Geneology International

Category: Health News

  • As Omicron Surges, Effort to Vaccinate Young Children Stalls

    As Omicron Surges, Effort to Vaccinate Young Children Stalls

    Rachana Pradhan and Hannah Recht

    Two months after Pfizer’s covid vaccine was authorized for children ages 5 to 11, just 27{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} have received at least one shot, according to Jan. 12 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only 18{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c}, or 5 million kids, have both doses.

    The national effort to vaccinate children has stalled even as the omicron variant upends schooling for millions of children and their families amid staffing shortages, shutdowns and heated battles over how to safely operate. Vaccination rates vary substantially across the country, a KHN analysis of the federal data shows. Nearly half of Vermont’s 5- to 11-year-olds are fully vaccinated, while fewer than 10{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} have gotten both shots in nine mostly Southern states.

    Pediatricians say the slow pace and geographic disparities are alarming, especially against the backdrop of record numbers of cases and pediatric hospitalizations. School-based vaccine mandates for students, which some pediatricians say are needed to boost rates substantially, remain virtually nonexistent.

    “You have these large swaths of vulnerable children who are going to school,” said Dr. Samir Shah, a director at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Compounding the problem is that states with low vaccination rates “are less likely to require masking or distancing or other nonpartisan public health precautions,” he said.

    In Louisiana, where 5{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} of kids ages 5 to 11 have been fully vaccinated, Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, added the shot to the list of required school immunizations for the fall, over the objections of state legislators, who are mostly Republicans. The District of Columbia and California, where about 1 in 5 elementary school kids are fully vaccinated, have added similar requirements. But those places are exceptions — 15 states have banned covid vaccine mandates in K-12 schools, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy.

    Mandates are one of multiple “scientifically valid public health strategies,” Shah said. “I do think that what would be ideal; I don’t think that we as a society have a will to do that.”

    Vaccine demand surged in November, with an initial wave of enthusiasm after the shot was approved for younger children. But parents have vaccinated younger kids at a slower pace than 12- to 15-year-olds, who became eligible in May. It took nearly six weeks for 1 in 5 younger kids to get their first shot, while adolescents reached that milestone in two weeks.

    Experts cite several factors slowing the effort: Because kids are less likely than adults to be hospitalized or die from the virus, some parents are less inclined to vaccinate their children. Misinformation campaigns have fueled concerns about immediate and long-term health risks of the vaccine. And finding appointments at pharmacies or with pediatricians has been a bear.

    “One of the problems we’ve had is this perception that kids aren’t at risk for serious illness from this virus,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases. “That’s obviously not true.”

    Parents are left to weigh which is more of a threat to their children: the covid virus or the vaccine to prevent the virus. Overwhelmingly, research shows, the virus itself presents a greater danger.

    Kids can develop debilitating long-covid symptoms or a potentially fatal post-covid inflammatory condition. And new research from the CDC found that children are at significantly higher risk of developing diabetes in the months after a covid infection. Other respiratory infections, like the flu, don’t carry similar risks.

    Katharine Lehmann said she had concerns about myocarditis — a rare but serious side effect that causes inflammation of the heart muscle and is more likely to occur in boys than girls — and considered not vaccinating her two sons because of that risk. But after reading up on the side effects, she realized the condition is more likely to occur from the virus than the vaccine. “I felt safe giving it to my kids,” said Lehmann, a physical therapist in Missouri, where 20{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} of younger kids have gotten at least one dose.

    Recent data from scientific advisers to the CDC found that myocarditis was extremely rare among vaccinated 5- to 11-year-olds, identifying 12 reported cases as of Dec. 19 out of 8.7 million administered doses.

    The huge variations in where children are getting vaccinated reflect what has occurred with other age groups: Children have been much less likely to get shots in the Deep South, where hesitancy, political views and misinformation have blunted adult vaccination rates as well. Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate for 5- to 11-year-olds, with 5{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} fully vaccinated. States with high adult vaccine rates such as Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maine have inoculated the greatest shares of their children.

    Even within states, rates vary dramatically by county based on political leanings, density and access to the shot. More than a quarter of kids in Illinois’ populous counties around Chicago and Urbana are fully vaccinated, with rates as high as 38{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} in DuPage County. But rates are still below 10{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} in many of the state’s rural and Republican-leaning counties. In Maryland, where 1 in 4 kids are fully vaccinated, rates range from more than 40{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} in Howard and Montgomery counties, wealthy suburban counties, to fewer than 10{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} along parts of the more rural Eastern Shore.

    Nationally, a November KFF poll found that 29{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} of parents of 5- to 11-year-olds definitely won’t vaccinate their children and that an additional 7{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} would do so only if required. Though rates were similar for Black, white and Hispanic parents, political differences and location divided families. Only 22{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} of urban parents wouldn’t vaccinate their kids, while 49{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} of rural parents were opposed. Half of Republican parents said they definitely wouldn’t vaccinate their kids, compared with just 7{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} of Democrats.

    The White House said officials continue to work with trusted groups to build vaccine confidence and ensure access to shots. “As we’ve seen with adult vaccinations, we expect confidence to grow and more and more kids to be vaccinated across time,” spokesperson Kevin Munoz said in a statement.

    The Hunt for Shots

    Just before her younger son’s 5th birthday, Lehmann was eager to book covid vaccine appointments for her two boys. But their pediatrician wasn’t offering them. Attempts to book time slots at CVS and Walgreens before her son turned 5 were unsuccessful, even if the appointment occurred after his late-November birthday.

