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    CFAS News Current Edition

    Fallout from Change Healthcare Cyberattack; Measles Outbreak Challenges Public Health; Alabama Law Shields Health Care Workers from Criminal Charges, Allowing IVF Clinics to Reopen; and Other Items of Interest

    ā€œALPHV, the gang blamed for the massive Feb. 21 attack on UnitedHealth Groupā€™s Change Healthcare unit, took in a ransomware payment of $22 million before shutting down and will probably reemerge under a new name, as its core group has done before,ā€ reported the Washington Post. The Post also covered how federal officials and health industry executives have stepped in to help, reporting how the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) unveiled a strategy that encouraged private health plans to provide funding to the hardest-hit organizations and relax requirements that can slow the billing process.
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    The HHS released a statement this week acknowledging the impact the cyberattack had on Change Healthcare and the ripple down to clinics, physicians, and other health care networks. ā€œHHS is announcing immediate steps that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is taking to assist providers to continue to serve patients,ā€ the statement said, adding ā€œThis incident is a reminder of the interconnectedness of the domestic health care ecosystem and of the urgency of strengthening cybersecurity resiliency across the ecosystem.ā€
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    The measles outbreak across several regions in the United States is threatening the countyā€™s status as the nation that ā€œeliminatedā€ the disease, reported The Hill. The piece noted that while much of the attention is focused on Florida, where 10 cases have been reported, other states (including Arizona, California, Georgia, Indiana, and Maryland) have also reported cases.
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    In its reporting on the measles cases, STAT noted that officials from Floridaā€™s public health services have released few details about the cases there, which has some health experts worried that cases could continue to spread. The article said that measles vaccinations typically increase when there is an outbreak, but there is fear parents may not protect their children if they donā€™t know the details about cases in their area.
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    Alabama passed a law protecting in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment, reported the New York Times. With the governorā€™s signature, physicians and clinics providing IVF are now protected against criminal liability arising from a recent state Supreme Court ruling saying that frozen embryos should be considered children. While the law protects health care workers from liability, it does not answer the questions around personhood raised by the court. According to the piece, the University of Alabama at Birmingham health system said it was ā€œmoving to promptly resume I.V.F. treatmentsā€ and would ā€œcontinue to assess developments and advocate for protection.ā€
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    Aledade, one of the largest U.S. primary care networks, is the focus of a whistleblower Medicare lawsuit involving fraudulent and inflated billing of patients, reported KFF Health News. The suit alleges that Aledadeā€™s billing process allowed doctors to improperly boost revenues by adding overstated medical diagnoses to patientsā€™ electronic medical records. The case was originally filed in 2021 but remained under seal until early this year. The company has employed some notable past and current government figures, including Mandy Cohen, MD, who had been executive vice president at Aledade before becoming head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. The KFF piece also noted that ā€œAledade has grown rapidly behind hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital financing and was valued at $3.5 billion in 2023.ā€
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    Patients pay $39 on average to message their provider over email, reported Beckerā€™s Health IT.
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    A study on Medicare patients found that emergency surgery rates, serious complications, and readmissions are higher in areas with primary care shortages, reported MedPage Today.
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    Physicians are increasingly pushing back on noncompete clauses that are making it more challenging for patients to get the care they need in the midst of a physician shortage, reported Beckerā€™s Hospital Review.
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    KFF Health News profiled a small group of academics who have toiled to document how gun violence pervades American communities and discussed how the lack of federal funding to study gun violence prevention has made things more challenging.
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    Allison Brashear, MD, MBA, vice president for health sciences at the University at Buffalo (UB) and dean of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, wrote an op-ed for the Buffalo News describing UB student efforts to create a new elective course called Trauma Surgery and Trauma-Informed Care, ā€œwhich teaches support and advocacy for trauma patients ā€” as well as advanced trauma life support skills.ā€ The course was created in the aftermath of more than 600 mass shootings in the United States in just two years, including one in Buffalo, New York, in May of 2022. ā€œAs leaders of our institutions, we have a great responsibility to the people of the communities we serve,ā€ Dr. Brashear wrote. ā€œIt is imperative that we encourage fellow students and faculty to do the same.ā€
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    ā€œAccording to a number of small studies, between a third and two-thirds of the people who were addicted to opioids or crack cocaine and were treated with [a psychedelic called ibogaine] in a therapeutic setting were effectively cured of their habits, many after just a single session. Ibogaine appears to provide two seemingly distinct benefits. It quells the agony of opioid withdrawal and cravings and then gives patients a born-again-style zeal for sobriety,ā€ reported the New York Times.
