Discovery Channel will air an encore of its medical documentary, “An Emerging Epidemic: Food Allergies in America,” on Saturday, September 21 at 8 a.m. ET. The program, which aims to raise awareness of food allergies as a serious and growing public health issue, features stories of families living with the potentially life-threatening condition.

The documentary features Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Physician Faculty Scholars alumna Ruchi S. Gupta, MD, MPH, who is an allergy researcher and mother of a child with egg, peanut, and tree nut allergies. Gupta wrote a post for the RWJF Human Capital Blog about the intersection of her professional and personal missions to keep children safe and raise awareness about food allergies.

The documentary is also available for viewing at www.discoverychannelpatienteducation.com and available for download on iTunes.

Learn more about the documentary.
Read Gupta’s post on the RWJF Human Capital Blog.

Around the country, print, broadcast, and online media outlets are covering the groundbreaking work of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) leaders, scholars, fellows, alumni, and grantees. Some recent examples:

Jennifer Stuber, PhD, an alumna of the RWJF Health & Society Scholars program, was a guest on KING’s New Day (Seattle, Wash.) to discuss Forefront, an organization she co-founded to advance suicide prevention through policy change, professional training, campus and school-based interventions, media outreach and ongoing evaluation. Stuber has been an advocate for suicide prevention since her husband took his own life in 2011, and supports suicide-assessment training for medical professionals as part of continuing education. Read a post Stuber wrote for the RWJF Human Capital Blog about that legislation.

Nearly 60 percent of the 5.1 million patients who were prescribed a psychotropic medication in 2009 had received no psychiatric diagnosis, according to a study led by RWJF/U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Clinical Scholar Ilse Wiechers, MD, MPP. The study also finds that 67 percent of those prescriptions were given to patients who did not receive any specialized mental health care, Medscape reports, meaning the medications were prescribed in primary care, general medical, or surgical settings.

Minnesota Public Radio and MinnPost.com report on a study co-authored by Health & Society Scholars alumni Sarah Gollust, PhD, and Jeff Niederdeppe, PhD, MA, examining how different messages about the consequences of childhood obesity could affect public attitudes about obesity-prevention policy. The researchers found that tapping into core values beyond health—like the need for a strong and ready military—appealed to conservatives, sometimes causing them to revise their views on how the problem should be addressed and which public and private entities should play a role.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s decision to limit the working hours of medical residents has not increased patient mortality rates, but it has decreased the time residents spend on direct patient care, according to two studies published in the August issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania studied 13.7 million Medicare patients admitted to hospitals between 2000 and 2008. In the first three years after the Accreditation Council enacted an 80-hour work week for residents in 2003, the researchers found no significant changes in patient mortality within 30 days of admission.

“We can reassure the public that patients did not appear to be harmed by the initial duty hour reform of 2003,” senior study author Jeffrey Silber, MD, PhD, told American Medical News. “We have published many papers prior to this looking at other outcomes [including prolonged length of stay following 2003 duty hour reform], and we have found similar results.”

A second change in resident hours came in 2011, when the Accreditation Council limited residents’ maximum shift length to 16 hours, down from 30. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland found that this change contributed to a reduction in the amount of time residents spent on direct patient care. Studies conducted in 1989 and 1993 found an average of 18 to 22 percent of residents’ time was spent on direct patient care; the new study finds residents only spent 12 percent of their time on direct patient care—or about eight minutes per patient, per day—in 2012.

Residents spent most of their time (64 percent) on indirect patient care tasks, such as talking with other health professionals, reviewing charts, and handoffs, the study concluded. Lead author Lauren Block, MD, MPH, told American Medical News that while residents aren’t spending as much time eating and sleeping at hospitals, “that time is not being made up spending time with patients, because they spend that time instead working at their computer stations.”

Read more about the studies in American Medical News.

Have you signed up to receive Sharing Nursing’s Knowledge? The monthly Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) e-newsletter will keep you up to date on the work of RWJF’s nursing programs, and the latest news, research, and trends relating to academic progression, leadership, and other critically important nursing issues. These are some of the stories in the September issue:

Wanted: Young Nurse Faculty
Nearly three-quarters of full-time nurse faculty are 50 and older, and the nurse faculty workforce is on the brink of a mass retirement. Most young nurses have chosen to work in other settings, and the insufficient number of young nurse faculty threatens to exacerbate the looming nurse shortage. Read about what is stopping young nurses from entering academia, and how RWJF programs are encouraging faculty careers.

RWJF Fellow Tapped to Head New Diversity Initiative in California
RWJF Executive Nurse Fellows alumna Mary Lou de Leon Siantz was tapped in June to head up the Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives on Science (CAMPOS) at the University of California, Davis, which aims to increase the participation of women, and Latinas in particular, in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. The appointment of a Latina nurse to this high-profile position calls attention to the often overlooked fact that science undergirds the nursing profession, and to the valuable role that women, and Latinas, play in scientific endeavors.

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Pamela A. Kulbok, DNSc, RN, PHCNS-BC, FAAN, is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellow. She is the Theresa A. Thomas Professor of Nursing and a professor of public health sciences at the University of Virginia, chair of the Department of Family, Community, and Mental Health Systems, and coordinator of the public health nursing leadership track of the master’s in nursing program.

