Health Care Advocacy Research Articles

Trends and patterns of social media utilization at annual ASCO meetings.

e18021Background: The use of social media is expanding in medicine. More and more healthcare professionals, patients and advocates are using social media as a common platform to enhance communicati...

National Health Service Principles as Experienced by Vulnerable London Migrants in "Austerity Britain": A Qualitative Study of Rights, Entitlements, and Civil-Society Advocacy.

Recent British National Health Service (NHS) reforms, in response to austerity and alleged 'health tourism,' could impose additional barriers to healthcare access for non-European Economic Area (EEA) migrants. This study explores policy reform challenges and implications, using excerpts from the perspectives of non-EEA migrants and health advocates in London. A qualitative study design was selected. Data were collected through document review and 22 in-depth interviews with non-EEA migrants and civil-society organisation representatives. Data were analysed thematically using the NHS principles. The experiences of those 'vulnerable migrants' (ie, defined as adult non-EEA asylum-seekers, refugees, undocumented, low-skilled, and trafficked migrants susceptible to marginalised healthcare access) able to access health services were positive, with healthcare professionals generally demonstrating caring attitudes. However, general confusion existed about entitlements due to recent NHS changes, controversy over 'health tourism,' and challenges registering for health services or accessing secondary facilities. Factors requiring greater clarity or improvement included accessibility, communication, and clarity on general practitioner (GP) responsibilities and migrant entitlements. Legislation to restrict access to healthcare based on immigration status could further compromise the health of vulnerable individuals in Britain. This study highlights current challenges in health services policy and practice and the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in healthcare advocacy (eg, helping the voices of the most vulnerable reach policy-makers). Thus, it contributes to broadening national discussions and enabling more nuanced interpretation of ongoing global debates on immigration and health.

Evaluating recall of key safety messages, and attitudes and perceptions of a patient safety initiative at a pediatric hospital

Involving inpatients in their safety and well-being is becoming increasingly common. Interventions have been developed to encourage patients to be active in their own safety, but published evaluations are scarce. The Patient Safety Ambassador (PSA) program was developed to increase patient and parent/guardian engagement and knowledge in patient safety. This study aimed to determine recall ability of key safety messages and explore attitudes and perceptions towards the PSA program, hence obtaining feedback for program improvements. Participants were pediatric inpatients and parents of inpatients. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted. Cued and non-cued recall ability was determined using questions with and without specific cues, while attitudes and perceptions were explored using openended questions regarding patient safety. QSR NVivo 10 software was used to analyze interviews for recall ability and major themes. 95% of parents could remember all safety messages with cues, but could only remember one (35%) or two (32.5%) messages without cues. Inpatient participants could remember up to 4 messages with cues, no messages without cues, and, unlike parents, were unable to discuss their attitudes and perceptions towards safety. Five major themes emerged from analysis of interviews with parents: the importance of medication knowledge, parental involvement in care, having trust in healthcare team, asking questions, and advocacy. Use of cues appears beneficial in facilitating recall of safety messages. Parents had varied attitudes and perceptions to safety. Future research can explore methods to engage pediatric inpatients, integrate cues to increase recall, and examine resulting behavioural changes.

Symposium Introduction: The Politics of Religious Alliances

This symposium examines the politics of religious alliances. While the literature on religion and politics generally focuses ondifferencesacross individuals, congregations, denominations, or traditions, these articles instead ask how, when, and why religious groups do — and do not — form alliances with other organizations, both religious and secular. Specifically, this collection of original research examines the formation of multi-denominational coalitions among party activists, litigants, and religious leaders. These varied articles arose from a workshop at Oxford University in March 2015, an event hosted and funded by the Rothermere American Institute. The collection explores the impact of religious coalitional activity upon political attitudes, decision-making, and public policy development. It is wide-ranging, extending our understanding of religious coalitional activity beyond the United States and dealing with topics of vital current significance, including the swiftly changing landscape of school voucher and tax credit expansion, same-sex marriage, healthcare, and abortion advocacy.

Why Media matters in healthcare advocacy and education

‘Words are bridges that separate us’, said Mexican writer Octavio Paz.So, I believe, is the Media: It bridges the distance between messenger and audience, but it hardly eliminates it.The Media can ...

Organizational Advocacy of Cultural Competency Initiatives: Lessons for Public Administration

Cultural competency initiatives in the public sector continue to grow, from programming efforts to organizational policy implementation. These initiatives build off decades of similar experiences and practices in associated fields of public administration. This study reviews existing advocacy in health care, social work, and other public sector organizations. Specifically, the study reviews public service academies, associations, honor societies and accrediting body practices that, by example, can help by informing, guiding and advocating cultural competency initiatives in public administration. Future implications and opportunities are explored and presented.

