Emory Family & Preventive Medicine  Department News 

2023: Volume 6, issue 6

55 Words from the Division of Family Medicine

"Congratulations to our graduating residents and fellows and our faculty recognized as Atlanta Top Docs for their accomplishments! We are developing partnerships through mentorship programs for faculty and learners. Stay tuned for AI pilots rolling out across EHC to improve the clinical experience of our patients, staff, and providers. Take care of yourselves and others."

- Jose and Tina-Ann

Congratulations to our FPM Atlanta Magazine
Top Docs!

Almost 40% of the physicians recognized in the 2023 “Top Doctors” issue of Atlanta magazine are physicians within Emory Healthcare, Emory Healthcare Network, Emory medical staff or faculty of Emory University School of Medicine. According to the annual list, more Emory physicians made the 2023 “Top Doctors” list than any other health care system in metro Atlanta. The July issue of Atlanta magazine can be found on newsstands or at this link to the digital edition of the magazine. Congratulations to our FPM Top Docs from Family Medicine, Hospice and Palliative Medicine and Geriatrics!

Spotlight on Partnerships

We're All In!

Our department has multiple thriving partnerships, both inside and outside the department. Read on to learn about just a few of our partnerships and feel free to send in descriptions of your partnerships for future issues.  

Special thanks to those who wrote about their partnerships for the newsletter!

The Family Medicine Residency and the VA Palliative Care Team have a thriving partnership in which each 2nd year family medicine resident spends 4 weeks with the VA Palliative Care Team. Residents spend their first week with Dr. Laura Waddle in the VA outpatient palliative care clinic and the rest of their time on the inpatient service with Drs. Laura Waddle, Lawson Marcewicz, Lauren Sigler, Lynn O’Neill.

-Dr. Lynn O'Neill

Pictured below: Dr. Sigler (pictured below left) is pictured with this month’s resident, Dr. Diana Rodgers. 

On the Primary Care Consortium Training Program Advisory Council, education leaders of the PA program, NP program, OPEX medical student program, and Adult Primary Care medical student clerkship have collaborated to lead preceptor education and recruitment events. Jointly led sessions during the Emory Primary Care Forum and Emory primary care new provider orientation are already yielding new student preceptors! Some of  the people who have been active in recent initiatives are Sonya Green, Pam Vohra-Khullar, Veketa Smith (pictured above, right), Alison Schlenger, and Amber Davis (pictured above, left).

-Dr. Ryan Smith (pictured above, center)

The Emory Farmworker Project (EFP) is an interprofessional project that combines service-learning and clinical experience while providing free healthcare to migrant farmworkers in South GA. The project began in 1996 with a small team of Emory PA students and faculty. The project continues to be led by the Emory PA Program and over the years EFP we have developed many partnerships that have allowed us to expand the services we can provide to patients, number of patients we are able to see, and the interprofessional education we can provide to students.  

Our core partnership is with the local farmworker clinics, who have relationships with the farms and farmworkers and can provide follow up and service year-round to any patients we see during the project. We would not have clinic sites or patients without these local partners.

Within Emory alone, the PA program partners with PT students and local preceptors, nursing students and faculty from the DABSN program, medical students, faculty from DFPM and throughout the School of Medicine, medical residents, pharmacy residents, interpreters, and Rollins faculty, researchers, and students.

We also have an incredible network of non-Emory partnerships that help make this project what it is – United Farmworker Foundation, Latino Community Fund, Mercer University PA Program, volunteers that collect and manage our clothing donations, local organizations and churches that provide our dinners, and Southwest Georgia Area Health Education Centers and their scholar program which includes students from other universities like Georgia Southwestern, University of Georgia, Medical College of Georgia, and PCOM South.

We have just returned from our summer 2023 project. Over the two weeks of clinics, we had over 250 participants who travelled with us as well as local community members. Amidst heat and some of the worst inclement weather in the history of this project, we saw 1,000 patients. We had cancelled or moved clinics and a blackout during a tornado and still this team remained flexible and positive and kept their focus on serving patients. This is the essence of the project – to bring people together as they give their time and skills to provide care to a patient population that is often overlooked, disregarded, or denied care. Our team saw a wide range of conditions including diabetes, hypertension, infections, pregnancy, mental health concerns, and as always, musculoskeletal pain due to intensive physical labor. We also conducted research investigating access to sanitation and presence of pathogens like norovirus.