With the recent release of second edition of the Public Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice (American Nurses Association, 2013), now is a perfect time to reflect on the past and look toward the future of public health nursing (PHN). Public health nurses have always focused on improving the health of populations through health promotion and disease prevention. Since the establishment of visiting nursing in Boston and the Henry Street Settlement in New York City in the late 1800s, public health nurses have worked with families and communities in schools and homes, with immigrant populations in industrialized cities, and with rural communities to address challenging social conditions and to promote the health of the public.

It was evident with the founding of the National Organization of Public Health Nurses in 1912 that “something must be done” to prepare nurses with a broader education and emphasis on social conditions and prevention. Today, more than ever before, when health care in the United States is shifting its emphasis from an illness care system to one focused on health promotion and prevention, we need public health nurse generalists and advance practice public health nurses prepared to lead health care reform. 

This is part of a series of blog posts introducing programs in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Human Capital Portfolio. The RWJF Clinical Scholars program develops physician leaders to improve health and health care in the United States while preserving a commitment to service and patients.

A number of university professors and deans, hospital CEOs, health commissioners, 45 members of the Institute of Medicine, and even RWJF’s president and CEO have one thing in common: their shared experience as alumni of RWJF’s oldest program, the Clinical Scholars.

“For anyone who wants to be a catalyst for change in the health and health care of our country, the Clinical Scholars program is an excellent opportunity to do so.”

- Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, MBA, president and CEO, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Penn Clinical Scholars program ’83–’86)

Founded in 1969 and adopted by RWJF in 1972, the Clinical Scholars program was created to foster the development of physicians who are leading the transformation of U.S. health and health care through positions in academic medicine, public health, and other leadership roles.

Through this post-residency program which provides two years of master’s degree study, Clinical Scholars learn to conduct innovative research in health policy, health services research, and community-based participatory research (CBPR). In addition, scholars work with communities, organizations, practitioners, and policy-makers on issues important to the health and well-being of all Americans.

Richard Rieselbach, MD, is an alumnus of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellows program and a professor emeritus and health policy consultant for the University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation.

In the last decade, the nation’s community health centers (CHCs) have doubled their capacity. They now provide care for more than 22 million underserved children and adults in every state. But they’re going to need to do it again. By 2019, some 40 million patients will be in need of care.

The United States does not have enough primary care providers to serve these new patients, and our public investment in health professions education—graduate medical education (GME)—is failing to produce the pipeline we need. Medical students are choosing specialties over primary care at an alarming rate, and a policy vacuum keeps the GME program from being held accountable.

An initiative was launched in 2011 that I think holds great promise: the Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education initiative. This five-year, $230 million program was funded by the Affordable Care Act and created to increase the number of primary care graduates trained in community settings.

My colleagues and I have proposed a modified and expanded version of this initiative, called “CHAMP” Teaching Health Centers (CHAMP THCs). Our teaching model would pair CHCs with academic medical centers to develop a THC track that would encourage students to graduate in primary care and practice in urban and rural underserved areas.

Around the country, print, broadcast, and online media outlets are covering the groundbreaking work of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) leaders, scholars, fellows, alumni, and grantees. Some recent examples:

People who will be newly eligible for Medicaid after expansion under the Affordable Care Act will be younger and healthier than those currently enrolled in the program, according to a study by RWJF Clinical Scholars alumna Tammy Chang, MD, MPH, and program site co-director Matthew Davis, MD, MAPP. The researchers found that the new Medicaid enrollees will also be less likely to be obese or to suffer from depression, although more of them will be smokers and drinkers. Among the outlets to report on the findings: Reuters, Kaiser Health News, NBC News, NPR’s Shots blog, and Medpage Today.

Medpage Today reports on a study led by RWJF Physician Faculty Scholars alumnus Craig Newgard, MD, MPH, finding that nearly one-third of patients sent to major trauma centers by first responders did not need that level of care and could have been sent elsewhere for diagnosis and treatment. This “overtriaging" raises per-patient health care costs by as much as 40 percent, the study finds. Read more about it.

While in Australia for a conference on reforming health care systems to meet the challenges of aging populations, RWJF Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program alumna Alicia Arbaje, MD, MPH, sat down for two interviews—one with The Australian Financial Review on how stereotypes about aging are changing, and one with Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio about transitional care and reducing readmissions among older adults after they leave hospitals. Read a post Arbaje wrote for the RWJF Human Capital Blog about navigating care across settings and the role of caregivers.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) recently released three new videos about the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, a national initiative of RWJF and AARP to implement recommendations from the Institute of Medicine’s Future of Nursing report.

The first video describes the Campaign’s history and goals, as well as the work of its Action Coalitions, which are working in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. They have been harnessing the power of nursing to generate real, transformational change for the country’s health care system.

RWJF also produced video interviews with Campaign for Action co-directors Susan B. Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, RWJF’s senior adviser for nursing, and Susan Reinhard, PhD, RN, AARP’s senior vice president for public policy, in which they discuss their careers and their roles with the Campaign for Action.

Learn more and watch the videos.