News from Family & Preventive Medicine

September 2019

Just 55 Words 
from the Chair: 

Welcome to our new Division of Palliative  Medicine colleagues!

Daniel Bell
Gretchen Bell
Laura Brachman
Kimberly Curseen
Kevin Day
Paul DeSandre
McLean Ellis
Quintesia Grant
Susan Kunihiro
Joanne Kuntz
Ashima Lal
Kevin Li
Jimi Malik
Meredith Maxwell
Julie Mitchell
Lauren Marcewicz
Chinonye Nnaji
Lynn O'Neill
Ravi Pathak
Tammie Quest
Jesse Soodalter
Jabeen Taj
Laura Waddle
Ali John Zarrabi

We look forward to doing great work with you!

Pictured below:  Palliative Care colleagues at a division retreat, led by Dr. Tammie Quest

Department Website update:

The new Department website is now under construction. If you have urgent content changes for the current website, please email them to Leigh Partington. Department, Program, and Division leadership will have an opportunity to review the new website before it goes live later this fall.

Transformative Research

2019 Emory SOM Researcher Appreciation Day Recognition

Family Medicine Team joins
Quality Academy: Faculty Development in QI 

Congratulations to Family Medicine faculty Drs. Miranda Moore, Jennifer Mascaro, Neena Ghose, Jose Villalon-Gomez, and Mirtha Aguilar-Alvarado, and Family Medicine residents and Healthcare staff Priti Patel, Dr. Bernadette Baker, Dr. Angela Holder, and Oluyinka Ajirotutu! Their Project Team was accepted into the Emory Quality Academy 2019 course for Faculty Development in Quality Improvement. The Family Medicine team's project is titled "Family medicine resident and faculty wellness improvement through an app-delivered mindfulness meditation intervention." We look forward to hearing more about their results!

Project Abstract: Family medicine residents and physicians often report higher workplace burnout than other medical trainees and physicians. Research has shown that mindfulness meditation can help reduce the stress of medical training and practice. Smartphone-delivered applications of mindfulness activities offer a feasible group-based intervention to improve well-being and reduce the likelihood of burnout. Family medicine residents and family medicine faculty will be recruited to participate in this randomized, single-blind, wait-list controlled pilot study. Faculty and trainees will be randomized to either receive a phone-based mindfulness meditation application (10% Happier) or to a waitlist group that receives the application at the conclusion of the study. We will examine the effects of an 8 week intervention consisting of app-delivered daily meditation exercises on a battery of self-report measures and on patient self-reported satisfaction with clinicians before and after the intervention. Participants are expected to show a positive improvement in sleep, overall mindfulness, and measures of social well-being. Additionally participants are expected to see an improvement in the percentage of their patients who would recommend the provider from Press Ganey patient surveys.

New Publications

Drs. Mo Ali and Megha Shah had an invited commentary published in JAMA Internal Medicine in August. You can read "Age and Age-old Disparities in Diabetes Care Persist" here. 

Dr. Sara Turbow, Preventive Medicine resident and Emory General Internal Medicine faculty member, is senior author on an upcoming publication in the Journal of General Internal Medicine titled, "Patient Outcomes Following Interhospital Care Fragmentation: A Systematic Review." A link to the article will be included in a future issue of this newsletter.

Research Opportunities

If you are interested in becoming a more active participant in our department's research, please contact Vice Chair for Research, Dr. Mo Ali (mkali@emory.edu).

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Reminder: Health Services Research Center (HSRC) Lunch and Learn   
Wednesday, 9/25 at noon in SOM 190P.  Join the HSRC for an interactive Q&A on major federal sources for funding health services research, including AHRQ, PCORI, VA HSR&D, and the NIH. The panel includes: Rachel Patzer (Director Health Services Research), Neal Dickert (Associate Professor- Cardiology), Laura Plantinga (Assistant Professor- Renal Medicine), Camille Vaughan (Associate Professor- General Medicine/Geriatrics).  Register | Read more    

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Subscribe to the Department of Medicine's weekly newsletter "What's Up in DOM Research" for the latest on NIH funding opportunities and notices, federal funding opportunities, and more. Email domresearch@emory.edu to subscribe.

Educational Investments for our future

Dr. Aguilar named Family Medicine Residency Associate Program Director 

Dr. Mirtha Aguilar will be joining the residency leadership as Associate Program Director starting October 1st. Congratulations, Dr. Aguilar!

Dr. Jodie Guest awarded IPECP Synergy Award for Emory Farmworker Project 

Congratulations to Dr. Jodie Guest who was awarded a Woodruff Health Sciences Center (WHSC)’s Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice (IPECP) Synergy Award supporting a grant to enhance interprofessional curriculum and learning with the Emory Farmworker Project. This grant focuses on enhancing a collaborative approach to teaching DPT and PA students, facilitates the students cross-teaching, adds a social determinants of health component to the combined curriculum, and supports engagement from the DPT program into the Emory Farmworker Project. 

Jonie Fawley completes the Woodruff Health Educators Academy Fellowship 
 

Congratulations to Jonie Fawley, Assistant Professor in the PA Program, who completed the Woodruff Health Educators Academy Fellowship and presented her quality improvement project "Active Learning: Improving PACKRAT 1 (Physician Assistant Clinical Knowledge Rating and Assessment Tool) Scores. She was an inaugural fellow in this year-long program. 

Being of Service

Dr. Kulshreshtha joins medical mission to Jamaica
 

Dr. Ambar Kulshreshtha joined ophthalmologists and physicians from across the US in Jamaica during August to provide free back-to-school medical, dental, and optical checks for students who live in St. Catherine Parish. Dr. Kulshreshtha described the trip as "one of the most satisfying and exciting trips I have done in a long time." The healthcare team saw more than 600 students in 2 days and made the local paper. 