    “It was not easy,” she said. Wanting to avoid separate trips for her 10-year-old and 5-year-old, she nabbed appointments at a hospital a half-hour away.

    “Both of my kids have gotten all their vaccines at the pediatrician, so I was kind of shocked. That would have certainly been easier,” Lehmann said. “And the kids know those nurses and doctors, so I think it would have helped to not have a stranger doing it.”

    The Biden administration has pointed parents to retail pharmacies and 122 children’s hospitals with vaccine clinics. Nationwide, more than 35,000 sites, including pediatricians, federally qualified health centers and children’s hospitals have been set up to vaccinate young kids, according to the administration. Yet administering the covid vaccine to children presents obstacles that haven’t been as prominent for other inoculations.

    Enrolling pediatricians in the covid-19 vaccine program is a challenge because of the application process, reporting requirements for administered doses, and staffing, said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers.

    “Many of them are short-staffed right now and don’t necessarily have huge capacity to serve,” she said. Plus, “it’s not as easy to engage the schools in school-based clinics in certain areas just due to the political environment.” Health centers, government officials and other groups have set up more than 9,000 school vaccination sites for 5- to 11-year-olds nationwide.

    The CDC’s long-standing program, Vaccines for Children, provides free shots for influenza, measles, chickenpox and polio, among others. Roughly 44,000 doctors are enrolled in the program, which is designed to immunize children who are eligible for Medicaid, are uninsured or underinsured, or are from Native or Indigenous communities. More than half of the program’s providers offer covid shots, although the rates vary by state.

    Pharmacies have been heavily used in Illinois, where 25{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} of 5- to 11-year-olds are fully vaccinated.

    Dr. Ngozi Ezike, a pediatrician and the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said 53{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} of shots administered to younger children as of Jan. 5 were done at pharmacies. Twenty percent occurred at private clinics, 7{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} at local health departments, 6{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} at federally qualified health centers and 5{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} at hospitals.

    “You need all pieces of the pie” to get more kids vaccinated, Ezike said.

    Kids Respond to ‘the Greater Good’

    The Levite Jewish Community Center in Birmingham, Alabama, tried to boost vaccinations with a party, offering games and treats, even a photo booth and a DJ, along with shots given by a well-known local pharmacy. Brooke Bowles, the center’s director of marketing and fund development, estimated that about half a dozen of the 42 people who got a dose that mid-December day were kids.

    Bowles was struck that children were more likely to roll up their sleeves when their parents emphasized the greater good in getting vaccinated. “Those children were just fantastic,” she said. In parts of the Deep South like this one, pro-vaccine groups face a tough climb — as of Jan. 12, only 7{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} of Jefferson County’s children had gotten both shots.

    The greater good is what pediatricians have emphasized to parents who are on the fence.

    “Children are vectors for infectious disease,” said Dr. Eileen Costello, chief of ambulatory pediatrics at Boston Medical Center. “They’re extremely generous with their microbes,” spreading infections to vulnerable relatives and community members who may be more likely to end up in the hospital.

    Seventy-eight percent of the hospital’s adult patients have received at least one dose. For children 5 and up, the figure is 39{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c}, with younger children having lower rates than adolescents, Costello said. Particularly amid an onslaught of misinformation, “it has been exhausting to have these long conversations with families who are so hesitant and reluctant,” she said.

    Still, she can point to successes: A mother who lost a grandparent to covid was nonetheless reluctant to vaccinate her son with obesity and asthma whom Costello was seeing for a physical. The mother ultimately vaccinated all four of her children after Costello told her that her son’s weight put him at higher risk for severe illness.

    “That felt like a triumph to me,” Costello said. “I think her thinking was, ‘Well, he’s a kid — he’s going to be fine.’ And I said, ‘Well, he might be fine, but he might not.’”

    Methodology

    Vaccination numbers are from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as of Jan. 12.

    National vaccination rates are calculated by the CDC and include vaccinations provided by federal programs such as the Indian Health Service and the Department of Defense, as well as U.S. territories. To compare the vaccination rollout for kids and adolescents, we counted day 0 as the day the CDC approved the vaccine for each age group: May 12, 2021, for 12- to 15-year-olds and Nov. 2, 2021, for 5- to 11-year-olds.

    The CDC provides vaccination numbers at the state and county level. These numbers do not include the small fraction of children who were vaccinated by federal programs. To calculate rates for 5- to 11-year-olds, we divided by the total number of kids ages 5 to 11 in each state or county.

    To calculate the number of children ages 5 to 11 in each state, we used the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 Population Estimates Program “single year of age” dataset, the latest release available. For county-level data, we used the National Center for Health Statistics’ Bridged Race Population Estimates, which contain single-year-of-age county-level estimates. We selected the 2019 estimates from the 2020 vintage release so the data would reflect the same year as the state-level estimates.

    Vaccination data by age is unavailable for Idaho, counties in Hawaii and several California counties. For county-level vaccination data, we excluded states in which the county was unknown for at least 10{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} of the kids vaccinated in that state.

    Visit the Github repository to read more about and download the data.

    KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

    USE OUR CONTENT

    This story can be republished for free (details).

  • 6 reasons not to get omicron right now : Shots

    6 reasons not to get omicron right now : Shots

    getty-1216011683

    Keith Bishop/Getty Photos

    getty-1216011683

    Keith Bishop/Getty Pictures

    Tens of millions of men and women are tests good with COVID-19 in the U.S. just about every 7 days and the Fda warns that most Individuals will get the virus at some issue. With growing evidence that the omicron variant possible brings about milder ailment, some persons may possibly be contemplating: Why not encourage omicron to infect us so we can enjoy daily life once more?

