Senate Reintroduces GME Bill; AAMC Announces Collaboration with Thalamus; Kaiser to Acquire Geisinger; and Other Items of Interest
The AAMC issued a statement on the Senate reintroduction of the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act, which seeks to increase federal funding for GME programs. “The AAMC applauds Senators Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for introducing important, bipartisan legislation to help expand the physician workforce and address the estimated physician shortage of up to 124,000 doctors by the year 2034. As the U.S. population increases and continues to age, requiring more medical care, it is critical to ensure there are enough physicians to provide care for patients who need it. Additionally, as many physicians near traditional retirement age, there is an urgent need to educate and train more doctors to help ensure there are enough physicians to care for patients in communities across our country,” said AAMC President and CEO David J. Skorton, MD, and AAMC Chief Public Policy Officer Danielle Turnipseed, JD, MHSA, MPP.
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The AAMC and Thalamus, an interview-scheduling platform that connects residency and fellowship applicants with program administrators, have announced a strategic collaboration to accelerate innovation and ease the transition to residency for medical students, medical schools, and residency programs. The collaboration will combine the AAMC’s leadership in innovation along the continuum from medical school to residency training and continuing medical education with Thalamus’ market-leading product and software development expertise.
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Kaiser Permanente said it expected to acquire Geisinger Health “in an effort to develop a new company that would operate nonprofit community health systems,” reported the New York Times. “Kaiser will not absorb Geisinger, which will keep its name. Instead, Geisinger, which is headquartered in Danville, Pa., will be folded into Risant Health, a new nonprofit group that will operate independently.” Geisinger’s chief executive, Jaewon Ryu, MD, JD, will serve as Risant’s chief executive when the deal is completed, said the Times.
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Could it be that the gender gap in academic fields is not as pronounced as traditionally thought? Inside Higher Ed covered a study published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest which found that tenure-track women are “at parity with tenure-track men in three domains (grant funding, journal acceptances, and recommendation letters) and are advantaged over men in a fourth domain (hiring).” As for teaching ratings and salaries, the study found evidence of bias against women, but noted that gender gaps in salary were “much smaller than often claimed,” though the authors noted they “were nevertheless concerning.” The authors added, “Even when limiting ourselves to a consideration of STEM tenure-track jobs, there are nevertheless many contexts in which women may face barriers to success in entering and succeeding in these jobs.”
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Reporting in the U.K.-based Guardian covered a push for unionization among some recently graduated medical students just starting their careers in medicine. The piece noted that more than 2,500 residents and fellows at Massachusetts General Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston “are currently waiting to have a union election date set after filing this year” in the face of opposition among some in hospital management. The piece added that 1,400 residents at Penn Medicine have filed for a union election in May.
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A study published in JAMA Network Open found that, “on average, every 10-percent increase in county-level Black [primary care provider] representation was associated with 31-day higher age-standardized life expectancy among Black individuals. Higher Black PCP representation levels were also associated with lower all-cause mortality rates among Black individuals and with reduced mortality rate disparities between Black and White individuals.” Paper authors included Zakia Nouri and Michael Dill of the AAMC Workforce Studies team.
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“At many of the nation’s [historically Black colleges and universities], just 1 in 3 undergraduate students are men. It’s true at some of the largest public institutions, including Texas Southern University, and some of the most-selective private ones, such as Howard University. ... HBCUs educate most of the nation’s Black engineers, lawyers and judges. Fewer men in these programs means that the diversity of the professions will suffer and that the racial wealth gap will grow. And for fields such as teaching and medicine, which already are experiencing shortages, shrinking numbers of men at HBCUs could hurt efforts to enlarge the ranks of those professions,” reported the Washington Post.
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The Radiological Society of North America, a CFAS member society, published an article that examined the potential challenges that deter women medical students from selecting radiology as their specialty.
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A study led by John Ayers, PhD, MA, from the Qualcomm Institute within the University of California, San Diego, and published in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that medical advice dispensed from an artificial intelligence system like ChatGPT did a better job empathetically addressing patient questions and concerns than human physicians. “ChatGPT messages responded with nuanced and accurate information that often addressed more aspects of the patient’s questions than physician responses,” said Jessica Kelley, a nurse practitioner with San Diego firm Human Longevity and a co-author in the study.
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And Politico reported on how hospitals and health systems are anticipated to put AI to use in consumer frontline health care in the near future, along with what the patient experience might be, not to mention rules and governance surrounding AI-generated health advice.
