Return of the Flap; The Empire State Mandate: A Multi-decade Multi-institutional Analysis of the 2010 New York State Legislature's Impact on Postmastectomy Immediate Flap-Based Reconstruction.

PURPOSE: Immediate postmastectomy breast reconstruction plays an integral role in patient care because of its psychosocial benefits. New York State (NYS) passed the 2010 Breast Cancer Provider Discussion Law with the aim of increasing patient awareness of reconstructive options through mandating plastic surgery referral at the time of cancer diagnosis. Short-term analysis of the years surrounding implementation suggests the law increased access to reconstruction, especially for certain minority groups. However, given the continued presence of disparities in access to autologous reconstruction, we aimed to investigate the longitudinal effects of the bill on access to autologous reconstruction along various sociodemographic cohorts. METHODS: Retrospective review identified demographic, socioeconomic, and clinical data for patients undergoing mastectomy with immediate reconstruction at Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Irving Medical Center from 2002 to 2019. Primary outcome was receiving implant or autologous-based reconstruction. Subgroup analysis was based on sociodemographic factors. Multivariate logistic regression identified predictors of autologous reconstruction. Interrupted time series modeling analyzed differences in reconstructive trends for subgroups before and after the 2011 implementation of the NYS law. RESULTS: We included 3178 patients; 2418 (76.1%) and 760 (23.9%) patients underwent implant and autologous-based reconstruction, respectively. Multivariate analysis indicated that race, Hispanic status, and income were not predictors of autologous reconstruction. Interrupted time series showed that with each year leading up to 2011 implementation, patients were 19% less likely to receive autologous-based reconstruction. Following implementation, there was a 34% increase in the odds of receiving autologous-based reconstruction with each passing year. Following implementation, Asian American and Pacific Islander patients experienced a 55% greater increase in the rate of flap reconstruction than White patients. Following implementation, the highest-income quartile experienced a 26% greater increase in the rate of autologous-based reconstruction compared with the lowest-income quartile. After implementation, Hispanic patients experienced a 30% greater decrease in the rate of autologous-based reconstruction compared with non-Hispanic patients. CONCLUSIONS: Our data indicate the long-term efficacy of the NYS Breast Cancer Provider Discussion Law in increasing access to autologous-based reconstruction, especially for certain minority groups. These findings underscore the importance of this bill and encourage its adoption into other states.

Antidiscrimination Laws as Essential Tools for Achieving LGBTQ+ Health Equity.

This Viewpoint discusses a pending US Supreme Court case to determine the extent to which people who identify as LGBTQ+ are protected under state antidiscrimination laws in the commercial marketplace.

Restricted access to assisted reproductive technology and fertility preservation: legal and ethical issues.

Access to assisted reproductive technology (ART) and fertility preservation remains restricted in middle and low income countries. We sought to review the status of ART and fertility preservation in Brazil, considering social indicators and legislative issues that may hinder the universal access to these services. Although the Brazilian Constitution expressly provides the right to health, and ordinary law ensures the state is obliged to support family planning, access to services related to ART and fertility preservation is neither easy nor egalitarian in Brazil. Only a handful of public hospitals provide free ART, and their capacity far from meets demand. Health insurance does not cover ART, and the cost of private care is unaffordable to most people. Brazilian law supports, but does not command, the state provision of ART and fertility preservation to guarantee the right to family planning; therefore, the availability of state-funded treatments is still scarce, reinforcing social disparities. Economic projections suggest that including ART in the Brazilian health system is affordable and may actually become profitable to the state in the long term, not to mention the ethical imperative of recognizing infertility as a disease, with no reason to be excluded from a health system that claims to be 'universal'.

Now Is Our Time to Act: Why Academic Medicine Must Embrace Community Collaboration as Its Fourth Mission.

In his Leadership Plenary at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) annual meeting, "Learn Serve Lead 2020: The Virtual Experience," president and CEO David Skorton emphasized that the traditional tripartite mission of academic medicine-medical education, clinical care, and research-is no longer enough to achieve health justice for all. Today, collaborating with diverse communities deserves equal weight among academic medicine's missions. This means going beyond "delivering care" to establishing and expanding ongoing, two-way community dialogues that push the envelope of what is possible in service to what is needed. It means appreciating community assets and creating ongoing pathways for listening to and learning from the needs, lived experiences, perspectives, and wisdom of patients, families, and communities. It means working with community-based organizations in true partnership to identify and address needs, and jointly develop, test, and implement solutions. This requires bringing medical care and public/population health concepts together and addressing upstream fundamental causes of health inequities. The authors call on academic medical institutions to do more to build a strong network of collaborators across public and population health, government, community groups, and the private sector. We in academic medicine must hold ourselves accountable for weaving community collaborations consistently throughout research, medical education, and clinical care. The authors recognize the AAMC can do better to support its member institutions in doing so and discuss new initiatives that signify a shift in emphasis through the association's new strategic plan and AAMC Center for Health Justice. The authors believe every area of academic medicine could grow and better serve communities by listening and engaging more and bringing medical care, public health, and other sectors closer together.