    Which is not a fantastic strategy for several causes, say infectious illness industry experts and physicians. Do not throw your mask absent and do not even feel about web hosting a 1970s-fashion rooster pox party, the omicron edition. This is why:

    1. You could get sicker than you want to

    “Even for boosted persons, just due to the fact you will not conclusion up in the hospital, you can nonetheless be really depressing for a handful of days,” Dr. Ashish Jha, a health practitioner and Dean of the Brown University College of Community Health and fitness reported on All Matters Regarded as. “Not guaranteed why you will need to look for that out.”

    While omicron appears to be to provoke milder ailment for quite a few people, “the real truth is that it really is likely somewhere in concerning what you imagine of as a frequent cold or flu and the COVID that we experienced before,” claims Dr. Emily Landon, an infectious sickness health practitioner at UChicagoMedicine. “And there are continue to a whole lot of dangers of finding COVID.”

    And, of class, if you have any risk things that put you in the vulnerable group, such as age, you could however get seriously unwell.

    Even if you do get an exceptionally mild case, you can skip out on existence when isolating.

    Fact check: The theory that SARS-CoV-2 is becoming milder

    2. You could spread the virus to susceptible folks

    When you’re contaminated with COVID, you can unknowingly unfold it to other individuals before you have signs. You could possibly expose your household, roommates, co-personnel, or random persons in the grocery retailer, states epidemiologist Monthly bill Miller of The Ohio Condition University.

    “And whilst you could have designed a aware determination to allow for by yourself to be uncovered and contaminated, individuals men and women have not designed that exact selection,” he suggests. And they might have a bigger hazard amount than you.

    You have forced your choice on other individuals, Miller suggests, and that decision could trigger severe disease or even demise.

    Or you could unfold it to a youngster who is nevertheless far too younger to get vaccinated, says Dr. Judy Guzman-Cottrill, professor of pediatrics at Oregon Health and fitness & Science University. “Throughout the place and in my personal state, we are seeing much more unwell children being hospitalized with COVID pneumonia, croup, and bronchiolitis,” she says.

    3. Your immunity will past months — not years

    Compared with chickenpox, acquiring a COVID-19 an infection is not a get-out-of-jail-no cost card for long.

    T wo key points affect how properly our immunity will defend us, clarifies Jeffrey Townsend, an evolutionary biology and biostatistics professor at The Yale College of Community Wellbeing. To start with, antibody ranges: Promptly immediately after you get a shot, booster or an infection, your antibodies skyrocket and you’re not likely to get ill. Regrettably, people levels do not keep superior.

    Second, the switching character of the pathogen: As the virus evolves and variants arise, our waning antibodies may possibly not be equipped to focus on the new variants of the virus as exactly. Omicron is a prime illustration of a virus that has mutated to be able to carry on infecting us — that’s what the time period immune evasion refers to.

    So how a great deal time does an infection acquire you?

    Even though which is really hard to respond to exactly, Townsend’s team estimates that reinfection could arise someplace between a few months and five yrs following infection, with a median of 16 months. This is based on an assessment of data from prior antibodies to prior coronaviruses,

    “At a few to 16 months, you should really be on discover,” he says. “The clock is starting up to tick once again.”

    4. You could add to the crisis in the health and fitness treatment program

    Supplied that hospitalizations are at pandemic highs, and medical center means and staffing are stretched slender in a lot of spots, your an infection could include to the strain, Miller suggests.

    “Your determination to let by yourself to be infected may well induce a cascade of infections, typically unknowingly, that sales opportunities to even much more people today needing to be in the clinic,” Miller says.

    Not only are health treatment employees pressured and exhausted correct now, but individuals who have other overall health issues are acquiring turned absent and even dying due to the fact of the flood of COVID sufferers.

    Contributing to that would be socially irresponsible, Landon claims: “You do not want it hanging about your head in terms of karma.”

    5. If you get unwell now, you could not have obtain to remedies that are continue to in quick supply

    Monoclonal antibody infusions, amid the most successful treatments to prevent serious illness from COVID, are in short provide ideal now.

    “We cannot rescue people today as properly as we could when we experienced delta because we really don’t have as quite a few monoclonal antibodies,” Landon says. “We are totally out of [Sotrovimab] and we don’t know when we are acquiring yet another cargo to our healthcare facility.”

    Other hospitals have documented related shortages of the monoclonal antibody that has been proven to be powerful against omicron.

    It really is the exact problem with new antiviral medicine this sort of as Paxlovid, Pfizer’s drug that should be specified within the to start with few days of indicators for it to be most productive. Landon suggests her hospital has restricted provides. “They are not obtainable for most folks correct now,” she says.

    Also, it’s possible that the upcoming retains even superior treatment options, Jha told NPR. “We are likely to get far more therapeutics in excess of time. So everything we can do to hold off far more infections – they might be inevitable, but there is certainly no explanation to do it now.”

    6. The chances of receiving prolonged COVID following omicron haven’t been dominated out

    Omicron has not been all around extended ample for us to know whether or not it might cause lengthy COVID in the exact way previous variants have. Vaccination decreases the danger of developing long COVID, “but we do not know something about how it performs in omicron,” Landon states.

    We do know that some folks with delicate bacterial infections get very long COVID, she suggests. And many wholesome folks conclude up with COVID indicators that final for months or months, Miller adds.

    “We don’t know, still, how significantly extensive COVID there will be with omicron — but I would argue it can be not worthy of the prospect,” he states.