As the largest interprofessional educational experience at Emory, opportunities for students to work together is built into the project. Over the course of the project, our students discovered how their collaboration could improve care, increase efficiency, and advance their own knowledge and abilities. In our rare moments of downtime, students were able to teach and learn from each other, from a morning of case presentations to a class from PT on tests and treatment for common injuries. Students remarked they had never had so much opportunity to collaborate with their peers in other professions. Partnerships and interprofessional education are core themes for the Emory Farmworker Project that benefit our patients and all those who participate. To quote one student, “This is the most meaningful educational experience I have had. I feel like I am making a significant impact on patients while my personal learning is skyrocketing.”

-          Dr. Jodie Guest, EFP Director (pictured above, left) and Emi Grill, MPH, EFP Logistics Coordinator (pictured above, right)

A four-year partnership between the Emory Palliative Care Center and Adult CF Clinic is expanding – and with it, increasing opportunities for palliative care research. Since 2020, Emory has been the lead of five North American sites for the randomized clinical trial of Integrating Specialist Palliative Care to Improve Care and Reduce Suffering: Cystic Fibrosis (InSPIRe:CF) (PI: Dr. Dio Kavalieratos pictured above left). The trial, which has completed enrollment of 264 adults with CF, is the first to study the effect of early palliative care for people with a rare or genetic disease. 

Building from this collaboration, Emory palliative research and CF teams have begun investigating the individual, metabolic, systemic, and social factors that shape CF-related symptoms and clinical care. 

CF Foundation Postdoctoral fellow Alexandre Cammarata-Mouchtouris (pictured, above center), PhD joined Dr. Kavalieratos’s lab to study the relationship between patient-reported CF symptoms and the presence of biomarkers of inflammation in blood and sputum. Other members of the lab, including Rollins Health Policy PhD student Alex Soltoff and Pulmonary T32 fellow Dr. Natalia Smirnova, are looking at relationships between CF symptoms and social determinants of health. All these approaches aim to expand understanding of how CF affects quality of life and to identify new targets for treatment. 

Recently, an R01 proposal led by Dr. Kavalieratos received a favorable score (9^th percentile) from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. This five-year study leverages the CF Center’s ties to the Georgia CF Data Warehouse, which houses data from Emory, CHOA and Augusta University. The study, which will recruit 140 adults with CF at Emory and Augusta in a year-long prospective cohort, will use patient-reported data, biological samples, and interviews to look at symptoms that occur together, and relationships between symptoms and individuals’ biological processes, social environment, and the care they receive. The goal is to identify new opportunities, biological and clinical, to reduce symptom burden for people with CF. Co-investigators on the project are Drs. Jane Lowers (pictured above right), Joshua Chandler (SOM – Pediatrics), Arlene Stecenko (SOM – Pediatrics), Anne Fitzpatrick (SOM – Pediatrics), Rishi Kamaleswaran (SOM – Biomedical Informatics), Nick Giordano (SON), Cade Hovater (patient stakeholder), and Ryan Harris (Augusta University).

Our research partnerships are on display every month in the research section of the newsletter. Collaborative publications, presentations, and funding awards are constant evidence of these relationships.

Dr. Miranda Moore has partnerships in the division of General Internal Medicine with her work on Healthy Kitchen Collaborative and in the division of Geriatrics and Gerontology with Georgia Memory Net and Georgia Gear. Dr. Moore's partnership with Dr. Alexis Bender (Geriatrics) and Dr. Fayron Epps (School of Nursing) resulted in a 3-year, $300,000 grant from the Alzheimer's Association to assess a new measure of community level dementia-friendliness in partnership with the Alter program, which aims to improve the physical and mental health outcomes of African American church community members using educational and infrastructural interventions. Pictured above, left to right: Krystyna Rastorguieva and Dr. Jonathan Bonnet, Dr. Sharon Bergquist, Dr. Miranda Moore and WellMory celebrating the 3^rd Emory Health Kitchen Collaborative grant received from the Ardmore Institute of Health to implement a Teaching Kitchen at Decatur Wellness and Weightloss Center.

Dr. Oguchi Nwosu (pictured above with his Ethiopian team partners) has a long-standing partnership with Black Lion Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is also collaborating with Dr. Jennifer Goedken in the department of OB/GYN on cervical cancer screening in Addis Ababa. This is a pilot study providing primary HPV test kits delivered to women’s homes where they self-swab. If they test positive, they make an appointment for Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid application (VIA) and if that is positive as well, they receive a one visit treatment with Cryotherapy.

FPM Summer Celebration Continues!

As you travel, relax, and enjoy your summer, please share pictures of yourself and your family to celebrate the importance of work-life balance!  

