Apr 12 2021
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Raina Merchant

CHIBE Q&A with Raina Merchant, MD, MSHP, FAHA

By CHIBEblog

Raina Merchant, MD, MSHP, FAHA, is Director of the Penn Medicine Center for Digital Health. She is also an Associate Vice President at Penn Medicine and Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. She has secondary appointments in the Department of Internal Medicine, the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Division of Health Policy, and she serves as Co-Director of the Penn National Clinician Scholars Program. Dr. Merchant recently became a CHIBE-affiliated faculty member as well. Read our CHIBE Q&A to learn more about her. What projects are you working on right now? Much…

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Apr 12 2021
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Penn Today: An approach to COVID-19 vaccination equity for Black neighborhoods

By In the News

Nationwide, the rollout for the COVID-19 vaccine has been inequitable, with white individuals being vaccinated at higher rates compared to Black individuals. Leaders from Penn Medicine, Mercy Catholic Medical Center, and the community partnered on designing and running a series of community-based clinics that vaccinated almost 3,000 people, 85% of whom were Black. A retrospective of their efforts on the three initial clinics was published in NEJM Catalyst. While the paper describes the efforts in detail, Lee, senior author Eugenia South, an assistant professor of emergency medicine, and other members of the team describe some of the main takeaways for cities, health systems,…

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Mar 20 2021
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Med Page Today: Op-Ed: Race Has No Place in Precision Oncology

By In the News

by Kelsey S. Lau-Min, MD, Carmen E. Guerra, MD, MSCE, Katherine L. Nathanson, MD, and Justin E. Bekelman, MD Studies show that minority patients with breast cancer are 50% to 65% less likely than white patients to get genetic testing, even if it is free or covered by insurance. Genetic testing is the first step in precision oncology – individualizing treatments based on a person’s hereditary risk or the molecular characteristics of their cancer. A doctor’s recommendation is a singular predictor of whether patients get genetic counseling and testing, surpassing even cost, culture, and patient attitudes. Today, we must reimagine how to help doctors make…

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Mar 12 2021
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WHYY: What Will It Take to Diversify Medicine?

By In the News

Who becomes a physician in this country — and who never gets that chance? It’s a question a lot of medical schools are grappling with, as groups like Black people and Latinos remain especially underrepresented among students. What would it take to attract and retain a more diverse group of students? On this episode, we hear stories about people’s path to med school, and the challenges they face along the way. We learn about a major push to increase diversity that happened in the 90s — and what happened to it; why some are rallying to do away with a…

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