    So in conclusion…

    Gurus agree: Omicron functions are out.

    Even however it may seem to be inevitable, “it can be still value it to prevent finding COVID if you can,” Landon states.

    So why ended up chickenpox functions distinctive?

    “Having contaminated with the omicron variant is not the same as finding chickenpox — it does not deliver lifelong immunity,” Guzman-Cottrill states.

    And suggests Ali Mokdad, main system officer of inhabitants well being at the College of Washington details out, even in the circumstance of chickenpox, men and women who got the illness have a prospect of obtaining shingles afterwards in lifestyle, whereas men and women who got the vaccine do not.

    Without the need of knowing the long-time period outcomes of COVID, no matter if delta or omicron, he claims, “it really is better to get our immunity through a vaccine.”

    And avoiding infection could aid safeguard us all, says Guzman-Cottrill: “Enabling this virus to continue on spreading does 1 point: it provides the virus an prospect to further more mutate. I feel it is really harmless to say that nobody needs to see a further new variant of issue in 2022.”

  • Telehealth experiments & the latest digital health news from JPM

    Telehealth experiments & the latest digital health news from JPM

    You are looking at the world-wide-web edition of STAT Wellness Tech, our guide to how tech is reworking the everyday living sciences. Sign up to get this newsletter delivered in your inbox each and every Tuesday and Thursday. 

    Telehealth businesses take a look at the waters on risk-sharing

    A handful of virtual treatment corporations are inking new varieties of contracts that reward them for preserving patients’ price tag minimal and penalize them for overspending — a model identified as risk-sharing. It’s a departure from the common “fee-for-service” billing process, and a move  providers hope could support them get paid for the expert services they offer in addition to virtual doctors’ appointments, like in-app messaging, medicine reminders, and electronic wellbeing coaching. They are also betting that embracing threat could endear them to the health options and businesses they depend on for contracts.

    ad

    Execs from organizations like Heartbeat Health and Teladoc say they’re in the quite early stages of cementing these contracts. When there is no very clear roadmap for how to construction them, irrespective of whether they choose maintain could explain how virtual care will suit into the brick-and-mortar healthcare process and incentivize individuals corporations to operate with classic companies on avoidance, explained Jennifer Goldsack, CEO of the Digital Drugs Society. “There is an prospect to reimagine what wellbeing care appears to be like when it is close to the affected individual,” she instructed Mohana. Study the complete story.

    The circumstance for scaling principal treatment

    advertisement

    Intently watched upstarts hawking higher-tech health care are in a fierce battle with retail giants and tech corporations to ascertain the long term of key treatment. And as they make the rounds at conferences like JP Morgan, they are out to influence investors that major care — which has traditionally been underfunded — is scalable and value backing. Medicare-targeted startup Oak Road Well being plans to open up 70 far more destinations this year A single Medical expects to get to 28 markets soon. And other gamers including Walmart, CVS, and Amazon are ramping up their own endeavours. But the companies have also confronted headwinds, including a DOJ inquiry into Oak Street’s probable Untrue Statements Act violations. Casey has the tale.

    The guarantee of neurostimulation

    Brain stimulation is booming. This growing field of study is slowly and gradually revealing truths of the brain: how it will work, how it malfunctions, and how electrical impulses, exactly targeted and managed, may be used to address psychiatric and neurological disorders. Scientists are wanting into how distinctive sorts of neuromodulation influence dependancy, despair, persistent soreness, obsessive compulsive condition, and a lot more. Still, the industry is in its infancy, and a lot of hurdles to therapy continue to be. STAT’s Isabella Cueto has the total story.

    Yes, it was a ton of revenue

    SILICON VALLEY Lender

    This is the chart we all noticed coming, we just ultimately know what it suggests, courtesy of Silicon Valley Bank’s annual Health care Investments & Exits report. Health and fitness tech expenditure in 2021 much more than doubled, with 60{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} of funding coming from mega rounds. Early stage expenditure also greater from $2.2 billion in 2020 to $3.5 billion in 2021. Inspite of these remarkable figures total, SVB sees some indications that factors could cool off: It expects venture cash fundraising will fall to $16 billion throughout health and fitness care in 2022 from its outstanding $28 billion last 12 months.

    What the study suggests about AI and quality assurance

    AI and device finding out promise popular benefits in overall health treatment, but there is no complete framework for how to safely and securely and responsibly introduce the technological innovation, a team of scientists compose in a new literature evaluation in Nature’s NPJ Electronic Medication.

    Their assessment finds that there is an abundance of guidance about facts preparing, but less about computer software progress and how to evaluate impression and implementation. Their review could provide as the foundation for this sort of a framework, however they famous sizeable gaps in educational exploration about high-quality assessment in the afterwards phases of predictive design development.

    Tech requires more than JPM

    Right now at JPM we’ll be observing shows from Talkspace, Colour, and GoodRx. Here’s what is happened in tech at the convention because we final talked:

    • Headspace Wellness, which was shaped previous year with the merger of telemental wellbeing service Ginger and mindfulness app Headspace, announced the acquisition of Sayana, an AI mental overall health application.
    • Transcarent, the wellbeing treatment startup for self-insured businesses from Livongo founder Glen Tullman, declared a $200 million Collection C round led by Kinnevik and Human Capital with participation from Ally Bridge Group, Typical Catalyst, and 7wireVentures.
    • At a JPM side celebration, Deborah Di Sanzo, president of Very best Acquire Wellbeing, stated that even with the company’s ambitions, it is not fascinated in care delivery: “We have a large red line that we will not cross, and that is, we are not going to be a company,” she mentioned.