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    The National Cancer Institute and Cancer Research UK awarded a $25 million grant to Morehouse School of Medicine to tackle racial disparities in cancer care and outcomes, reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The piece noted that Morehouse ā€œbecomes the first historically Black medical school to receive one of these awards, which draw hundreds of submissions from institutions around the globe.ā€
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    Modern Healthcare explored the reasons why physician and nursing staffing shortages are persisting, from training bottlenecks, regulation, and uneven distribution of certain providers.
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    In related news, MedPage Today reported that school shootings have reached their highest recorded levels in the United States. Fatalities from shootings have also increased. The findings were based on a paper published in the journal Pediatrics.
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    Axios discussed how hospitals and pharmacy benefit managers have been able to avoid major federal reforms so far, after the unveiling of the congressional spending deal this week.
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    Nature discussed what a Biden-Trump rematch could mean for science issues such as climate change, public health, and international scientific collaboration, noting that the two candidates have starkly different views on an array of science issues, including issues about public health.
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    A commentary in Medscape by Alok Patel, MD, discussed the arguments around residents unionizing. ā€œIf you listen to any residents who are amid a unionization process or you read articles about it, issues such as low pay, burnout from working long hours, no childcare options, a lack of leave time, parking fees, and more are among the many cited reasons that residents want to take this on,ā€ he wrote. Dr. Patel is a clinical instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at Columbia University.
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    People from the Middle East and North Africa often find themselves without a box to check in the United States Census, having to identify as ā€œWhiteā€ or another category that they feel doesnā€™t represent their roots, reported the New York Times.
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    A piece in Medscape delved into emergency medicineā€™s shift with alternative payment models.
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    The March edition of Academic Medicine is online and features content related to integrating personal experiences with teaching and patient care roles, the evidence base on precepting with telemedicine in medical education, statistical fragility in surveys, and medical student advocacy, among other topics.
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    From being deemed too weak to study medicine in the 19th century to outnumbering male medical students in the 21st, AAMCNews looked at the dramatic journey of women in medicine in the United States across the decades.
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    The AAMC has presented Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) with the 2024 AAMC Champion of Academic Medicine Award. This award recognizes their extraordinary leadership in strengthening the health workforce, advancing lifesaving medical research, promoting the nationā€™s public health, and supporting federal programs ā€” particularly those critical to the nationā€™s teaching health systems and hospitals, medical schools, learners, physician faculty, scientists, and the patients and communities they serve.
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    The AAMC has launched its Mentor Match program as part of the Virtual Communities Network. This exclusive tool is open to all members and is designed to connect experienced individuals in academic medicine with those seeking mentorship. A virtual orientation about the new program will take place on March 14.
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    The AAMC, the National Resident Matching ProgramĀ®, and the American Medical Association invite students, residents, faculty, and others to celebrate Match Week as part of the 2024 Main Residency MatchĀ® taking place March 11-15. Throughout the week, use #Match2024 on social media to tag congratulatory messages with photos and videos of students, faculty, and staff taking part in festivities. The AAMC will also be creating a YouTube playlist of Match videos and a Facebook album with photos from member institutions across the country (submissions can be sent to socialmedia@aamc.org).
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    The AAMC is seeking applications for its 2024 Telehealth Equity Catalyst (TEC) Awards as part of the associationā€™s continued efforts to support the work of AAMC-member institutions to advance telehealth equity in communities that are under-resourced with limited access to health care services. The TEC Awards will be granted for new or existing programs that reduce barriers to health care access using telehealth modalities and promote equitable care practices. The deadline to submit applications is April 16.
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    The AAMC is seeking applications for its 2024 Integrated Behavioral Health (IBH) Awards as part of the association's continued efforts to support the work of AAMC-member institutions to expand and enhance access to mental and behavioral health care. The awards will recognize excellence and innovation in existing IBH clinical care models and training programs. The deadline to submit applications is April 12.
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    The Arnold P. Gold Foundation is accepting applications for the 2024 Gold Student Summer Fellowship program. This opportunity is open to medical students who are interested in working on a research or service project with supportive funding of up to $4,000. The application deadline is March 18 at 11:59 p.m. PT.
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    Nominations are being accepted for the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN)-Gold Interprofessional Humanism in Healthcare Award to recognize the impact of interprofessional collaboration between nurses and physicians that has fostered humanism in health care. Nominations are due by May 1.
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    The AAMC will host the 2024 Virtual Medical School Fair from April 10-12. Registration is free.