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Charles Lieber, PhD, a former Harvard chemistry professor, was sentenced this week for failing to disclose ties and funding to the Chinese Thousand Talents program and Wuhan University in China, reported the New York Times. He will serve two days in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, with six months of home confinement. He will also pay a fine of $50,000 and $34,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.
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“Almost no nation in the world defeated Covid, and few managed to navigate it without an awful lot of death. The United States did worse than its peer countries, all told, but it was not an extreme outlier in terms of excess mortality. Things were not always more restricted here than in many other rich countries, but often looser, school closings perhaps aside,” said science writer David Wallace Wells in an op-ed in the New York Times titled, “Who’s to Blame for a Million Deaths?”
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On a related note, the editorial board of the Washington Post said, “The pandemic … revealed ‘a collective national incompetence in government.’ This warning comes through over and over again in ‘Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report,’ a book published Tuesday by a group of 34 specialists led by Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission and a history professor at the University of Virginia. Their verdict: ‘The leaders of the United States could not apply their country’s vast assets effectively enough in practice.’”
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Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, sent a letter to China’s Ambassador to the U.S. requesting that the Chinese government make scientists and military officials available to testify in Washington, D.C., on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, reported The Hill.
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A study published in JAMA Network Open found that, during the pandemic, gun assault rates doubled for children in Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and New York City, reported NPR.
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But in related findings, a research team from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the University of California, Davis, found that people in rural areas and small towns are more likely to die from gun violence than those in densely populated urban areas. Researchers based their findings on an analysis of multiple cause-of-death data files from the National Center for Health Statistics’ National Vital Statistics System over a two-decade period ending in 2020. The findings appear in the journal JAMA Surgery.
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A policy change at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that aimed to prevent researchers from escaping the consequences of a sexual harassment investigation apparently failed, since one Florida State University genetics researcher “was able to take two National Institutes of Health grants with him and receive a third one when he left the university for the San Diego Biomedical Research Institute despite a lengthy investigation that found numerous incidents,” reported Inside Higher Ed.
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PLOS responded to a request for information from the NIH on the agency’s planned implementation of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy directive to make all federally funded research immediately publicly accessible.
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“If we are simply creating techies who can only work with the technology, we’re in big trouble. We need people who can think about the increasingly important role of technology and look at the big ethical and philosophical questions that we’ll be facing as we go through this next period in our development as a society,” said president emeritus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Freeman Hrabowski III, PhD, in an interview with Issues in Science and Technology.
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The Washington Post discussed the policy battle between certain congressional leaders and hospital lobbyists over site-neutral payments.
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A report commissioned by the American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals stated that physician-owned hospitals (POHs) “generally treat a population that is younger, less complex or comorbid, and less likely to be dually eligible or non-white, and that POHs have higher margins and lower unreimbursed and uncompensated care costs as a percent of net patient revenue compared to non-POHs.” Medpage Today covered the report.
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Maryland is about to become the first state to make a dedicated investment in alternatives to animals in medical research, reported STAT.
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Becker’s Hospital Review featured an interview with Theo Koury, MD, president of health care staffing company Vituity, on what hospitals need to stay competitive in recruiting the workforce of the future.
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An article by Philip Alberti, PhD, AAMC Center for Health Justice founding director, and Heather Pierce, JD, MPH, the center’s director of policy, published in the 100th anniversary special edition of the Milbank Quarterly, focused on the future of population health. “A Population Health Impact Pyramid for Health Care,” explored how in order to meaningfully impact population health and health equity, health care organizations must take a multipronged approach that ranges from education to value-based purchasing to advocacy.
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AAMCNews covered how medical students are pushing for parental leave policies and discussed how piecemeal approaches create confusion and inequity for student parents.
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Another piece in AAMCNews said that new and emerging health threats, as well as the increased politicization of public health, will require global health leaders to head a coordinated response that puts equity and scientific evidence at its center.
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Save the date: Join the AAMC on Oct. 25 from 4-5:15 p.m. ET for the third annual AAMC Awards Recognition Event honoring colleagues and their achievements in academic medicine. Registration for this free, virtual event will open in August.
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The AAMC is hosting a new learning series to highlight the role of academic medicine in promoting and advancing Integrated Behavioral Health (IBH). The next webinar, “Cultivating Collaboration: Enhancing Efficiencies and Effectiveness through Team Training in IBH,” will be held on May 11 at 4 p.m. ET and will examine the core concepts of interprofessional training in integrated behavioral health.