Genomics and Cancer Disparities: The Justice and Power of Inclusion.

Advances in genomic science have transformed our ability to interrogate cancer, revealing biases that drive disparities in minority populations. Cancer disparities research engages diverse ethnic group inclusion as a matter of rigor, to address underrepresentation in genomic data sources, and has led to groundbreaking work, enhancing our understanding of tumor biology.

Social and Behavioral Variables in the Electronic Health Record: A Path Forward to Increase Data Quality and Utility.

PURPOSE: Social and behavioral determinants of health (SBDH) are important factors that affect the health of individuals but are not routinely captured in a structured and systematic manner in electronic health records (EHRs). The purpose of this study is to generate recommendations for systematic implementation of SBDH data collection in EHRs through (1) reviewing SBDH conceptual and theoretical frameworks and (2) eliciting stakeholder perspectives on barriers to and facilitators of using SBDH information in the EHR and priorities for data collection. METHOD: The authors reviewed SBDH frameworks to identify key social and behavioral variables and conducted focus groups and interviews with 17 clinicians and researchers at Johns Hopkins Health System between March and May 2018. Transcripts were coded and common themes were extracted to understand the barriers to and facilitators of accessing SBDH information. RESULTS: The authors found that although the frameworks agreed that SBDH affect health outcomes, the lack of model consensus complicates the development of specific recommendations for the prioritization of SBDH data collection. Study participants recognized the importance of SBDH information and individual health and agreed that patient-reported information should be captured, but clinicians and researchers cited different priorities for which variables are most important. For the few SBDH variables that are captured, participants reported that data were often incomplete, unclear, or inconsistent, affecting both researcher and clinician responses to SBDH barriers to health. CONCLUSIONS: Health systems need to identify and prioritize the systematic implementation of collection of a high-impact but limited list of SBDH variables in the EHR. These variables should affect care and be amenable to change and collection should be integrated into clinical workflows. Improved data collection of SBDH variables can lead to a better understanding of how SBDH affect health outcomes and ways to better address underlying health disparities that need urgent action.

International policies and challenges on the legalization of traditional medicine/herbal medicines in the fight against COVID-19.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has now rapidly spread around the world, causing an outbreak of acute infectious pneumonia. To develop effective and safe therapies for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 has become the major global public health concern. Traditional medicine (TM)/herbal medicines (HMs) have been used to treat multiple epidemics in human history, which brings hope for the fight against COVID-19 in some areas. For example, in China, India, and South Korea with traditional medication history and theory, the governments issued a series of guidelines to support TM/HMs in the medication of COVID-19. In contrast, other countries e.g. North American and European governments are typically silent on these practices, unless to warn of possible harm and overselling. Such difference is due to the discrepancy in culture, history and philosophical views of health care and medication, as well as unharmonized policies and standards in the regulation and legalization of TM/HMs among different areas. Herein, we reviewed the responses and scientific researches from seven selected countries on the policies and legalization of TM/HMs to treat COVID-19, and also analyzed the major challenges and concerns to utilize the traditional knowledge and resource.

Cherry Blossoms, COVID-19, and the Opportunity for a Healthy Life.

To date, short-term funding and policy fixes for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have focused on saving the current health care system; policies have not maximized the population's health, prioritized the safety net, nor addressed the fundamental problems that have hindered our nation's response for our most vulnerable neighbors. We need to plan more lasting equity-specific reforms now. I explain 3 lessons that should inform reforms to the health care delivery and payment systems to reduce health disparities and maximize the public's health: (1) Proven roadmaps and processes for reducing health care disparities already exist, as do themes of successful interventions. Implement them; (2) Payment reform needs to create a business case for health care organizations to address social determinants of health and implement care interventions to reduce health disparities; (3) We as a nation need to have hard conversations about whether we truly value the opportunity for everyone to have a healthy life.

Navigating inequities: a roadmap out of the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed social inequities that rival biological inequities in disease exposure and severity. Merely identifying some inequities without understanding all of them can lead to harmful misrepresentations and deepening disparities. Applying an 'equity lens' to bring inequities into focus without a vision to extinguish them is short-sighted. Interventions to address inequities should be as diverse as the pluralistic populations experiencing them. We present the first validated equity framework applied to COVID-19 that sheds light on the full spectrum of health inequities, navigates their sources and intersections, and directs ethically just interventions. The Equity Matrix also provides a comprehensive map to guide surveillance and research in order to unveil epidemiological uncertainties of novel diseases like COVID-19, recognising that inequities may exist where evidence is currently insufficient. Successfully applied to vaccines in recent years, this tool has resulted in the development of clear, timely and transparent guidance with positive stakeholder feedback on its comprehensiveness, relevance and appropriateness. Informed by evidence and experience from other vaccine-preventable diseases, this Equity Matrix could be valuable to countries across the social gradient to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by abating the spread of inequities. In the race to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, this urgently needed roadmap can effectively and efficiently steer global leadership towards equitable allocation with diverse strategies for diverse inequities. Such a roadmap has been absent from discussions on managing the COVID-19 pandemic, and is critical for our passage out of it.