Boston University School Research Articles

In Case You Haven't Heard…

We're sorry we missed it. An unusual online meeting sponsored by Faegre Drinker Consulting and Arnold Ventures was conducted earlier this month. The June 9 Boston University School of Public Health event focused on what it called “an area ripe for opportunistic fraudsters.” Indeed, we have written about treatment fraud many times. This meeting did note that the SUPPORT Act of 2018 sought to prohibit much of the actions used by those committing substance use disorder treatment fraud but has led to relatively few indictments thus far. There is a human as well as an economic cost to fraud, and focused on the lack of regulation of some programs. It's important to remember that there are bad apples, and that they don't mean all treatment is fraudulent. The focus of this meeting was on using algorithms to detect waste and fraud, something supported by Faegre Drinker and Arnold Ventures and conducted by researchers at the Boston University Medical Campus (the “Drinker,” by the way, is the name of one of the partners of Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath). The main market for this algorithm is insurance companies. The meeting also focused on secret shopper studies. Brad Sorte of Caron Treatment Centers was there as well and noted that programs that focus on finance instead of patient care — asking about insurance up front, for example — may be fraudulent. Have you ever gone to any health care provider who didn't ask about insurance up front? Still, again, we're sorry to have missed it. (https://www.faegredrinker.com/en/insights/events/2021/6/substance‐use‐disorder‐treatment‐centers‐uncovering‐fraud‐and‐advancing‐policies‐to‐promote‐best‐pra).

Peripheral Vascular Disease in 2021.

Peripheral Vascular Disease in 2021.

A Novel Curriculum Assessment Tool, Based on AAMC Competencies, to Improve Medical Education About Sexual and Gender Minority Populations.

Medical education aspires to mitigate bias in future professionals by providing robust curricula that include perspectives of and practices for caring for sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations; however, implementation of these ideals remains challenging. Medical school leaders motivated to improve curricula on caring for SGM populations must survey their school's current curricula to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement. In 2014, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) published 30 SGM competencies that curricula should address. Here the authors describe the development of a tool to efficiently assess whether an undergraduate medical education (UME) curriculum adequately incorporates the AAMC-recommended SGM competencies. In 2018, Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) convened a group of faculty and students with experience and expertise regarding SGM health. The group distilled the 30 AAMC competencies into 12 SGM topic areas that should be addressed in any UME curriculum, and they developed a curriculum assessment tool to evaluate the presence and timing of these topic areas in the BUSM curriculum. This tool was distributed to all course and clerkship directors responsible for the required UME curriculum at BUSM to investigate where these topic areas are addressed (May-June 2019). The curriculum assessment tool identified several strengths in the preclerkship and clerkship curricula, including faculty willingness and enthusiasm to include SGM content. The assessment tool also revealed that some SGM topic areas are underrepresented in the BUSM curriculum, particularly during clerkships. The curriculum assessment tool described here is a straightforward, standardized instrument to map SGM topic areas within any UME curriculum. It is designed to be comprehensible by individuals who are not familiar with SGM health. The tool minimizes barriers to medical curricular change by providing a mechanism to assess and understand how SGM health is incorporated into existing curricula.

Editorial Comment.

No AccessJournal of UrologyAdult Urology1 Aug 2021Editorial CommentThis article comments on the following:SKOPE—Study of Ketorolac vs Opioid for Pain after Endoscopy: A Double-Blinded Randomized Control Trial in Patients Undergoing Ureteroscopyis a letter which has replyReply by Authors Shaun E. L. Wason Shaun E. L. WasonShaun E. L. Wason Department of Urology, Boston University School of Medicine/Boston Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts More articles by this author View All Author Informationhttps://doi.org/10.1097/JU.0000000000001772.01AboutFull TextPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints ShareFacebookLinked InTwitterEmail "Editorial Comment." The Journal of Urology, 206(2), p. 380

Preliminary Thoughts on 'The Jury Trial Reinvented'