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    The AAMC will host a webinar on March 27 from 2-3 p.m. ET, ā€œNavigating Critical Junctures: Academic Performance and Progression.ā€ The webinar will focus on exploring challenges and innovations associated with coordinated communication and collaboration, integrated student support and infrastructure to support academic performance, and progression. This webinar is part of a year-long series on holistic student support and is open to all. Questions about this webinar can be sent to holisticreview@aamc.org.
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    The AAMC will host a webinar on March 18 at 3 p.m. ET, ā€œMedical Education Four Years after COVID: Faculty and Staff Engagement,ā€ which will look at the lessons of COVID-19 and how the pandemic has shaped medical education. Speakers will explore how the roles of faculty and staff have been reshaped.
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    Carlos del Rio, MD, has been named chair of the Department of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. Dr. del Rio is a distinguished professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Emory University School of Medicine and executive associate dean for Emory at Grady.
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    Florette Gray Hazard, MD, has been appointed chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Sciences at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine. Dr. Hazard previously served as a professor of pathology and pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine.
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    Joshua Gordon, MD, PhD, has been appointed chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and psychiatrist in chief of the NewYork-Presbyterian campus at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, effective Aug. 15. Dr. Gordon previously served as director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
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    Michael Rosner, MD, has been appointed chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dr. Rosner has been serving as interim chair since October 2021.
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    Katharine Oā€™Connell White, MD, has been named chief and chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston Medical Center and Boston University Aram V. Chobanian & Edward Avedisian School of Medicine. Dr. White has served as vice chair of academics in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the associate director of the Complex Family Planning Fellowship, and the director of BEACON Research at Boston Medical Center.
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    Juan Pablo UmaƱa, MD, has been appointed chair of Cleveland Clinic Floridaā€™s Division of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. Dr. UmaƱa is an associate staff surgeon at Cleveland Clinicā€™s Main Campus in Ohio.
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    Laurence Katznelson, MD, has been appointed vice dean of medical education at Cedars-Sinai, effective May 1. Dr. Katznelson serves as a professor of neurosurgery and medicine and as associate dean of graduate medical education at Stanford University School of Medicine.
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    Alan Tita, MD, PhD, has been promoted to senior associate dean for global and womenā€™s health in the University of Alabama at Birmingham Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine. Dr. Tita previously served as associate dean for global and womenā€™s health at the school of medicine.
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    Craig Westling, DrPH, MPH, MS, has been appointed the inaugural associate dean for health sciences education at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Dr. Westling is an assistant professor of health policy and clinical practice at Geisel.
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    From the CFAS News Too-Much-of-a-Good-Thing desk comes reporting in the Washington Post about a German man who, for ā€œprivate reasons,ā€ put himself on the receiving end of 217 COVID-19 vaccination shots. Researchers got interested and wrote a paper published in the Lancet about this ā€œhypervaccinatedā€ manā€™s immune response, thinking it might somehow be compromised by all those shots. Nope. Heā€™s not only no worse for the wear, but his immune response is a little better than anticipated ā€” not that anyone is recommending 217 COIVD-19 shots, though the CDC would like you to get just one more if youā€™re over 65.
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    Wow. Five years in the making, the openVertebrate (oVert) project brought together 18 natural history institutions to create a free online museum that shows the anatomy and physiology of over 13,000 animal specimens, reported Popular Science. Project members took thousands of detailed CT images of an array of creatures, from amphibians and reptiles to birds and mammals, and collected them in one place for browsing. The pictures are definitely worth a look or two or three or a thousand.
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    And finally, howā€™s the weather up there? Cold and dark with an elevated risk of cancer. The University of Surrey released a statement on the work of its faculty experts shining a light on the lack of information provided to potential space tourists on the health risks linked to far-flung space travel, including exposure to unpredictable surges of electrically charged particles from the sun and dramatic increases in potential radiation exposure at higher altitudes. Their recommendations, including international standards and safety monitoring, were published in the journal Space Policy. Buckle up, have a safe flight, and donā€™t forget to pack the SPF 1,000.
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    Visit the CFAS Resources page for an archive of the previous edition of CFAS News as well as our People of Academic Medicine page, which features a running list of academic promotions, appointments, and departures.

    Your comments and news tips are always welcome. Please email them to Eric Weissman at eweissman@aamc.org.

    Read the previous edition of CFAS News.

    Eric Weissman
    Senior Director, Faculty and Academic Society Engagement
    AAMC
    eweissman@aamc.org
    www.aamc.org/cfas