Pictured below: Team Palliative Research at happy hour to celebrate new postdoc Dr. Alexandre Cammarata-Mouchtouris’ upcoming wedding, as well as several new grants among the team.

After a Kathelen and Dan Amos Medical Student Loan Forgiveness Program whitewater rafting trip was rained out, the participants headed to Decatur for lunch instead. Pictured below: Amos Scholar and Emory M4 Lindsey Garrett, Amos Program Coordinator Shannon Thomas, Dr. Ted Johnson, FPM Faculty and Amos Scholars Dr. Ryan Smith and Dr. Sarah Dupont, and Dr. Dupont's husband.

Dorothy Dale Gococo-Benore was born on June 9 at 2:42 p.m.  Mother, Dr. Denise Gococo-Benore, is a Palliative Medicine Fellow who participated in graduation festivities just the night before little Dorothy's birth!  Mother and baby are healthy and happy. Congratulations to the newly minted family of four!

Transformative Research

Research Partnerships

New Funding for Kaplan and Mascaro

Dr. Deanna Kaplan and Dr. Jenny Mascaro will be Co-Investigators on the five-year OPT-IN study, funded by a $10 million dollar gift that establishes the Vail Health Behavioral Health Innovation Center in Vail, Colorado. The OPT-IN study is a collaborative effort between Vail Health, UW- Madison, and Drs. Kaplan and Mascaro at Emory. OPT-IN is the initial flagship project that launches the research program of the new center, and aims to optimize protocols for psilocybin-assisted treatment through a randomized clinical trial design and multi-method ambulatory assessment.

Chapters in New Diabetes Textbook from Ali and Shah

Springer released its 2nd Edition of The Diabetes Textbook: Clinical Principles, Patient Management and Public Health Issues with chapters on Diabetes Management in the United States and Healthy Lifestyles for the Self-Management of Type 2 Diabetes by Dr. Mo Ali and Dr. Megha Shah. Both Dr. Ali and Dr. Shah were quoted in the Emory press release.

Research News

Recent Presentations

2023 DOM Research Day Call for Abstracts

The Department of Medicine is now accepting abstracts for the 16th Annual DOM Research Day, held Thursday, October 26, from 7:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Emory Student Center. Abstracts for oral and poster presentations must be submitted by Tuesday, August 22, at 11:59 p.m. EST. Late submissions will not be accepted. Department of Family and Preventive Medicine faculty are invited to submit an abstract. All Department of Medicine faculty, fellows, residents, and students (whose primary mentor is a member of the Department of Medicine) are invited to submit an abstract. There is a limit of two abstracts per presenting author.

Faculty publications

Collaborative Faculty Publications

Dr. Lawson Marcewicz, Dr. Lynn O’Neill, and Dr. Lauren Sigler published Caring for Veterans with Serious Illness.

Dr. Sarah Cross and Dr. Dio Kavalieratos published Public Health and Palliative Care.

Dr. Jane Lowers and Dr. Dio Kavalieratos published Decision support training for advanced cancer family caregivers: Study protocol for the CASCADE factorial trial and Clinician perspectives on barriers and solutions to symptom management in cystic fibrosis.

Dr. Ali John Zarrabi and Dr. Dio Kavalieratos published Spotlighting Death Anxiety in Palliative Care

Dr. Deanna Kaplan and Dr. Ali John Zarrabi published Importance of Integrating Spiritual, Existential, Religious, and Theological Components in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies.

Faculty Publications

Dr. Mo Ali:

• Changing socioeconomic and geographic gradients in cardiovascular disease risk factors among Indians aged 15-49 years - evidence from nationally representative household surveys.
• Corrigendum: Impact of a tobacco sales ban on the frequency of tobacco consumption in India during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Counterfactual and Factual Reasoning over Hypergraphs for Interpretable Clinical Predictions on EHR.
• Disruption to routine diabetes care processes during the pandemic: evidence from a large integrated health system in the Southeast United States.
• Estimated glomerular filtration rate trajectories in south Asians: Findings from the cardiometabolic risk reduction in south Asia study.
• Hypergraph Transformers for EHR-based Clinical Predictions.
• Mapping digital health ecosystems in Africa in the context of endemic infectious and non-communicable diseases.
• Measuring the global burden of diabetes: implications for health policy, practice, and research.
• Weight gain after HIV therapy initiation: pathophysiology and implications.