Pictured below: The crowd waiting outside the clinic

Pictured below:  Dr. Kulshreshtha in clinic

Pictured below:  The medical team

Emory Farmworker Project looking for volunteers in September 

Preceptors are needed September 27th - 29th in Bainbridge. Please contact Dr. Jodie Guest if you are interested in volunteering.

Evidence of our Awesomeness!

Dr. Guest honored with SOM Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Award

Dr. Nwosu named Chief of Service for Family Medicine at Emory University Hospital Midtown

Don't miss events and opportunities!

Heel to Heal 5K 

Come out and participate in the PA Program's Heel to Heal 5K on Saturday September 21st. Dress up in your best 80's or 90's work out gear! Stick around after the race for the Post-Run Party and Raffle Drawings! There will also be face-painting, games, music, and more! Visit h2h5k.com for more details and registration information.

Emory's Urban Health Initiative needs volunteers 

Emory's Urban Health Initiative is looking for student, faculty, and staff leaders to address urban health challenges and the social determinants of health in underserved areas of Atlanta. Learn more about UHI's projects, internships, Fellows, and volunteer opportunities by attending the Fall Orientation and Pizza Party on September 24th at 5:30 in the Rita Anne Rollins Auditorium in the Grace Crum Rollins Building. RSVP to urbanhealth@emory.edu. More information about UHI is available at their website. 

Resilience Movie Screening & Panel Discussion, Sept. 26

Join the Preventive Medicine Residency for "Emory Healthcare Network" Parts 2 & 3 

RSVP to Mary Davis to attend

If you’ve ever heard a talk on trauma and asked yourself, “How might this change my practice?” then this conference is for you! The goal of the event is to provide tangible skills that health providers can use in both primary care and inpatient settings. The day will feature two phenomenal keynote speakers, one of whom was one of the original ACE Study authors, as well as ten different workshops to choose from. And the best part – it’s free AND includes meals!

This event will be among the first of its kind (even on a national level) in terms of being tailored specifically for frontlines healthcare providers. So please consider attending if this topic piques your interest! Full program available HERE. 

Date: Saturday, October 19, 2019

Time: 8:00 AM – 1:30 PM

Location: Emory University School of Medicine, Room 110 (100 Woodruff Circle, Atlanta, GA, 30322)

Registration: Click Here

You're invited to DOM Research Day
 

2019 Department of Medicine Research Day will be held Friday, 11/1 from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Cox Hall Ballroom. Family Medicine faculty are welcome to attend - choose "Gen Med" as your division when you register if there is not a Family Medicine option. The full-day program includes both oral and poster presentations as well as a keynote address titled “Seizing unprecedented opportunities in discovery science” from Gary Gibbons, MD Director, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health. Awards are given at the conclusion to recognize the most outstanding presentations.  Register | Agenda | Read more  

Save the Date:
Paul W. Seavey Distinguished Lecture 
November 12, EUH Grand Rounds at 12 pm
 

Dr. Louise Walter from University of California San Francisco will give the 2019 Paul W. Seavey Distinguished Lecture on November 12th, 12 pm, Grand Rounds at Emory University Hospital.

Dr. Walter is a clinician-researcher who is a national leader in evaluating the real-world risks and benefits of cancer screening in older patients. She has transformed our approach to cancer screening in older adults. She has developed novel methodology demonstrating the fundamental importance of life expectancy rather than age in determining benefits and risks of screening. Virtually every cancer screening guideline cites her research. Further, her studies of older adults in poor health documented the extent to which screening can lead to clinical harm. Her approach also forms the basis for the management of other chronic diseases (e.g., diabetes) in older adults.

In addition, Dr. Walter led a series of seminal studies demonstrating decisions to screen older adults for cancer are often dictated more by age than health such that many patients in poor health continue to undergo screening while many healthy older patients fail to get screened. Also, she discovered that cancer screening frequently leads to significant harms without benefit in patients in poor health and developed a taxonomy and quantification of screening harms. This research changed national VA quality indicators and convinced California state auditors to abandon their mandatory mammography policy for health plans that care for frail elders.

Interprofessional Simulation Conference
November 14-15

Register for the conference HERE.

Primary Care Consortium Grants

The Emory Primary Care Consortium provides grants up to $2,500 to support any project that involves research, quality improvement, advocacy, development of clinical decision support tools, or educational activities in support of advancements in primary care (as it relates to patient safety, innovations in healthcare delivery, addressing disparities in healthcare, etc.).   You'll find details and application information on our website. 

The next deadline for application submission is December 15. Awardees will be announced by January 15.

Save the date: Georgia CTSA Clinical and Translational Conference: February 27-29, 2020 Callaway Resort and Gardens

The annual conference describes how the Georgia CTSA can support your research and increase grant funding; allows attendees to network with national leaders and NIH staff in translational science and education; and share research with others and develop new collaborations. 

Please Consider Participating in the
 All of Us Research Program

The Georgia CTSA recently partnered with the All of Us Research Program. All of Us is a health research program funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Its goal is to help researchers better understand why people get sick or stay healthy. The mission of the All of Us Research Program is simple: to speed up health research and medical breakthroughs. To do this, All of Us is asking one million people from across the U.S. to share their health data and samples to build the one of the largest health database of its kind. You are invited to participate and share! To learn more about Georgia enrollment in the project through Emory, email: allofus@emory.edu or call 404-778-1284.

Got news? Please send your announcements and photos to leigh.partington@emory.edu. The DFPM newsletter is published monthly.