Among this year’s takeaways is that, if any social entity wishes to survive, it must—like biological entities—adapt. Yet adaptation requires change—and law is notoriously slow to change. Since a functioning legal system is fundamental to society, however, it is no exaggeration to say that the law’s capacity to adapt will have ramifications that extend far beyond the legal profession. Although the past year’s biological crisis is far from over, its dual political crises—a crisis of democratic legitimacy and an epistemic crisis—pose far more fundamental threats to our collective future than COVID-19 ever did. I recently co-authored a paper with Professor Christopher T. Robertson of the Boston University School of Law, in which we suggest that a large part of the solution to our dual political crises is staring us in the face: The jury. In the 18th century, the Framers recognized that the jury as an institution was crucial for maintaining the public’s faith in democracy, as well as for preserving its faith in the justice system’s ability to discern truth. In our paper, we propose six reforms aimed at making the jury relevant in the 21st century. This essay was published in a newsletter produced by NYU Law School, and attempts to provide a synopsis in order to describe a forthcoming (full-length) law-review article: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3796292

Editorial introductions.

Editorial introductions.

Editorial introductions

Editorial introductions

Elizabeth Pearce: maintaining the fight against iodine deficiency

You could say that Elizabeth Pearce was meant for endocrinology. Both her parents were in academic medicine, serving as professors at the University of Minnesota. Her father was a pulmonologist, and her mother was an endocrinologist. Aside from her mother's influence, Pearce found intellectual excitement in “working out mechanisms and pathways based on lab results”. She also appreciates how endocrinology is “a whole-body specialty that allows for long-term relationships with patients”. A recent past-president of the American Thyroid Association, she serves as a Professor of Medicine in the Endocrinology, Diabetes and Nutrition section at the Boston University School of Medicine, where she also directs the endocrinology fellowship programme.

Weight-bearing CT for Knee Osteoarthritis Assessment: A Story Unfolds

Weight-bearing CT for Knee Osteoarthritis Assessment: A Story Unfolds

Brigid Dwyer, MD, and Douglas I. Katz, MD.

Dr. Dwyer is Assistant Professor of Neurology at Boston University (BU) School of Medicine. She received her BS from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and her MD from the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University. She did her internship in Internal Medicine, as well as her residency in Neurology, at BU. This was followed by a clinical and research fellowship in Brain Injury Medicine and Neurorehabilitation sponsored by the BU School of Medicine and the Boston Veterans Affairs Healthcare System. She joined BU's faculty in 2017, where she has served admirably. She is currently Director of the Vascular Injury/Stroke Program at Encompass Health Braintree Rehabilitation Hospital, where she also serves on the Medical Executive Committee. She serves on numerous American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM) committees, including the Disorders of Consciousness Working Group, the Physicians and Clinicians Working Group, and the Brain Injury Interdisciplinary Special Interest Group. She is a revered clinician and teacher, and a rising star in the field of Brain Injury Medicine.

The past and future of social group work in Germany: contributions of Louis Lowy

ABSTRACT Louis Lowy (1920 to 1991), the international social work educator, remembered surviving the Holocaust as a formative professional experience. After joining the faculty of Boston University School of Social Work, Lowy returned to Germany every summer for 20 years to help restore social work education. This SPARC project, “The Past and Future of Social Group Work in Germany: Contributions of Louis Lowy,” was proposed in collaboration with Klaus-Martin Ellerbrock and the German Chapter of IASWG at the height of the 2015 global refugee crisis, when Germany admitted more than one million refugees. The purposes of the project were to encourage ongoing international scholarship on the implications of Lowy’s teachings for social work with groups; to facilitate research and writing from an international perspective on group work with migrants and other disenfranchised populations; and to foster international collaborations among group workers in the spirit of Louis Lowy.

Opioids in oral surgery: preliminary findings between Birmingham, UK and Boston, US.

Aims This study aims to review ways in which UK and US practitioners manage post-operative dental pain following oral surgery procedures, focusing on the use of opioids in Boston, US and Birmingham, UK.Methods An anonymous online questionnaire was distributed to clinicians from either Birmingham Dental Hospital, UK and Harvard School of Dental Medicine or Boston University School of Dental Medicine, US. They were invited to fill this out via email link or in person using a tablet provided. Information was collected regarding age, years of experience, area of practice, area of undergraduate training, gender and levels of oral surgery activity. Participants were presented with six clinical scenarios and asked to indicate how they would achieve post-operative analgesia for each.Results A total of 44 responses were received, 22 from each city, including 27 males and 17 females. Fifty-five percent of respondents carried out at least ten weekly oral surgery procedures, with 52% having more than ten years' experience. Forty-one percent were aged greater than 40 years, with 32% less than 30. Boston dentists were 2.1 times (P = 0.016) more likely to opt for opioids than Birmingham dentists. Both cohorts were more likely to choose opioids for invasive surgeries involving flap procedures compared to simple extractions. Among the cases where UK respondents opted for opioids, codeine was chosen in 100% of cases compared to 9% for the US cohort, where the remainder chose more potent opioids (oxycodone, hydrocodone and tramadol).Conclusions Results of this preliminary study show that Boston practitioners were likely to opt for opioids in a higher proportion of cases (19.84%) than Birmingham practitioners (9.42%). Reasons for the discrepancies could be related to how practitioners are trained, patient expectations on pain relief and health policy in the two countries. Dental prescriptions have contributed to the US opioid epidemic and their decreased use will be important in combatting the crisis.

