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April Updates from the Mongan Institute
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In the News: Helping to Lead the COVID-19 Response
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Rochelle Walensky, MD, MS, is part of the COVID-19 Advisory Board brought together by Massachusetts' Baker-Polito administration. The COVID-19 Advisory Board is a group of medical experts that will support the Response Command Center as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts continues to respond to COVID-19.
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 Tracker App and the COronavirus Pandemic Epidemiology (COPE) Consortium
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With emergency funding from the UK National Health Service and the Wellcome Trust, the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit (CTEU) within the Mongan Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital launched a mobile “COVID Symptom Tracker” app that was co-developed by King's College and Zoe Global Ltd. It was deployed in the UK on March 24, 2020, garnering over 1 million downloads in just 48 hours. The US version of the app was deployed shortly afterwards. 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 COronovirus 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. We are also working hard to get central IRB approval, if that is of interest. This will offer you an opportunity to rapidly introduce an easy-to-use data collection tool to track COVID-19 exposure, symptoms, and outcomes in real-time during the acute phase of this pandemic, which will be invaluable for your studies. Ultimately, we will be in a position to pool data to address key research questions as a collective. We recognize that this is an extremely busy and uncertain time, but it is important to act quickly given the speed at which the virus is affecting our participants.
If you are interested, please contact us at predict@mgh.harvard.edu and provide us 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.
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COVID-19 Mental Health Disparities: Call for Research Participants
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As part of the COVID-19 response, the Disparities Research Unit staff at the Mongan Institute have adapted our STRONG MINDS program for adults 18 years or older who are fluent in English, Spanish, Mandarin, or Cantonese, with symptoms of depression, anxiety, or trauma to participate in this research study. We aim to help adults better handle stress, and lead happier and healthier lives by promoting mental health in these times of extreme uncertainty. We would like to see how COVID-19 is impacting your life and how STRONG MINDS can help you cope with the related stress.
Eligible participants who speak any of the study languages may receive at no cost 10 individual psychoeducation sessions and referral to services by a care manager. The sessions will introduce you to skills that may help you manage unhelpful thoughts, strategies to practice self-care and mindfulness, and ways to maintain a more positive outlook on life. If interested, please contact Dr. Larimar Fuentes in English or Spanish at 617-643-0514 or 617-755-0763, or Liao Zhang in English, Mandarin, or Cantonese at 617-417-4783.
Margarita Alegria, PhD, is Chief of the Disparities Research Unit and a Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
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MGH Equity and Community Health COVID Response Team & The Partners HealthCare COVID-19 Resource Repository
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Massachusetts General Hospital has launched the MGH Equity and Community Health COVID Response Team comprised of staff across the hospital, including Aswita Tan-McGrory, MBA, MSPH, Director of the Disparities Solutions Center and Administrative Director of the Mongan Institute. Joseph Betancourt, MD, MPH, Vice President and Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer at Mass General, is leading the MGH Equity and Community Health COVID Response Team with Joan Quinlan, MPA, Vice President of Community Health.
The team is working to ensure that all we do to address COVID-19 at MGH has equity and community health as our foundation. The team has workstreams focused on ensuring that all communications to patients and employees are in multiple languages, that all clinical interactions have the capacity to meet the needs of diverse and multilingual populations, and that the critical social needs of our communities are addressed.
As part of ensuring an equitable response to COVID-19, the Partners 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 Partners HealthCare 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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Observational Data Collection for COVID-19 Suspects/Cases
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Ingrid Bassett, MD, MPH, James Meigs, MD, MPH, and Virginia (Jeanne) Triant, MD, MPH, are leading an effort to launch observational data collection for COVID-19 suspects/cases across all Partners HealthCare hospitals. This builds on expertise from multiple specialities and will utilize a combination of manual chart review and Epic data extraction. There will be a focus on special populations (e.g., pregnant women, pediatrics, people living with HIV). The team is also working with hospitals throughout Boston to harmonize data for a Boston-wide observational cohort study.
Dr. Bassett is Co-Director of the Medical Practice Evaluation Center within the Mongan Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and an infectious disease physician at Mass General. Dr. Meigs is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a physician in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Mass General, and Co-Director of the MGH Clinical Research Program’s Clinical Effectiveness Research Group. Dr. Triant is an associate physician in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Mass General and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
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COVID and Home-Based Care for Elderly and Seriously Ill Adults
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Christine Ritchie, MD, MSPH, is co-leading the Home-based Care Workgroup with Judy Flynn of Partners Home Health as part of Partners’ Covid Continuum of Care response. This Partners-wide effort includes: 1) Adapting infection control guidelines for all home visits (including people who are immunocompromised, frail elderly, and other seriously ill adults); 2) Creating an inventory for all programs that involve visits at home to optimize coordination and workflows; 3) Developing frameworks for triaging all home visits; 4) Developing capacity strategies to accommodate outflow from hospitals; 5) Engaging an environmental scan of national guidelines and best practices; and 6) Optimizing Communication (clinician, patient), dissemination.