Dr. Kimberly Curseen:

• Advancing the Vision of Palliative Care for the Older Adult.
• Early Palliative Care for the Geriatric Patient with Cancer.
• Psychedelics and Related Pharmacotherapies as Integrative Medicine for Older Adults in Palliative Care.
• Advance Care Planning in the Geriatrics Clinic.
• A Web-Based Dyadic Intervention to Manage Psychoneurological Symptoms for Patients With Colorectal Cancer and Their Caregivers: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Study.

Dr. Jodie Guest:

• Combined Infection Control Interventions Protect Essential Food Workers from Occupational Exposures to SARS-CoV-2 in the Agricultural Environment.
• Contribution of alcohol use in HIV/hepatitis C virus co-infection to all-cause and cause-specific mortality: A collaboration of cohort studies.

Dr. Ted Johnson:

• Use of Natural Language Processing of Patient-Initiated Electronic Health Record Messages to Identify Patients With COVID-19 Infection.

Dr. Deanna Kaplan:

• Importance of Integrating Spiritual, Existential, Religious, and Theological Components in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies
• Inclusion of Trainee Stakeholders Is Necessary for Effective Change in Health-Service-Psychology Internship Training

Dr. Dio Kavalieratos:

• Interventions to Improve Outcomes for Caregivers of Patients with Advanced Cancer: a Meta-Analysis.

Dr. Ambar Kulshreshtha

• Infrastructure Features Associated With Increased Department Research Capacity.
• Risk Factors Associated With Polypharmacy and Potentially Inappropriate Medication Use in Ambulatory Care Among the Elderly in the United States: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Dr. Megha Shah:

• Disparities in diabetes prevalence and management by race and ethnicity in the USA: defining a path forward.

Dr. Sathish Thirunavukkarasu:

• Precision Prevention of Type 2 Diabetes: An Approach to Revitalize Current Lifestyle Interventions. 
• Development of a Modified Global Physical Activity Questionnaire and its Construct Validity among Adults in Kerala, India
• Increased severity of COVID-19 in patients with newly diagnosed diabetes: a public health priority. (In Press).
•  A peer support program results in greater health benefits for peer leaders than other participants: Evidence from the Kerala Diabetes Prevention Program
• Global, regional, and national burden of diabetes from 1990 to 2021, with projections of prevalence to 2050: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021. 

Dr. Ali John Zarrabi

• Exploring the Unique Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelics to Reduce Chronic Shame Among Sexual and Gender Minority Adults

Educational Investments for our future

Graduations Galore!

Family Medicine Residency Graduates

Above, from left to right:  Dr. Sophia Rashid,  Dr. Victoria Anderson, Dr. Michael Zimmerman, Dr. So Mang “Sarah” Chang, Dr. Nercie Danger, Dr. Kimberly Eide,  Dr. Selena Trichel Payne, Dr. Jasmine Shackelford, Dr.Briana Toatley, Dr. Yiam Dieppa Garay.

2023 FMR Awards

Alanna Meadows, DO
PGY-1 Resident Award

Jungwon Allison Choi, MD
PGY-2 Resident Award

Jasmine Shackelford, MD, MSc
PGY-3 Resident Award

So Mang Sarah Chang, DO
Scholarly Research Project

Selena Trichel Payne, DO
STFM Resident Teaching Award

Dr. Bernadette Baker
Family Medicine Inpatient Faculty of the Year Award

Dr. Leah Robinowitz, DO
Family Medicine Outpatient Faculty of the Year Award

Dr. Lee Kneer
Rotation Teaching Award

Ronald "RJ" Frierson
Clinic Staff Award

Jonathan McLaughlin
Nursing Staff Award

What's Next for the FM Graduates?

Palliative Medicine

On June 8, 2023, the Division of Palliative Medicine celebrated its Annual Awards Ceremony and Fellowship Graduation.  Pictured below are this year's graduates (left to right): Alexandra Lozano San Miguel, MD, Gretchen Werner, NP, Cristina Vellozzi-Averhoff, MD, Nitya Nair Shah, MD, Bhamini Patel, MD, Zikran Choudhury, MD, and Denise Gococo-Benore, MD. 

The Division of Palliative Medicine also gave out 2023 division awards during their ceremony. Below are the FPM faculty and division of Palliative Medicine fellows who received awards.

