December 2018 Media Mentions
We regularly share highlights from news coverage of our work, including the growing collection of results from our funded studies. Here are some recent examples:
Black and Hispanic Americans Have a Harder Time Quitting Cigarettes. Will This Penn Study Find a Way to Help?The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 3, 2018
This article featured a PCORI-funded study that aims to help patients from underserved populations who receive lung cancer screening to stop smoking. According to the article, Hispanic and black Americans have more difficulty with smoking cessation than whites. It notes that an $11 million PCORI award will support researchers in testing the effectiveness of four different approaches to helping patients stop smoking when they present for a lung cancer screening. The study will include 3,200 smokers who are black, Hispanic, have a low income or educational level, or live in rural areas.
Nearly 10 additional news outlets featured the Inquirer article in their coverage.
A New Way to Curb Harmful Medical Errors: Talk More to Patients and FamiliesSTAT, December 6, 2018
This prominent health news site was one of several outlets to cover a PCORI-funded project designed to improve communication and reduce dangerous medical errors in children’s hospitals by including patients and families as parts of a child’s care team. The study, reported in BMJ, found that more fully including families in daily “rounds,” the clinical meetings where the care team discusses a patient’s condition and care, reduced harmful medical errors by 38 percent.
Additional coverage appeared in the trade outlets Health IT Analytics and MDlinx.com.
Training the EHR to Speak When a Child Can’tPOLITICO, December 18, 2018
This article highlighted PCORI-funded researchers who built and evaluated a child abuse alert system within the electronic health record at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. The system aims to make the process of identifying indicators of child abuse, such as past injuries more objective for clinicians. Additional PCORI funding is supporting the team’s project to implement the system in other children’s hospitals. The article notes that an estimated 2,000 children die of abuse each year in the United States. Eventually, the system could help staff intervene before abuse happens, says principal investigator Rachel Berger, MD, MPH.
Answers to Crucial Questions in Pediatric Health Revealed Through Use of Big DataBecker’s Hospital Review, December 6, 2018
This article focused on the challenges of performing pediatric research and highlights PEDSnet, a PCORI member network that aids pediatric researchers in answering medical questions that will help children and their families. The data bank contains 6.2 million patient records from eight children’s hospitals and medical centers. The article notes that analyzing large amounts of data like that in PEDSnet can help answer research questions in less time and at lower cost. It also highlights recent results from a PEDSnet study on asthma. As reported in Pediatrics, researchers found obesity to be a major risk factor for asthma in children. The article states that the finding “could potentially prevent 800,000 kids in the United States from developing asthma.”
Two Leading Journals Highlight Awardees in 2018 Year-End ‘Best of’ ListsAnnals of Internal Medicine and JAMA, December 2018
PCORI awardees received recognition in year-end highlights articles in two of the nation’s top general medical journals. A year-end highlights piece in the Annals of Internal Medicine included two mentions of the work of awardee David Arterburn and colleagues, including their study comparing the long-term benefits and harms of three of the most common weight-loss surgeries. Researchers found that gastric bypass surgery led to greater initial and sustained weight loss compared to adjustable gastric banding or sleeve gastrectomy. Meanwhile, an article on the “most talked about” papers in JAMA cited awardee Erin Krebs’ SPACE study as No. 3 on that journal’s 2018 list; the Veterans Health Administration funded this study, but Krebs has a PCORI-funded project on a similar topic.
Shepherd Center’s Top 10 Accomplishments of 2018news.shepherd.org, December 21,2018
This blog celebrated a $5.7 million PCORI award for studying the delivery and effects of an exercise program for individuals with multiple sclerosis as one of the center’s top accomplishments for 2018. The piece notes that the award marks the hospital’s largest research grant to date. The Shepherd Center’s Director of Multiple Sclerosis Research Debbie Backus, PT, PhD, will lead the project comparing at-home and facility-based exercise programs. The Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia, specializes in medical treatment, research, and rehabilitation for people with brain and spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis, and other neuromuscular conditions.
The Extraordinary Importance of SleepP&T Community, December 2018
The future of clinical trial research in the field of sleep medicine will emphasize patient engagement and patient-centered outcomes, according to this article. The piece highlights a PCORI-funded study that compared a new, patient-centered approach to care with conventional care for the outpatient treatment of sleep disorders. “The patient’s perspective is so invaluable in guiding the success of a study that ideally it should be incorporated right at the inception of a research question or idea,” says the study’s principal investigator Clete Kushida, MD, MS, in the article. The research team published its findings in the journal Sleep.
Stay tuned for more media highlights of our work.