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During a recent visit with faculty and students at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at University of Utah, David J. Skorton, MD, AAMC president and CEO, joined Michael Good, MD, CEO of University of Utah Health and executive dean of the school of medicine, in a conversation about the value that academic medical centers bring to their communities. In a new podcast episode for “The Scope,” Skorton talked about the importance of academic medical centers in delivering top-quality medical care, conducting cutting-edge research, educating the next generation of health care professionals, and collaborating with communities to solve health care problems. Dr. Good was a featured plenary speaker at the CFAS Spring Meeting in Salt Lake City last month.
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STAT covered how students are leading a nascent climate movement in medical education.
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The next International Competency-Based Medical Education (ICBME) Collaborators webinar will take place on May 9 at 3 p.m. ET. Objectives of the discussion include analyzing the impact of CBME on current resident selection practices, listing the competencies and abilities that are important for success in a CBME-based program, and identifying new strategies for selection of residents based in the principles of CBME.
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The Building Trustworthiness by Addressing Uncertainty in Medicine Grant Program is intended to promote educational approaches that will guide physicians’ acceptance of uncertainty as a routine part of clinical practice and help them more effectively communicate about uncertainty with their patients and clinical colleagues across the care team. The program, sponsored by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, will provide two to three grants of $120,000 each. The deadline for proposals is June 16.
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Esa Matius Davis, MD, MPH, has been named inaugural associate vice president for community health at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and senior associate dean for population health and community medicine at University of Maryland School of Medicine, effective July 1. Dr. Davis is an associate professor of medicine and clinical and translation science and the director of the Career Education and Enhancement for Health Care Research Diversity Program at the University of Pittsburgh.
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Paul Schwartzberg, DO, MBA, has been named associate dean of academic affairs and designated institutional official (DIO) of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Medicine - Chattanooga, effective May 1. Dr. Schwartzberg previously served as clinical associate professor of pediatrics at both Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine.
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Elizabeth Quinlan, PhD, has been named chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Quinlan is professor and the Clark Leadership Chair in Neuroscience at the University of Maryland in College Park, where she serves as the director of the Brain and Behavior Institute.
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Thomas Lloyd, MD, PhD, has been named chair of the Department of Neurology at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Lloyd previously served as a professor of neurology and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and as an attending physician at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.
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Amitpal Johal, MD, has been appointed chair of gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition weight management at Geisinger Health. Dr. Johal began his career at Geisinger in 2006 as a gastroenterology fellow and has had progressive leadership roles during the course of his career.
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Bill Heerman, MD, MPH, has been named chief of the Division of General Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, effective May 1. Dr. Heerman is an associate professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
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Christina Cicolette, MNA, has been appointed associate dean for medical education at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, effective July 1. Cicolette is executive director of the assessment, curriculum, and evaluations team at UCSF School of Medicine.
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Animals infected with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii famously find themselves as prey to cats. But the same traits that cause mice and rats to end up as cat food by taking risks that essentially lead them to walk into Fluffy’s mouth, can cause other animals, such a wolves — not exactly known as cat food — to take risks that result in them becoming leaders of their pack. Researchers published a paper in Nature Communications Biology showing how wolves can become infected with the parasite through incidental contact with felines like cougars, and then experience behavioral changes that cause them to leave their original packs earlier and show traits including aggression and dominance that put them in the pack leader role. The findings have caused scientists to wonder whether the environmental effect of the tiny parasites that also have been pegged as making humans love cats (guilty) might be greater than previously thought.
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It’s not quite a chicken or egg riddle, but scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have discovered which came first: the ability to engage in locomotion or the development of the limbs and appendages necessary for locomotion. A paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience explained it’s not even close. You need not look further than sea slugs to learn that the neural pathways necessary to make our legs or arms useful existed long before we had the arms and legs to get us anywhere.
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And finally, humpback whales crave an occasional spa day just as much as their human cousins. Marine ecologist Olaf Meynecke, PhD, from Australia’s Griffith University Whales and Climate Research Program and Coastal and Marine Research Centre, discovered that humpbacks quite deliberately seek out gritty areas of the seabed where they have been observed rolling around to exfoliate, much to the delight of nearby fish who feast upon the bonanza of the scraped-off whale skin. When you’re a whale, all the ocean floor is your loofah.
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Past News
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