    New yr, new gig

    • Fred Hutchinson Most cancers Analysis Center appointed Jeffrey Leek as vice president and main details officer. Leek earlier labored at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg University of Community Wellness.
    • AliveCor appointed Vincent Balsamo as govt vice president of throughout the world profits and Archana Dubey as main scientific officer. Balsamo formerly labored at Salesforce, Cisco, IBM, and Propeller Health. Dubey joins from Hewlett Packard.
    • Tendo Units, a wellness care application startup funded by Typical Catalyst and Lux Funds, appointed Bala Hota as senior vice president and chief informatics officer. Hota comes from Hurry College Healthcare Heart.
    • SonderMind, a psychological overall health know-how startup, appointed Brannan Schell as main functioning officer. He was formerly the company’s chief progress officer.
    • Quartet, a further psychological wellbeing upstart, hired Jay Meyers as main expansion officer. He was earlier CEO of Wellvana Well being and main advancement & marketing officer for Anthem’s diversified business team.
    • BehaVR, which is developing mental health treatment options utilizing digital truth, appointed Risa Weisberg chief scientific officer. Weisberg is a professor of psychiatry at the Boston College University of Medicine.
    • ClarifyHealth hired Niall Brennan, previous CEO of the Health Care Expense Institute, as its main analytics and privateness officer.
    • Cityblock introduced on a host of new hires this 7 days, including chief health officer Kameron Matthews, previously main health care officer at the Veterans Affairs Section chief men and women officer Ara Tucker, who led talent strategy at Audible main administrative officer Susan Brown, previously basic counsel at Haven and chief marketing officer Andrea Zahumensky, formerly chief internet marketing officer at KFC.

    What we’re looking through

  • Making music, changing lives: Youth orchestras help at-risk kids

    Making music, changing lives: Youth orchestras help at-risk kids


    By Elizabeth Thompson

    Bethany Uhler Thompson didn’t know what to expect when she decided to start a youth string orchestra at Chatham Youth Development Center.

    She was inspired by her uncle, who was incarcerated and had confided in her how isolating being in prison could be. Thompson used to perform with her cello in a juvenile detention center when she was younger, but she wanted to get incarcerated people involved in the community of music makers.

    That’s how Chatham Strings was born.

    For about two years, Chatham Strings, an orchestra made up of donated violins, cellos and one viola helped incarcerated children explore creativity, teamwork and accomplishment. COVID-19 stalled the program in 2020, and then Thompson graduated from her program and moved to California.

    She hopes, however, that the impact has remained.

    “There’s potential benefits to music involvement,” Thompson said, “like recovering from traumatic experiences in life, fostering a positive experience with learning and new experiences, education, and also developing interpersonal skills that are so essential to life.”

    The results of Chatham Strings, which Thompson explored in her dissertation for a doctor of musical arts degree at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, are all anecdotal and correlatory, Thompson said. But some children said being involved in the program helped them try new experiences — even if they were told they were never going to succeed.

    “They were discouraged from learning new things, that was part of their past,” Thompson said, “When they were given the opportunity to try something new, and they started enjoying it, and noticing a bit of success, they started saying, ‘Oh, why am I limiting myself?’”

    Maybe success on the cello could transfer to success in beautician school, or math class, Thompson said.

    Transformation through music

    Chatham Strings was one look into the transformational powers of music, which studies suggest improve cognitive skills, health and well-being.

    Just 40 miles away from Chatham Youth Development Center, Durham-based Kidznotes has boasted that participants in its out-of-school music program for students in lower-income areas have higher school attendance rates and improved academic performance. The program is based on the El Sistema model originally launched in Venezuela for children in impoverished neighborhoods to learn music.

    More important than test scores, though, is the joy of music, said Shana Tucker, Kidznotes’ executive director.

    “It is not something that stays,” Tucker said. “But it is something that hopefully we all experienced — at least once in our lives, at least once a week, once a day — but you’ve got to know what it is and recognize it when it comes because it dissipates.”

    Tucker has spoken with countless parents who no longer play an instrument, but they can’t forget the first time they held one, how special it was. 

    Thompson recalled a similar reverence from the children in Chatham Strings, who, even in the midst of an argument with other students, set aside their instruments.

    But is music special? What makes it different from other activities?

    Nothing magical

    According to Donald Hodges, professor emeritus at UNCG, there is something unique, but nothing magical about music.

     “The elements of all the bits and pieces probably can be found in other things as well, for different children, different individuals,” Hodges said,

    Playing music can activate different parts of the brain, Hodges said. For example, when you play a violin, your right hand, which controls the bow, controls the rhythm, while your left hand, which presses the notes on the strings, controls the melody. 

    After doing that activity over and over again, it creates a permanent imprint on the brain.

    That kind of coordination can be found in many activities, Hodges noted. He rejects ideas that music has a mystical, uncanny quality, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something important and uniquely human about making music.

    Societies across the globe incorporate music into their daily lives, albeit in different ways. It is perhaps the human in music that makes it feel so special.

    “Every musical style, if it’s your favorite, regardless of what it is,” Hodges said, “activates the part of the brain that says ‘Hey, I am a human being and this is how I feel about my humanity.’”

    In recent years, research made possible through new imaging techniques that can show what the brain is doing in real-time has shown that music definitely has some neurological benefit. Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center researcher John Burdette found in a 2014 study that just listening to one’s favorite music changed the connections between auditory brain areas and the hippocampus, a part of the brain that’s “responsible for memory and social emotional consolidation.”