Dr. Ritchie is the Kenneth L. Minaker Chair in Geriatrics and Director of Research for the Division of Palliative Care and Geriatric Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is a board-certified geriatrician and palliative care physician and conducts research focused on optimizing quality of life for those with chronic serious illness and multimorbidity. She co-leads the NINR-funded Palliative Care Research Cooperative and the national Home-based Primary Care and Palliative Care Consortium, which seeks to improve our understanding and care of the homebound population. Dr. Ritchie is the Director of the Center for Aging and Serious Illness Research at the MGH Mongan Institute.
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Frontline Clinician Resilience Program
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Elyse Park, PhD, MPH, is leading the Frontline Clinician Resilience Program, which helps Partners HealthCare employees develop resiliency skills to adapt to the additional burden COVID-19 has placed on the medical system and its constituents. This program offers one-hour sessions that are held twice weekly for 4 weeks via Zoom to help those providing direct care to patients with much-need stress management, self-care, and resiliency tools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Partners HealthCare physicians and nurses can register for the groups at the Benson-Henry Institute website by clicking here. Karen Donelan, ScD, EdM, and Christine Vogeli, PhD, are partnering with Dr. Park on behalf of Partners Population Health to conduct a pre/post assessment.
Dr. Park is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Associate Director of Survivorship Research and Psychosocial Services for the Mass General Cancer Center Survivorship Program, Director of Behavioral Sciences at the MGH Tobacco Treatment & Research Center, and Director of Behavioral Research at the MGH Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine.
Dr. Donelan is a senior scientist at the Health Policy Research Center within the Mongan Institute at Mass General, Director of the Survey Research and Implementation Unit in the MGH Division of Clinical Research, and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Vogeli is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of Evaluation and Research at Partners Population Health.
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Adverse and Allergic Drug Reactions related to COVID-19 Treatments
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Kimberly Blumenthal, MD, MSc, is collaborating with informaticians at Brigham and Women's Hospital to study adverse and allergic drug reactions related to COVID-19 treatments across Partners HealthCare hospitals.
Dr. Blumenthal is Co-Director of the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Immunology Clinical Epidemiology Program within the Mongan Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital.
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COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance
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Zachary Wallace, MD, MSc, is on the Steering Committee of the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance, which launched an IRB-approved physician-reported registry to collect cases of rheumatic disease patients infected with COVID-19. There is also a complementary patient-reported experience registry.
Dr. Wallace is a rheumatologist and researcher in the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Immunology Clinical Epidemiology Program and an Assistant Professor of Medicine 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.
- To fast or not to fast: Lipid measurement and cardiovascular disease risk estimation in rural sub-Saharan Africa
Yang IT, Hemphill LC, Kim JH, Bibangambah P, Sentongo R, Kakuhire B, Plutzky J, Boum Y 2nd, Tsai AC, Okello S, Siedner MJ. To fast or not to fast: Lipid measurement and cardiovascular disease risk estimation in rural sub-Saharan Africa. J Glob Health. 2020 Jun;10(1):010407. doi: 10.7189/jogh.10.010407.
- The impact of gun violence restraining order laws in the U.S. and firearm suicide among older adults: a longitudinal state-level analysis, 2012–2016
Saadi A, Choi KR, Takada S, Zimmerman FJ. The impact of gun violence restraining order laws in the U.S. and firearm suicide among older adults: a longitudinal state-level analysis, 2012–2016. BMC Public Health. 2020 April 7;20. doi: 10.1186/s12889-020-08462-6.
- Risk Factor Profiles Differ for Cancers of Different Regions of the Colorectum
Wang L, Lo CH, He X, Hang D, Wang M, Wu K, Chan AT, Ogino S, Giovannucci EL, Song M. Risk Factor Profiles Differ for Cancers of Different Regions of the Colorectum. Gastroenterology. 2020 Apr 1. pii: S0016-5085(20)30408-X. doi: 10.1053/j.gastro.2020.03.054. [Epub ahead of print]
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MGH COVID-19 Treatment Guide Available in English and Spanish
Massachusetts General Hospital is collecting and curating information to help clinical professionals stay up to date during this crisis. Thanks to the help of volunteer medical translators and editors, the MGH COVID-19 Treatment Guide is now available in Spanish, too.
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Bridging the Divide: Cancer Care & Mental Health in the Time of COVID-19
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Friday, April 17
8:30am - 11:30am
Registration is now open for the Bridging the Divide Virtual Symposium: Cancer Care & Mental Health in the Time of COVID-19, scheduled for Friday, April 17. We look forward to gathering a diverse group of clinicians, researchers, persons with lived experiences, caregivers, advocates, and community stakeholders for a day of discussion, engagement, and partnership-building around promoting equity and reducing stigma for persons with cancer and mental illness. The event is free but registration is required.
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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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