Physicians Are Unable to Consistently Predict Patient Health Literacy in a Breast Clinic.

INTRODUCTION: Health literacy (HL) is a patient's capacity to understand health information. Low HL is associated with worse cancer outcomes and adherence to treatment regimens. This study aimed to test physicians' ability to predict their patients' HL after an initial consultation to determine if routine HL screening is valuable. METHODS: From February 2023 through June 2023, patients seen at an academic breast clinic completed a validated, self-reported HL assessment. Surgical and medical oncologists estimated their patients' HL by answering the same HL questionnaire based on their perception of the patient visit. Patient and physician scores were compared using an intraclass correlation coefficient. Linear regression was used to evaluate associations between physicians' ability to predict HL and other variables. RESULTS: The cohort included 210 patient HL scores with corresponding physician scores for each. Most patients (75.7%) had adequate HL. There was moderate agreement between the patient and physician HL scores (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.677, P < 0.01), meaning physicians could somewhat predict their patient's HL. Physicians were worse at predicting HL when patients had low HL. There was no difference in physicians' ability to predict HL based on patient age (P = 0.09) or race (P = 0.29). Additionally, we found no difference in the ability to predict HL based on the physician's specialty (P = 0.25). CONCLUSIONS: After an initial consultation, physicians cannot accurately predict patient HL, particularly in patients with lower HL. Given the impact of low HL on a patient's ability to make treatment decisions and adhere to treatment plans, using a validated tool to measure HL is necessary.

Results from a difference-in-differences evaluation of health facility HIV and key population stigma-reduction interventions in Ghana.

INTRODUCTION: Stigma undermines all aspects of a comprehensive HIV response, as reflected in recent global initiatives for stigma-reduction. Yet a commensurate response to systematically tackle stigma within country responses has not yet occurred, which may be due to the lack of sufficient evidence documenting evaluated stigma-reduction interventions. With stigma present in all life spheres, health facilities offer a logical starting point for developing and expanding stigma reduction interventions. This study evaluates the impact of a "total facility" stigma-reduction intervention on the drivers and manifestations of stigma and discrimination among health facility staff in Ghana. METHODS: We evaluated the impact of a total facility stigma-reduction intervention by comparing five intervention to five comparable non-intervention health facilities in Ghana. Interventions began in September 2017. Data collection was in June 2017 and April 2018. The primary outcomes were composite indicators for three stigma drivers, self-reported stigmatizing avoidance behaviour, and observed discrimination. The principal intervention variable was whether the respondent worked at an intervention or comparison facility. We estimated intervention effects as differences-in-differences in each outcome, further adjusted using inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW). RESULTS: We observed favourable intervention effects for all outcome domains except for stigmatizing attitudes. Preferring not to provide services to people living with HIV (PLHIV) or a key population member improved 11.1% more in intervention than comparison facility respondents (95% CI 3.2 to 19.0). Other significant improvements included knowledge of policies to protect against discrimination (difference-in-differences = 20.4%; 95% CI 12.7 to 28.0); belief that discrimination would be punished (11.2%; 95% CI 0.2 to 22.3); and knowledge of and belief in the adequacy of infection control policies (17.6%; 95% CI 8.3 to 26.9). Reported observation of stigma and discrimination incidents fell by 7.4 percentage points more among intervention than comparison facility respondents, though only marginally significant in the IPTW-adjusted model (p = 0.06). Respondents at intervention facilities were 19.0% (95% CI 12.2 to 25.8) more likely to report that staff behaviour towards PLHIV had improved over the last year than those at comparison facilities. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide a foundation for scaling up health facility stigma-reduction within national HIV responses, though they should be accompanied by rigorous implementation science to ensure ongoing learning and adaptation for maximum effectiveness and long-term impact.

Noninvasive Detection of Inflammatory Changes in White Adipose Tissue by Label-Free Raman Spectroscopy.

White adipose tissue inflammation (WATi) has been linked to the pathogenesis of obesity-related diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. In addition to the obese, a substantial number of normal and overweight individuals harbor WATi, putting them at increased risk for disease. We report the first technique that has the potential to detect WATi noninvasively. Here, we used Raman spectroscopy to detect WATi with excellent accuracy in both murine and human tissues. This is a potentially significant advance over current histopathological techniques for the detection of WATi, which rely on tissue excision and, therefore, are not practical for assessing disease risk in the absence of other identifying factors. Importantly, we show that noninvasive Raman spectroscopy can diagnose WATi in mice. Taken together, these results demonstrate the potential of Raman spectroscopy to provide objective risk assessment for future cardiometabolic complications in both normal weight and overweight/obese individuals.