Beyond the Manuscript: “Don’t Shoot, I Want to Grow Up”: Findings of a Multi-city Youth-led Health Assessment

Beyond the Manuscript: “Don’t Shoot, I Want to Grow Up”: Findings of a Multi-city Youth-led Health Assessment Vanessa de Danzine, Catalina Tang Yan, and Necole Muhammad Welcome to Progress in Community Health Partnerships’ latest episode of our Beyond the Manuscript podcast. In each volume of the Journal, the editors select one article for our Beyond the Manuscript post-study interview with the authors. Beyond the Manuscript provides the authors the opportunity to tell listeners what they would want to know about the project beyond what went into the final manuscript. In this episode of Beyond the Manuscript, Associate Editor, Vanessa de Danzine interviews Catalina Tang Yan and Necole Muhammad, authors of “Don’t Shoot, I Want to Grow Up”: Findings of a Multi-city Youth-led Health Assessment Vanessa de Danzine: Hi. Good day. Welcome. Glad to have the opportunity to interview you. My name is Vanessa de Danzine. I’m a retired detective in the New York City Police Department. I’m the past chair of the Community-Based Public Health Caucus, and I’m the past president of the National Community-Based Organization Network and, of course, an associate editor for the Journal of Progress in Community Health Partnership. I’d like to welcome you to this podcast. Catalina Tang Yan: Thank you. So, Necole, do you want to introduce yourself? Necole Muhammad: Oh, sure. So I am Necole Muhammad. I am a native of Chicago, Illinois, and during the highlights of the study and the action of the study at that time I was the principal at Little Black Pearl Art and Design Academy, and that is a high school in Chicago. And it was a phenomenal experience, and just the experience that we had working with the youth, once I resigned from my position as a principal, I immediately moved into gun-violence reduction. So that is currently what I do. I’m a licensed clinical social worker, and so that’s me. That’s me. Catalina Tang Yan: Thank you so much for having us here. My name is Catalina Tang Yan. I go by she/her/hers. I’m currently a doctoral candidate at Boston University School of Social Work, and I was born and raised in Colombia, South America. My family are Chinese migrants from the south, and I came here to the U.S. at the age of 16. My background prior to pursuing this doctoral degree—I got politicized as a youth leader in Boston, and I worked primarily with young people, youth of color out of school time in social-justice-based programs, and my research really focuses on community-based participatory research approaches to health equity and racial justice. Vanessa de Danzine: Well, thank you ladies both for joining us today. I’m really excited. I had a wonderful time reading the manuscript. I’d like for you to tell me a little bit more about your partnership and how it all began. Catalina Tang Yan: I can get started and set a little bit the scene, if that’s okay, from our end. So, this partnership was also possible with the support of Dr. Linda Sprague Martinez, who served as the principal investigator of the project. And she serves as an associate professor at Boston University School of Social Work. And in [End Page 319] partnership with the America’s Promise Alliance, the Center for Promise, we actually received generous funding, and the purpose of the focus of the funding was really exploring factors that promoted and hindered the health and well-being of young people. And so leveraging Dr. Linda Sprague Martinez and also her experience and work partnering with youth and community-based organizations to really conduct health assessments, we actually were able to really identify a series of previous partners or community-based organizations across five cities in 2016. And in terms of really thinking about the partnerships, we thought about, what is the kinda work that they’re doing to uplift the voices and amplify the voices of young people? How is this aligned with the ways that this can enrich the work that they do? And so, we definitely...

