The prevalence of optimal cardiometabolic health among U.S. adults declined in the past 2 decades, with disparity gaps widening based on age, sex, education and race, researchers reported.
Optimal cardiometabolic health was defined as optimal levels of adiposity, blood glucose, blood lipids and BP, as well as no history of clinical CVD, according to data published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Read more in Healio.
NEW ORLEANS — Mental health care delivery needs a paradigm shift, according to a review that was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and presented at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) annual meeting.
Mental health professionals should move from an individual therapy and pharmacological treatment-focused approach to a community-level, public mental health-focused approach to achieve a more equitable model of mental health care, said Margarita Alegría, PhD, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues.
Read the full story in MedPage Today.
Racial and ethnic disparities in kidney replacement therapies were most pronounced among patients aged 22 to 44 years who are either transplant recipients or on home dialysis, according to data in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases.
“Research has shown wide racial and ethnic disparities in use of kidney transplant and home dialysis, yet how age interacts with these disparities is unknown,” Adam S. Wilk, PhD, and colleagues wrote. Read more in Healio.
The Organ Procurement and Transplant Network Board of Directors has unanimously voted to remove the race coefficient from eGFR equations.
Several organizations have called for the removal of the race coefficient because it puts Black patients on the transplant list at a disadvantage. Following the vote by its board, the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network (OPTN) will be implementing a race-neutral eGFR equation within 30 days. Read the full story in Healio.
Participation in cardiac rehabilitation is low among Asian, Black and Hispanic adults compared to white adults, with significant disparities by race/ethnicity regardless of income, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access, peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association.
Cardiac rehabilitation programs combine physical activity with counseling about healthy living and stress reduction to help improve recovery after a major cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack, heart failure, heart surgery or angioplasty.
Read more in News Medical Life Sciences.
Key points:
-OPTN Board to take up recommendation June 27
-If approved, implementation may occur within 30 days
-Transplant programs and labs should be aware of the pending action and consider options for transition
At its next in-person meeting, the Board of Directors of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) will consider a proposal to require transplant hospitals to use race-neutral calculations when estimating a patient’s glomerular filtration rates (GFR). This proposed change aims to reduce health disparities and address inequities for Black kidney candidates by more accurately estimating their GFR values. The board will next meet in Richmond, Va., June 26-27, 2022. Read more from UNOS.
CINCINNATI — African Americans wait two- to four-times longer on transplant waiting lists than whites, according to the Cleveland Clinic. One health center is working to get answers and cut down the wait.
D’On Ingram received an ultrasound as a follow up to his recent kidney transplant—a surgery that was years in the making. Just 10 years ago, doctors diagnosed him with stage three renal failure. Five years later, his kidneys got weaker, and his doctor put him on dialysis. Read the full story in Spectrum News 1 here.
A coalition including the four medical schools at the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities has announced a new initiative aimed at increasing the number of Black Americans registered as organ donors and combating disparities among transplant recipients.
A new initiative aimed at increasing the number of Black Americans registered as organ donors and combating disparities among transplant recipients was announced Thursday by a coalition that includes the four medical schools at the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities. Read more in U.S. News & World Report.
Women who need a liver transplant are more likely to spend more time on a waiting list, become too sick for transplant or die compared to men. To improve equity, a recently published Vanderbilt-led study suggests a sex adjustment to criteria for MELD (model for end-stage liver disease), which determines allocation of transplanted livers.
The paper, “Proposing a Sex-Adjusted Sodium-Adjusted MELD Score for Liver Transplant Allocation” appears in JAMA Surgery. Read more in the VUMC Reporter.
Racial disparities in COVID-19 mortality persist in the U.S. among lung transplant recipients, according to data presented at the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions.
“Our group was interested in trying to look at disparities and come up with ways of not only identifying but finding ways to intervene to decrease the disparities observed within the cardiac surgery population, which lung transplant recipients fall into,” Stanley B. Wolfe, MD, cardiac research fellow in surgery at the Corrigan Minehan Heart Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, told Healio. “We know that the transplant population, whether it be lung, heart, kidney, etc., have very close follow-up compared to a standard patient, but they also are immunosuppressed, which increases your overall risk of getting severe COVID-19, as well as dying from COVID-19.” Read the full story in Healio.