Bridging Research, Practice, and Policy: The "Evidence Academy" Conference Model.

Innovative models to facilitate more rapid uptake of research findings into practice are urgently needed. Community members who engage in research can accelerate this process by acting as adoption agents. We implemented an Evidence Academy conference model bringing together researchers, health care professionals, advocates, and policy makers across North Carolina to discuss high-impact, life-saving study results. The overall goal is to develop dissemination and implementation strategies for translating evidence into practice and policy. Each 1-day, single-theme, regional meeting focuses on a leading community-identified health priority. The model capitalizes on the power of diverse local networks to encourage broad, common awareness of new research findings. Furthermore, it emphasizes critical reflection and active group discussion on how to incorporate new evidence within and across organizations, health care systems, and communities. During the concluding session, participants are asked to articulate action plans relevant to their individual interests, work setting, or area of expertise.

Climate Change and Green Burial

Climate Change and Green Burial

Promoting Advocacy in Health Care: a Tool to Combat Medical Error

Promoting Advocacy in Health Care: a Tool to Combat Medical Error

The Osteoporosis Clinical Care Gap: An Opportunity for Impact by the Clinical Pharmacist

The impact of osteoporosis to patients and the healthcare system is significant with estimates that 50% of Caucasian women and 20% of men will experience an osteoporotic fracture in their lifetime. However, despite multiple calls to action from healthcare advocates, osteoporosis remains underdiagnosed and undertreated. Data demonstrates that only 23% of women aged 67 years old and older who have an osteoporosis-related fracture receive either a bone mineral density test or a prescription to treat osteoporosis in the six months after the fracture. Reasons for this are debatable but may be include lack of access to DXA, an over reliance on T-scores, and a lack of recognition on the importance of the evaluation of clinical risk factors. In 2014 the National Bone Health Alliance released a position statement regarding the diagnosis of osteoporosis which suggested new standards for the diagnosis of osteoporosis. Through utilization of these new standards, pharmacists are one of the healthcare providers in an interdisciplinary team which may help to recognize osteoporosis diagnoses and the need for treatment, closing the care gap that currently exists with osteoporosis.

Laboratory Learning in a Research Methods Course

Laboratory-based learning is increasingly considered to be an integral component of undergraduate education. However, students do not always perceive the value of laboratory learning in the college classroom. The current research sought to create an effective laboratory learning environment within a research methods course and to assess students’ perceptions of this approach at the end of one semester. This article reports the findings for two studies; in Study 1, a survey was given to 17 criminal justice, health care management and advocacy, and psychology students. In a subsequent semester, challenges from Study 1 were addressed, and the same survey (i.e., Study 2) was given to 20 criminal justice and psychology majors. Across both samples, students’ responses to the laboratory learning paradigm were generally positive, yet concerns and challenges were identified. Future research should attempt to address these concerns and to assess objective student outcomes, such as grades in the course.

Not Merely TLC: Nurses’ Caring Revisited

The profession and practice of nursing has been studied from quite diverse scholarly perspectives in the United States and abroad. Feminist critiques focus on the gendering of caring and its knowledge/skill features, while professionalization advocates view emotive caring as secondary to other critical activities necessary for the occupational advancement of nursing. Based on ethnographic observations 30 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with nurses across different units working at a large urban hospital, this paper examines how nurses define caring as knowledge-based, skilled work. Specifically, nurses described four types of skills—observational, analytical, interactional, and comforting—that they deploy in the accomplishment of caring work at the bedside. My findings go beyond previous literature in this area by showing how nurses think of caring work in line with occupational strategies that emphasize their biomedical knowledge and diagnostic skills and uphold an advocacy or intermediary role in health care. I argue that while this ideological work may reassure nurses of their professional identity and critical role in health care, it may also reinforce the dilemma of nurse professionalization by obscuring the organizational nature of caring, as it remains an unsupported dimension of their work.

