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May Updates from the Mongan Institute
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Dear Colleague,
In this newsletter you will find:
Mongan Institute News and Events
- Highlights of Mongan Institute Faculty COVID-19 Research and Efforts:
- Rochelle Walensky, MD, MS, Serves On Massachusetts Reopening Advisory Board
- COVID Symptom Study App Shows Promise in Tracking COVID-19 Infections
- Joseph Betancourt, MD, MPH, Launches New Video Series for Spanish-Speaking Communities
- Julie Levison, MD, MPhil, MPH, Appears as Panelist on Town Hall with MA Senator Becca Rausch: "Health Equity in the Era of COVID-19"
- COVID-19 Global Dermatology Registry
- Aswita Tan-McGrory, MBA, MSPH, Appears on Boston Neighborhood Network's "Seniors On The Move"
- Margarita Alegria, PhD, Awarded "Outstanding Reviewer" by Health Services Research
- Recent Publications
- Social Media Highlight
News and Events from Our Partners
- Access the Mass General Brigham COVID-19 Multilingual, Disability, & Community Health Resource Repository
- Watch the Mass General Brigham Webinar: "Ensuring Equity in the Response to COVID-19"
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Rochelle Walensky, MD, MS, Serves On Massachusetts Reopening Advisory Board
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Rochelle Walensky, MD, MS, is serving as part of the Massachusetts Reopening Advisory Board, formed on April 28 by the Baker-Polito administration. The Reopening Advisory Board includes representatives from the business community, public health officials, and municipal leaders from across the Commonwealth. This group is charged with advising the administration on strategies to reopen the economy in phases based on health and safety metrics.
Dr. Walensky is Chief of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a practicing Infectious Disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.
In the media:
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COVID Symptom Study App Shows Promise in Tracking COVID-19 Infections
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The "COVID Symptom Study" App, launched by the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit (CTEU) within the Mongan Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-developed by King's College and Zoe Global Ltd, has been shown to effectively predict COVID-19 infections. It was first deployed in the UK on March 24, 2020, garnering over 1 million downloads in just 48 hours. Research use of the COVID Symptom Tracker app is registered with clinicaltrials.gov as NCT04331509. The U.S. Principal Investigator is Andrew Chan, MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chief of the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit at MGH, and Director of Cancer Epidemiology at the MGH Cancer Center.
The CTEU is reaching out to investigators of cohort and clinical studies to join our efforts through a COronavirus Pandemic Epidemiology (COPE) Consortium in which cohorts (e.g., population based, clinic, etc.) and clinical studies could deploy this tool at no cost. There are opportunities to customize for your specific needs. If you are interested, please read the Call to Action in Cancer Epidemiology, Biology & Prevention and contact us at predict@mgh.harvard.edu, provideing details about your cohort or clinical study, specific needs, and ideas about how this might complement work you are already planning or doing around COVID-19.
In the media:
Publications:
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Joseph Betancourt, MD, MPH, Launches New Video Series about COVID-19 for Spanish-Speaking Communities
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Joseph Betancourt, MD, MPH, Vice President and Chief Equity and Inclusion Offer at Mass General, has announced a new video series in which he will share information about COVID-19 in Spanish to keep Spanish-speaking communities up-to-date. New videos will be published on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to the Mass General YouTube channel and shared across Mass General's social media and web platforms.
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Julie Levison, MD, MPhil, MPH, Appears as Panelist on Town Hall with MA Senator Becca Rausch: "Health Equity in the Era of COVID-19"
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Julie Levison, MD, MPhil, MPH, served as a panelist on a virtual Town Hall hosted by MA State Senator Becca Rausch, "Health Equity in the Era of COVID-19," along with Dr. Jonathan Jackson and Dr. Regina LaRocque. Dr. Levison is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School with clinical interests in general infectious diseases, HIV medicine, and immigrant health.
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COVID-19 Global Dermatology Registry
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Esther Freeman, MD, PhD, launched an international COVID-19 dermatology registry with the American Academy of Dermatology. Through the information collected through this registry, researchers discovered "COVID toes," a potential symptom of COVID-19.