    Other research has explored how people with dementia are able to recall music lyrics, despite profound memory loss, and a recent study found that people who started music training when young had stronger structural connections in the auditory regions of their brains.

    Healing through music

    Thompson taught her students how to compose music in addition to playing, allowing them to further express themselves. 

    Incarcerated children are more likely to have exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), defined as potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The research shows that even as children accumulate such ACEs as the incarceration or loss of a parent, witnessing violence or having a close relative with mental illness, it puts them at higher risk of poor educational attainment, substance use and even physical health problems such as cancer in adulthood.

    It can be hard for traumatized people to open up, Hodges said. Music can help.

    One student in Chatham Strings composed a piece about the loss of a parent. The orchestra performed that piece, “Motherly Love.”

    Encouraging reliability and reliance on others

    Playing music and being part of an ensemble involves coordination and teamwork, but it also requires expression — as an individual and as a group.

    “Everybody plays an important role,” Hodges said. “Not everybody can play first as well. So it’s a tricky balance.”

    Tucker said her organization, Kidznotes, works to create a “community through music.” 

    “The dynamics of orchestra works is very similar to how you create an intentional community outside of the program,” she said.

    Members of an orchestra support each other the same way they might support their neighbors or family members outside the orchestra. Just like in life, orchestra is more than just “playing your part,” she said.

    In Chatham Strings, Thompson said students quickly realized that if one person missed class, they wouldn’t sound as good. Students then felt a responsibility not only to themselves or Thompson, but to the group itself.

    “There’s a sense of responsibility,” Thompson said. “Of course, did that make them always make the right decisions? No. Does it do for any of us? But it had impact on them wanting to be responsible and be a part.”

    The pandemic has affected how both groups feel that community through music.

    Kidznotes was forced to go online as schools went online, and for some children that meant attending their group violin lessons from the McDonald’s parking lot because that was where there was Wi-Fi, Tucker said.

    For children in school during COVID, life is hard and unpredictable, Tucker said. 

    The pandemic changed the way we feel community through music. But music still found a way.

    As lockdowns began in countries around the world, videos of people playing trumpet or singing from their apartments circled around social media.

    In the end, it comes down to joy.

    That joy that music is so apt to bring is still retrievable despite the world. And that joy, that meaningful experience is something that anybody can experience, no matter your age, your cognitive ability or your numbers, Hodges said.

    Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

    X

    Republish this article

    As of late 2019, we’re changing our policy about reprinting our content.

    You are free to use NC Health News content under the following conditions:

    • You can copy and paste this html tracking code into articles of ours that you use, this little snippet of code allows us to track how many people read our story.





    • Please do not reprint our stories without our bylines, and please include a live link to NC Health News under the byline, like this:

      By Jane Doe

      North Carolina Health News



    • Finally, at the bottom of the story (whether web or print), please include the text:

      North Carolina Health News is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit, statewide news organization dedicated to covering all things health care in North Carolina. Visit NCHN at northcarolinahealthnews.org. (on the web, this can be hyperlinked)

    by Elizabeth Thompson, North Carolina Health News
    January 13, 2022

    1

  • NC doulas guide new parents through birth and beyond

    NC doulas guide new parents through birth and beyond


    By Elizabeth Thompson

    When Kira Kimble goes to the hospital to assist a client giving birth, she is charged with everything from keeping her pregnant client informed about the choices they have — whether they want to get an epidural, have a natural birth — to making sure her clients are simply being addressed by their names.

    Kimble said her clients report microaggressions as common for pregnant people of color throughout their nine months. This makes something as small as being addressed by your name a big deal.

    “A lot of times if the names are too complicated, or have too many vowels, or accent marks, there’s not even an attempt to pronounce their name,” Kimble said. “And so we really make sure that we are protecting them from those microaggressions.”

    Kimble is the owner and a certified doula at Charlotte-based Mine-R-T Doula Company (pronounced like “minority”). Her team of doulas of color offers services specifically tailored for all kinds of clients, such as plus-size birth, or vaginal birth after a cesarean section, Kimble said.

    American Indian, Alaska Native and Black mothers are two to three times as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes as white pregnant people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

    “If you have the money, you have the ethnic background, you get one form of treatment,” Kimble said. “If you don’t have the money and you have a different ethnic background, you get a substandard of care, and it shouldn’t be that way.” 

    Doulas have been found to reduce the incidence of births via cesarean section, the rate of birth complications and medical interventions during the birthing process, and one study showed that doula services also increase breastfeeding rates.

    Low-income pregnant people and people of color stand to benefit the most from doula services, but it can be difficult for them to access them. Doulas across North Carolina offer a variety of services at a variety of costs, from pro bono to thousands of dollars.

    What do doulas do?

    Doulas are typically nonmedical, trained professionals who provide “physical, emotional and informational support” to pregnant people before, during and after birth, according to Doulas of North America (DONA) International, a doula certifying agency.

    For Kimble, that means assisting clients with choosing a provider who they feel comfortable with, having talks about exercise and nutrition while clients are pregnant and making sure her clients get the birth that they want and they will be satisfied with.

    Kimble also works to make sure that her clients are aware of all their choices for treatment.

    Sometimes doctors may put a Black pregnant person on a high blood pressure medication based on statistics about Black pregnant people, regardless of whether that particular patient has high blood pressure, she said.

    Regardless of education and socioeconomic status, Black pregnant people have worse pregnancy outcomes than their white counterparts. A Black pregnant person with a college education still has a pregnancy-related mortality ratio five times higher than white pregnant people, according to the CDC.