They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans’ Story by Gretchen Cassel Eick

Reviewed by: They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans’ Story by Gretchen Cassel Eick Janet Dean They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans’ Story. By Gretchen Cassel Eick. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2020. xiii + 353 pp. $45.00 cloth. When Charles Ohiyesa Eastman and Elaine Goodale married in 1891, they formed a power couple in the fight for Indigenous people in the United States. He was a Santee Dakota (Sioux) doctor, serving his community as government physician at the Pine Ridge Agency. She was a white teacher and writer from Massachusetts whose work with Indigenous students at Hampton Institute led to a government position as supervisor of education in the Dakotas. Despite [End Page 177] their Indian Bureau appointments, both had reputations as critics of federal Indian policy and advocates for western tribes. Joining forces in life and work, the Eastmans would go on to dedicate their lives to the advancement of Indigenous rights. But the inauspicious timing of their engagement, days before the massacre at Wounded Knee, suggests the magnitude of what they, and their marriage, were up against: no less than a national campaign to eliminate Native American peoples and cultures. Less discernibly, the couple faced tensions within the movement they helped lead, as well as changes in their individual views about what was in the best interests of Indigenous people. Gretchen Cassel Eick’s They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans’ Story uses the record of this fascinating shared life as a framework for exploring the conflicts and contradictions of the Progressive Era. Interweaving descriptions of the Eastmans’ nearly thirty-year partnership with overviews of major historical events, shifts in government policy, and developments in reform movements, Eick offers not so much an intimate portrait of a marriage as a case study in the convergence of the personal and the political. Eick draws on scholarly biographies and the Eastmans’ memoirs, but rather than just presenting side-by-side life stories, she illuminates the major events that positioned her subjects between white and Indigenous worlds. The opening chapters focus on the Dakota War of 1862, which made Charles Eastman a refugee when he was four years old. Charles was raised by his grandmother in a traditional Dakota community in Canada; at fifteen, he was reunited with his father and brothers, who had been imprisoned by the United States and had emerged Christianized and assimilated. Charles learned English, converted to Christianity, and earned degrees from Dartmouth College and Boston University School of Medicine, but as Eick notes, he retained a belief that practicing traditional culture was an important form of resistance. Eick devotes less attention to Elaine’s early years but outlines a childhood in a New England family dedicated to social reform and an early writing career (as a teenager, she published a book of poetry with her sister). By the time of her marriage, Elaine was writing articles criticizing the commissioner of Indian Affairs and exposing the corruption of land speculators, railroad companies, and political appointees who exploited tribes. She learned Dakota and spent a year traveling to reservations to document conditions. In the years that followed their marriage, Charles held a variety of positions as Elaine supported his career and raised their six children, writing when she could. Eick details Charles’s work as a representative for the YMCA (he started forty-three chapters of the organization on reservations around the country), a lobbyist, an educator, a Bureau of Indian Affairs official, and a founder and president of the Society of American Indians. She chronicles Charles’s growing [End Page 178] celebrity as an author and speaker and the couples’ creation of a summer camp devoted to teaching Indigenous practices. Alternating with these descriptions are analyses of historical events, from the Battle of Little Big Horn to World War I, and introductions to a cast of prominent figures, including Chief Red Cloud, Theodore Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Emma Goldman, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin/Zitkala-Ŝa, and Mabel Dodge Luhan. While most of these figures did not directly interact with the Eastmans, their stories offer rich context for understanding the transformations in politics, society, and culture that the couple was experiencing at...

The 60° Doppler Angle Correction Paradigm: Reality or Myth? (an Uncomfortable Truth?).

Journal of Ultrasound in MedicineVolume 40, Issue 10 p. 2227-2233 Commentary The 60° Doppler Angle Correction Paradigm Reality or Myth? (an Uncomfortable Truth?) Joseph F. Polak MD, MPH, Corresponding Author Joseph F. Polak MD, MPH [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-2459-083X Tufts University School of Medicine and Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts Address correspondence to Joseph F. Polak MD, MPH, Department of Radiology, Lemuel Shattuck Hospital, 170 Morton St, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts 02130, USA. E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorFrederick W. Kremkau PhD, Frederick W. Kremkau PhD Center for Experiential and Applied Learning, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NCSearch for more papers by this author Joseph F. Polak MD, MPH, Corresponding Author Joseph F. Polak MD, MPH [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-2459-083X Tufts University School of Medicine and Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts Address correspondence to Joseph F. Polak MD, MPH, Department of Radiology, Lemuel Shattuck Hospital, 170 Morton St, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts 02130, USA. E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorFrederick W. Kremkau PhD, Frederick W. Kremkau PhD Center for Experiential and Applied Learning, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NCSearch for more papers by this author First published: 23 December 2020 https://doi.org/10.1002/jum.15603Citations: 1 Received December 2, 2020, from the Department of Radiology, Lemuel Shattuck Hospital, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston Massachusetts, USA (J.F.P.); and Center for Experiential and Applied Learning, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA (F.W.K.). Manuscript accepted for publication December 3, 2020. All of the authors of this article have reported no disclosures. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume40, Issue10October 2021Pages 2227-2233 RelatedInformation

