cancer susceptibility has been identified in what researchers are calling a landmark study.
The discovery marks the first time in years that a new susceptibility gene has been pinpointed, allowing scientists to get one step closer to a full understanding of hereditary breast cancer.
‘We know that genetics play an important role in the likelihood of developing breast cancer, with hereditary breast cancer accounting for roughly ten per cent of all cases,’ Dr. Mohammad Reza Akbari, associate professor at the University of Toronto and the principal investigator of the study, said in a press release.
Around one in eight women in Canada will develop breast cancer in their lifetime, with the disease accounting for the highest amount of cancer-related deaths in women globally.”
Read more here on “For the first time in years, researchers have identified a new susceptibility gene for breast cancer: study” via CTV News.
This call for proposals announces the availability of funding to support projects that will promote further development of research in Indigenous Health Professions Education (IHPE) at The University of British Columbia (UBC). We are looking for researchers who are interested in exploring the education experiences of Indigenous Students in health professional programs during their admissions and training processes as well as those of Indigenous health professionals in practice. That is, the Centre for Health Education Scholarship (CHES) wishes to engage with interested parties to further society’s knowledge of the role of education practices on the experiences and needs of Indigenous health professional learners and/or practitioners.
Background
CHES is seeking to work with Indigenous UBC Students and/or Faculty to lead or co-lead research that addresses a scholarly issue in Indigenous education of relevance to the health professions. Areas of research might focus on undergraduate or postgraduate education, interprofessional education, continuous professional development or the practice experience of Indigenous providers. Examples of eligible topics include Indigenous student experiences with the curriculum (formal, informal, and hidden), student affairs/support, the pre-admission process, the admission process, the learning environment (cultural safety), and experiences of diversity, equity and inclusion. In addition, Indigenous faculty experiences navigating traditional systems or Indigenous practitioner experiences (e.g., Continuing Professional Development) will also be of interest and eligible. Funding is not intended to support program development, program evaluation, or program delivery.
“This cake was 3D printed using seven simple ingredients blended into pastes. The result was a layered flavour that ‘hits you in different waves’, says Jonathan Blutinger at Columbia University in New York.
Blutinger and his colleagues grabbed seven ingredients from local grocery stores: graham crackers, peanut butter, strawberry jam, Nutella, banana puree, cherry syrup and frosting.
They put anything not already in a paste form into a food processor. That allowed a 3D printer to build up the cake by depositing the seven paste-like food ingredients in layers – a process resembling how people might squeeze out a tube of frosting.”
Footage: Jonathan Blutinger / Columbia Engineering
I wonder what the application of this technology could be in a hospital setting. More on “Understanding hospital staffs’ perspectives on what leads to quality food provision in Ontario hospitals” via J. Hum. Nutr. Diet.
Family Medicine Residency Site: Abbotsford-Mission 