    The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently launched a program to increase the number of Black doulas in the state to address maternal mortality rates that disproportionately affect Black women, North Carolina Health News reported.

    “We really make sure that they are asking questions and making sure that they are understanding that,” Kimble said. “Because if it’s your first child, you don’t know that not everybody goes through this. And so we make sure that they are knowing what questions to ask.”

    Postpartum, she keeps a watchful eye on her clients — and she knows how to spot things that could have been missed.

    “Especially during this time, when they’re short on beds, they’re short-staffed and are really turning people out really quickly, we are spotting mistakes,” Kimble said. “We are alerting our clients that ‘Hey, what you’re experiencing isn’t normal. You need to go to the emergency room or you need to call your provider.’” 

    Sybil Pye, a postpartum doula at Durham-based Emerald Doulas, says it sometimes surprises people that her first priority is the health and wellness of the birthing parent.

    “A lot of people think that we’re glorified nannies,” Pye said. “I make this very clear when I meet with clients to sort of delineate the difference between doulas and babysitters, doulas and nannies, doulas and housekeepers.”

    Pye used to be a nurse, and while her medical knowledge can be useful, doulas are non-medical professionals.

    That doesn’t mean that her work isn’t intertwined with her clients’ health. Pye has been able to identify red flags in clients exhibiting signs of postpartum depression. Those red flags can manifest in many different ways, she said from sleeping too much to not sleeping at all, having no interest in their baby, or not letting anyone near their baby — “anything that is extreme.”

    The COVID-19 pandemic certainly didn’t help, Pye said.

    COVID and doula services

    Going into a hospital can already be daunting, especially for people of color, Kimble said. The COVID-19 pandemic only increased fear.

    “There’s already knowledge of increased numbers and increased likelihood of dying during childbirth or having serious complications during pregnancy and following pregnancy,” Kimble said. “When you throw COVID on top of it, it made that [fear] even higher.” 

    At the height of COVID-19 restrictions, many hospitals only allowed pregnant people to bring in one person to the delivery room, which meant many patients had to choose between their partner and their doula.

    Some doulas FaceTimed into delivery, Pye said. Other birthing people who were depending on a doula to make them feel safe and protected in the delivery room looked for other hospitals where they could bring their doula, Kimble said.

    Many people in the Research Triangle area don’t have family to be with them during their pregnancy, since there are many young professionals and university students who recently moved here, Pye said.

    “A lot of people are not from here,” Pye said. “They don’t have family. And so they much prefer having one safe, trained professional person as opposed to grandma, grandpa, auntie and uncle coming on planes, trains and automobiles.”

    That’s where a doula can come in and offer the guidance and support people need during and after pregnancy.

    Affording a doula

    As beneficial as doula services can be, they can also be expensive. In order to afford doulas services, some clients have to get creative, Kimble said.

    “I’ve heard of people selling their car,” Kimble said. “People sell stuff, they would GoFundMe their baby registry instead of gifts … They find a way and that’s what mothers do.”

    Other pregnant people fund their doula services with gift certificates, Pye said, or they ask grandparents or other relatives to fund their doula support. Some doulas also volunteer their time to clients.

    There has been a growing investment in doula services, as some states such as Oregon and Minnesota changed their Medicaid regulations to include doulas. In North Carolina, doula services are not covered by Medicaid, but some legislators filed a bill that would explore doula coverage and doula Medicaid, but it went nowhere once it was introduced. The legislature did, however, include a one-year Medicaid extension for new mothers in the state budget. 

    Including doula services in Medicaid could be helpful for lower-income pregnant people who might not be able to afford it, said health policy analyst Alexis Robles-Fradet at the National Health Law Program. 

    The National Health Law Program aims to improve health outcomes for pregnant people on Medicaid by expanding access to doula care in its Doula Medicaid Project. 

    Attaching doula care to insurance could be a double-edged sword, Kimble said.

    “Sometimes insurance will tell you which doulas you can use,” Kimble said. “It defines what a doula can and can’t do because if they’re the ones paying, they get to set the parameters. It also ties our hands because when the patient is paying for us, they get to determine what they need, what they don’t need and what their care is going to look like.”

    Including doula services in Medicaid shouldn’t be exclusionary to one kind of certification or type of doula, Robles-Fradet said. Doulas’ voices should be included in crafting any kind of legislation, she said.

    “Just making sure that in every process, especially when you’re building a bill, trying to pass it in the legislature, that doulas are engaged in your process,” Robles-Fradet said. “They give feedback otherwise it’s probably going to be difficult to implement.” 

    Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

    X

    Republish this article

    As of late 2019, we’re changing our policy about reprinting our content.

    You are free to use NC Health News content under the following conditions:

    • You can copy and paste this html tracking code into articles of ours that you use, this little snippet of code allows us to track how many people read our story.





    • Please do not reprint our stories without our bylines, and please include a live link to NC Health News under the byline, like this:

      By Jane Doe

      North Carolina Health News



    • Finally, at the bottom of the story (whether web or print), please include the text:

      North Carolina Health News is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit, statewide news organization dedicated to covering all things health care in North Carolina. Visit NCHN at northcarolinahealthnews.org. (on the web, this can be hyperlinked)

    by Elizabeth Thompson, North Carolina Health News
    January 12, 2022

    1

  • Camino Health wants to know: who are NC’s Latinos?

    Camino Health wants to know: who are NC’s Latinos?