Medical Error, Adverse Events, and Complications in Interventional Radiology: Liability or Opportunity?

This review suggests that there is a critical need to renew understanding of adverse events and complications within interventional radiology and to redefine a robust commitment to patient safety a...

Dr. Roger Guerra-García Cueva y los estudios de población y desarrollo

Hace pocas semanas dejó de existir una de las figuras señeras de la ciencia médica y prócer de la Planificación Familiar en el Perú, el Dr. Roger Guerra-García Cueva, poseedor de una serie de cualidades que es necesario destacar e imitar. El Dr. Roger Guerra-García nació el 02 de abril de 1933 en la ciudad de Pacasmayo, La Libertad, aunque sus ancestros provenían de Cajamarca, a donde solía ir con frecuencia para disfrutar de su naturaleza y cumplir con responsabilidades propias de sus cargos. El Dr. Guerra fue un médico sanmarquino, con posgrado en el Hospital Mount Sinai de Nueva York y la Escuela de Medicina de la Universidad de Boston, habiendo alcanzado su doctorado en la Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia.

Editorial introductions

Current Opinion in Endocrinology and Diabetes was launched in 1994, with Obesity added to the title in 2007. It is one of a successful series of review journals whose unique format is designed to provide a systematic and critical assessment of the literature as presented in the many primary journals. The fields of endocrinology and diabetes are divided into 12 sections that are reviewed once a year. Each section is assigned a Section Editor, a leading authority in the area, who identifies the most important topics at that time. Here we are pleased to introduce the Journal's Section Editors for this issue. SECTION EDITORS Wendy KuohungWendy KuohungWendy Kuohung is the Director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology at Boston Medical Center and an Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Boston University School of Medicine, USA. Dr Kuohung received her medical degree from the Yale University School of Medicine, USA. She completed her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University Medical Center, USA and fellowship training in reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Brigham and Women's Hospital, USA. Dr Kuohung is a Reproductive Scientist Development Program scholar and has received several NIH research grants since 2003. She received the BUSM Resident Award for Excellence in Teaching in Ob/Gyn in 2001 and the Harvard Medical School Teaching Award in Reproductive Endocrinology in 2003. She has published numerous peer-reviewed publications and chapters. Her research interests lie in infections of the placenta and reproductive tract, and she has clinical expertise in advanced minimally invasive gynecologic surgery, female infertility, and fertility preservation. In addition to Boston University Medical Center, her practice sites include Boston IVF in Waltham, MA, USA. Katherine L. RotkerKatherine L. RotkerKatherine L. Rotker is a board-certified urologist and assistant professor of Urology at the University of Massachusetts medical school, USA. She completed both her residency training and fellowship at Brown University, USA, and specializes in male infertility, andrology and men's health. She has published in the areas of hypogonadism and fertility preservation. She also has a special interest in gender bias and has published extensively in this area including “Addressing Patient Gender Bias Toward Trainees in the Field of Andrology”, “What's Gender Got to Do With It: Difference in the Proportion of Traditionally Female Cases Performed by General Urologists of Each Gender” and “Gender Disparities in Industry Payments to Urologists.”

COVID-19 Response "Playbooks" at Boston University's School of Theology Library

Theological Librarianship is an open access journal publishing peer-reviewed articles, as well as essays and reviews, on subjects at the intersection of librarianship and religious and theological studies that potentially impact libraries.

To Increase Diversity, Medicine Should Rethink USMLE Scores, Psychiatrists Say

To Increase Diversity, Medicine Should Rethink USMLE Scores, Psychiatrists Say