Dr. Freeman is Director of Global Health Dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
In the media:
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Aswita Tan-McGrory, MBA, MSPH, Appears on Boston Neighborhood Network's "Seniors On The Move"
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Aswita Tan-McGrory, MBA, MSPH, Administrative Director of the Mongan Institute and Director of the Disparities Solutions Center, discussed disparities in health care access and health care outcomes with Yvonne Powell on Boston Neighborhood Network's "Seniors On The Move." The episode originally aired on February 26, 2020, and continues to air every week. It is also available to view online.
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Margarita Alegria, PhD, Awarded "Outstanding Reviewer" by Health Services Research
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Margarita Alegria, PhD, was awarded "Outstanding Reviewer for Health Services Research in 2019" by Health Services Research (HSR). HSR is one of the most highly cited health services research journals. Over the past two years, HSR has relied on 961 reviewers to evaluate original submissions. Dr. Alegria was rated in being the top 5% of reviewers during this time period for being exceptional in the volume and quality of reviews for HSR.
Dr. Alegria is Chief of the Disparities Research Unit at the Mongan Institute and a Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
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Recent Publications
Below are a few publications recently published by Mongan Institute investigators. Please find a more comprehensive list of publications from the past 3 months on our website.
- Antibiotic Use Associated With Risk of Colorectal Polyps in a Nationwide Study
Song M, Nguyen LH, Emilsson L, Chan AT, Ludvigsson JF. Antibiotic Use Associated With Risk of Colorectal Polyps in a Nationwide Study [published online ahead of print, 2020 May 23]. Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2020;S1542-3565(20)30697-2. doi:10.1016/j.cgh.2020.05.036
- Challenges of Developing a Natural Language Processing Method with Electronic Health Records to Identify Persons with Chronic Mobility Disability
Agaronnik N, Lindvall C, El-Jawahri A, He W, Iezzoni L. Challenges of Developing a Natural Language Processing Method with Electronic Health Records to Identify Persons with Chronic Mobility Disability [published online ahead of print, 2020 May 21]. Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2020;S0003-9993(20)30291-4. doi:10.1016/j.apmr.2020.04.024
- An Exploration of Health Behaviors in a Mind-Body Resilience Intervention for Parents of Children with Developmental Disabilities
Millstein RA, Lindly OJ, Luberto CM, Perez GK, Schwartz GN, Kuhlthau K, Park ER. An Exploration of Health Behaviors in a Mind-Body Resilience Intervention for Parents of Children with Developmental Disabilities [published online ahead of print, 2020 May 12]. J Dev Behav Pediatr. 2020;10.1097/DBP.0000000000000813.
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Access the Mass General Brigham COVID-19 Multilingual, Disability, & Community Health Resource Repository
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As part of ensuring an equitable response to COVID-19, Mass General Brigham has created a resource repository that includes:
- Multilingual resources to serve the needs of patients, providers, and employees who speak languages other than English
- Resources to support clinicians working with people with disabilities
- Community health resources
This repository was created for internal use within the Mass General Brigham system, but we are sharing it here with other organizations who may benefit from these resources. We will continue to update this repository with additional resources. Visit our website to view the repository and submit suggestions for new resources to be included.
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Watch the Mass General Brigham Webinar: "Ensuring Equity in the Response to COVID-19"
Mass General Brigham launched a system-wide COVID-19 effort to ensure that all patient, employee, and community-related efforts have equity as a foundational component. Convened in early March, the Equity and Community Health COVID Response Team developed multiple workstreams focused on ensuring:
- communications to patients and employees are in multiple languages and accessible to patients with disabilities
- interactions have the capacity to meet the needs of diverse and multilingual populatio
- deploying multilingual caregivers across the system to meet the needs of limited-English proficient patients and employees
- working in partnership with local communities, develop clinical and community responses to the disparities and social determinants of health that have led to and are exacerbated by COVID-19.
This webinar offers listeners an opportunity to learn more about how these workstreams were created, key initiatives that were developed, and important lessons learned. This session focused on sharing practical, actionable strategies and lessons learned from a large health care system-wide effort and multiple issues the team has managed over the last few months.
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Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay up-to-date on important news, updates, events, and publications from our researchers! Don't forget to tag us and use our hashtag, #MonganInstitute, so we can see your posts, too.
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