    By Clarissa Donnelly-DeRoven

    Between 1990 and 2020, North Carolina’s Latino population ballooned:  from 75,000 residents to more than 1 million, an increase of nearly 1,400 percent. The community is diverse; about 61 percent were born in the U.S., while the remaining 39 percent are immigrants, about half from Mexico, and another quarter from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. 

    But, beyond these sorts of impersonal data points, little is known about the lives of North Carolina’s Latino residents, according to scholars at the Camino Research Institute, one leg of the larger Camino Health Center in Charlotte. 

    “98 percent of our patients or clients at Camino Health Center are Latino immigrants,” said research assistant Lennin Caro. “That’s who we serve.”

    The director of the Camino Research Institute,  Keri Revens, first began doing detailed research on North Carolina’s Latino population, particularly those in Mecklenburg County, while completing her doctoral work in public health at UNC Charlotte. That’s when she came across the most recent community needs assessment for the Queen City — it was conducted in 2006. 

    Caro mentioned another community needs assessment conducted on Chatham County’s Latino population in 2016. But, “To our knowledge, there has been no comprehensive statewide survey study of Latinos in North Carolina. The closest thing we could find was a 2003 report created by the NC Institute of Medicine and El Pueblo,” Caro said. 

    “This was not necessarily a survey study,” he said, “but rather a task force made up of influential Latino leaders of North Carolina along with reporting [and] compiling existing data from other sources.”

    The dearth of studies led the researchers to a simple question: Why not do the survey themselves? 

    Reaching a broad population

    Starting in September 2021, Camino launched a survey, a community strengths and needs assessment, for Latino adults around North Carolina. It will be live until May 2022. It is anonymous and takes between 15 and 30 minutes to complete. Their aim is to gather responses from 5,000 people — a number needed to be able to make statistically significant claims and analyses about the state’s Latino population. 

    To reach as broad a swath of the community as possible — from rural to urban residents — the researchers are connecting with other Latino advocacy groups statewide as well as pastors and other religious leaders to help disseminate information about the survey, and recruit participants.

    Camino’s survey asks participants what they think are the Latino community’s greatest strengths. The preliminary results show those surveyed highly value the community’s bilingualism. Credit: Camino Research Institute

    Last year, they conducted a survey about the impact of COVID-19 on Latinos in North Carolina and found the relationship with religious leaders to be especially helpful. 

    “Latino pastors have access to this under-researched population,” Caro said, “and they helped us by acting as gatekeepers to promote the survey to their parish, to their ministry, to their people.”

    The researchers want to learn everything they can about Latino people in North Carolina, both to fill the gap in the literature and to better offer services and programs to the community. So far, the 226 responses gathered between September and November show that the state’s Latino community sees its bilingualism, cultural diversity and entrepreneurial spirit as its greatest strengths. 

    Dental care, vision care, and preventative medicine 

    The survey questions include a wide range of topics, including questions about economic security, legal status and interpersonal relationships. But over and over, respondents said they faced serious challenges when it comes to their health. They ranked access to dental care, vision care and general preventive medicine as their top three greatest needs. 

    “Anecdotally, serving here at Camino, we’d have our providers who would talk to us and mention, like, ‘Oh yeah, they talk about dental care, they’re looking for it,’” Caro said. “Our social navigators — basically their case managers — when they interact with their patients, they also report to us that [patients] talk about dental care, but now we see it in data, which is really powerful.”

    When asked about a broad swath of needs, survey respondents made clear that accessible health services sit high on the list. Credit: Camino Research Institute

    “It’s really important to understand that these are where there’s self-identified gaps in care,” said Sarai Ordonez, also a research assistant at Camino. Helping people get access to these particular types of care can be critical for their overall health. 

    “[We have] to meet those in order to have more holistic and higher outcomes,” she said.

    When asked what the most significant barriers were to accessing medical attention, most people pointed to health insurance. Half of all survey respondents said they do not have health insurance. The number is slightly higher for immigrants — 54 percent — and gigantic for undocumented respondents: 98 percent. 

    In North Carolina, about 13 percent of the general population is uninsured. Earlier research has also documented that Latinos are the least insured population in the state. 

    Giving back

    While they do hope to get the results published, the researchers have a different top-level goal. 

    “It’s really important to us to give the results and present them back to the community,” said Ordonez. “It’s really important for the community to understand what came out of this, what we found, so that they can feel more equipped.”

    Caro said the same. Delivering information to the community requires a different approach than submitting it to a journal for publication. 

    “When we did the COVID study, one of the first things we did is we made a YouTube video of me presenting some of the important results in Spanish,” he said.

    They’ll likely do the same once the results are finalized for this study. They’re also hoping to create an Instagram account for the research institute, “so we can release bite-sized portions of our study back to the community in Spanish in an understandable way,” Caro said. “That’s what we want to prioritize first.”

    Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

    X

    Republish this article

    As of late 2019, we’re changing our policy about reprinting our content.

    You are free to use NC Health News content under the following conditions:

    • You can copy and paste this html tracking code into articles of ours that you use, this little snippet of code allows us to track how many people read our story.





    • Please do not reprint our stories without our bylines, and please include a live link to NC Health News under the byline, like this:

      By Jane Doe

      North Carolina Health News



    • Finally, at the bottom of the story (whether web or print), please include the text:

      North Carolina Health News is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit, statewide news organization dedicated to covering all things health care in North Carolina. Visit NCHN at northcarolinahealthnews.org. (on the web, this can be hyperlinked)

    by Clarissa Donnelly-DeRoven, North Carolina Health News
    January 11, 2022

    1