PC-FACS

PC-FACS

Increasing Use of Social Media at Annual ASH Meetings

Background: The use of social media is expanding in medicine. More and more healthcare professionals, patients and advocates are using social media as a common platform to enhance communication.Methods: Each year American Society of Hematology (ASH) creates a hashtag (#) followed by year of the annual meeting (e.g. ASH 2014 had this hashtag: #ASH14) on Twitter. We conducted a retrospective study of annual meeting's hashtag use on Twitter for past 4 annual meetings using data from Symplur, LLC. Symplur is an online forum offering analytics of the global Twitter based conversations. Following hashtags were used for analysis, #ASH11, #ASH12, #ASH13 and #ASH14.Results: Overall there is an increasing trend for use of annual meeting's hashtag (see table 1). Last year's meeting generated over 72 million impressions. Number of tweets being sent out is doubling every year. More twitter users are engaging in conversations than the year before using annual meeting's hashtag. Last year almost 4000 individual twitter accounts were used during the annual meeting. Number of tweets per participant has stayed relatively constant over past four years. @ash_hematology remains the most commonly mentioned twitter handle every year since 2011. In 2014 itself, @ash_hematology was mentioned over 2000 times.Conclusion: Twitter is a very powerful tool that amplifies the content of scientific meetings. Use of twitter using meeting's hashtag is increasing every year at annual ASH meetings. This analysis provides a snapshot of twitter activity at the conference. Avenues for further research are: trend identification, "influencer" identification, and qualitative analysis. Interdisciplinary research should focus on evaluation methods that can assess the quality, value, and impact of tweeting.Table 1YearImpressionsTweetsParticipantsAverage tweet per participant201112,255,64631236065201218,153,7865,0948706201330,018,58012,23319426201472,433,27024,18539776 DisclosuresNo relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

EPID-04PREVALENCE OF MALIGNANT PRIMARY BRAIN TUMORS IN THE UNITED STATES COMPARED TO OTHER COMMON CANCERS, 2010

BACKGROUND: Prevalence rates reflect the complex relationship between incidence, survival, and population demographics and illustrate the total burden of disease in a population. This study estimates the 2010 prevalence of malignant primary brain tumors overall and by Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States (CBTRUS) histology groups, and compares them to the prevalence of other common cancers by age at diagnosis: children (0-14 years), adolescent and young adult (AYA) (15-39 years), and adult (40+ years). METHODS: The prevalence of common cancers was estimated using 2010 incidence data from the United States Cancer Statistics (USCS) with 10-year survival data from Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program (SEER). Malignant primary brain tumor prevalence was estimated using incidence data from CBTRUS with 10-year survival data from SEER. RESULTS: The overall prevalence rate for malignant primary brain tumors in 2010 was 29.65 per 100,000 population (∼92,000 prevalent tumors). The most prevalent cancer in children was childhood leukemia (48.48), the most prevalent in AYA was lymphoma (77.49), and the most prevalent in adults was prostate (1,477.94). The most prevalent brain tumor histology was pilocytic astrocytoma (3.47) among children, diffuse astrocytoma (1.03) among AYA, and glioblastoma (7.16) among adults. CONCLUSIONS: The relative impact of malignant primary brain tumors is higher among children than any other age group. For AYA, malignant primary brain tumors are the third most prevalent cancer. While less common in adults, malignant primary brain tumors contribute disproportionately to mortality and morbidity in adults in the United States. Prevalence estimates can provide critical information towards public health and healthcare planning, including treatment, decision-making, funding, and advocacy programs.

Advocate for our patients, advocate for our profession.

Advocate for our patients, advocate for our profession.

Honor Thy Parents: An Ethnic Multigroup Analysis of Filial Responsibility, Health Perceptions, and Caregiving Decisions.

The present study explores patterns of parity and disparity in the effect of filial responsibility on health-related evaluations and caregiving decisions. Participants who identified as White, Black, Hispanic, or Asian/Pacific Islander read a vignette about an older man needing medical care. They were asked to imagine that they were the man's son and answer questions regarding their likelihood of hiring a health care advocate (HCA) for services related to the father's care. A multigroup (ethnicity) path analysis was performed, and an intercept invariant multigroup model fits the data best. Direct and indirect effect estimation showed that filial responsibility mediated the relationship between both the perceived severity of the father's medical condition and the perceived need for medical assistance and the likelihood of hiring an HCA only for White and Hispanic participants, albeit differently. The findings demonstrate that culture and ethnicity affect health evaluations and caregiving decision making.

The Case for Making Health Care Advocacy a Discipline of Medicine; The Paradigm of a Vascular Patient.

The time has come for the medical profession to embrace health advocacy as a new discipline of medicine. When facing issues like cancer or major surgery, patients often seek second opinions, and as they do, the second recommendation is likely to differ from the original one in around 30% of the cases (1). In numerous studies about Decision Aid Support, patients given a brochure to read about their choices tend to opt out of surgeries in at least 20% of the times (1). These studies were conducted in centers of excellence, where abuse and over utilization are assumed to be minimal. When patients are given credible education, patients often steer their care from the direction chosen by their treating physician (1).

Six new laureates in Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.

Six Canadian [health care luminaries][1] — three researchers, a clinician, a health care advocate and a world-famous poet — were inducted into the [Canadian Medical Hall of Fame][2] (CMHF) on Apr. 23 in Winnipeg. They join [101 laureates][3] who have been recognized for their significant

Fitness for purpose study of the Field Assessment Conditioning Tool (FACT): a research protocol

IntroductionAs part of a programme of research aiming to improve the outcomes of traumatically injured children, a multisource healthcare advocacy tool has been developed to allow trauma team members and...