Dr. Emily Pinto Taylor
Palliative Care Center Compassionate Caregiver Award

  Dr. Jane Lowers
Dr. Tammie Quest
Dr. Ali John Zarrabi
Dr. Sarah Cross
Dr. Dio Kavalieratos
Scholarly Impact Award

Dr. Joanne Kuntz
Distinguished Educator Award

Dr. Kimberly Curseen
Distinguished Service Award

Dr. Denise Lawe
Compassionate Caregiver EJCH Award

Dr. Emily Pinto Taylor
Compassionate Caregiver Grady Award

Dr. Jimi Malik
Fellowship Faculty Inpatient Teaching Award

Dr. Laura Waddle
Fellowship Faculty Outpatient Teaching Award

Dr. Nitya Nair Shah
Best Center-Wide Core Lecture Award

Dr. Bhamini Patel
Best Journal Club Award

Preventive Medicine

Congratulations to the Preventive Medicine Residency/Fellowship Graduates! Here is the link to the recording of HRSA’s National Virtual Preventive Medicine Graduation Ceremony. Emory's two graduates are at 28 minutes / 43 seconds into the event accessible by the link.

Educational News and Events

Welcome Hospice and Palliative Fellows!

On July 3, the Division of Palliative Medicine welcomed the new class of Hospice & Palliative Medicine fellows.  They are (pictured above, left to right): Lauren Lewis, MD, Meghan Murphy, MD, Adugnaw Bekele, MD, Deborah Yu, MD, Rebekka DePew, MD, Chike Leigh, MD, and Annie Lips, MD.  We look forward to learning and caring for patients alongside this esteemed group in the coming year.

FM Residents receive HOPE Award

Congratulations to the following Family Medicine Residents for receiving the Emory GME House Staff Organization Professionalism Excellence (HOPE) Award! Their colleagues nominated them for demonstrating exceptional professionalism while working with peers in and across different departments.

Dr. Alanna Meadows

Dr. Hanain Fazal

Dr. Matthew Young

Dr. Carolina Huertas Ayala

Save the Date!

Dr. Paul Williams of "The Curbsiders Podcast" has agreed to be the speaker for the William T. Branch Innovations in Primary Care lectureship this year.   On October 4, 2023, he will speak on social media and its impact on medicine.  

Kern Fellowship in Interprofessional Leadership: Applications Due August 7

A 9-month program focused on developing the high-level professional and relational abilities necessary to create interprofessional leadership and professionalism at the individual, organizational, and community levels.

Participants will be early to mid-career educators from any of the Emory health sciences schools, centers, programs, or practice sites who are dedicated to and passionate about educating students, trainees, faculty, or others, and who would like to enhance their leadership skills. At least two years of educational experience preferred with positional authority to influence instruction, curricular programs, and/or interprofessional collaborative practice; support of administrative unit is required.

Application and more information about eligibility, important dates, and requirements available here 

Live chat information session online via Zoom will be held on July 27th at 5 pm.

WHEA Teaching Fellowship:
Applications Due September 1 

A 12-month program for health sciences educators who want to advance their teaching skills and offer quality instruction to their learners. The fellowship includes monthly two-hour skills development workshops and monthly online intersession discussion groups. All sessions are organized around three domains: Designing and Planning Learning, Teaching and Facilitating Learning, and Assessment of Learning.

This fellowship is ideal for early career educators from any of the Emory health sciences schools, centers, programs, or practice sites who are dedicated to and passionate about educating trainees, staff, or other colleagues, and who would like to enhance their training in key aspects and strategies of the education process. Support of administrative unit required.

Application and more information here

Service for our future

News from the FPM DEI Council

Pictured above: Pamela Okolie, Emory PA student, at the Diversity and Inclusion Week Block Party

Community Forum on Engagement, Equity, and Inclusion

Aug. 17 | Noon - 1 p.m. | Zoom 

Save the date to join us for a quarterly update on SOM diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and strategic priorities. Register

Queer Women of Emory Luncheon

Aug. 2 | Noon - 1:30 p.m. | Miller Ward Alumni House 

Register today for a gathering with fellow queer women of Emory for lunch and social networking.
Register

Article: Equity and Obesity Treatment — Expanding Medicaid-Covered Interventions

NEJM Interview: Structural Ableism — Essential Steps for Abolishing Disability Injustice. An Interview with Ari Ne’eman on opportunities to support access to home- and community-based services for people with disabilities. 

News from the Office of Faculty Development 

EmoryFIRST: Faculty members are responsible for keeping their EmoryFIRST profile page updated. Please ensure you are regularly maintaining your profile and have linked it to the new Open Researcher and Contributor ID system (ORCID) which connects to your scholarly work. Faculty members' Emory FIRST profiles are regularly used in Emory publications or on DOM and SOM web pages.