AcademyHealth improves health and health care for all by advancing evidence to inform policy and practice. Health services research, put simply, is the science of study that determines what works, for whom, at what cost, and under what circumstances. It studies how our health system works, how to support patients and providers in choosing the right care, and how to improve health through care delivery.
This award was presented during the Annual Meeting on June 29, 2024 at the IG’s panel session “Health Equity Interest Group: What does it mean to be a Health Equity Researcher?”.
At this year’s annual meeting of the American Transplant Congress, Drs. Larissa Myaskovsky and Miriam Vélez-Bermúdez, received the Best in Show award for their poster entitled, “The Kidney Transplant Fast Track (KTFT) Intervention Reduced Time to Complete KT Evaluation and Eliminated KT Race Disparities.” At the same conference, Dr. Myaskovsky presented an invited talk entitled, “Data Driven Insights – Use Social Determinants to Improve Health and Race Disparities in Kidney Transplantation” on a panel focused on “Policies and Interventions Aimed at Decreasing Disparities in Kidney Transplantation for Under Represented Minorities.” She also moderated a panel entitled, “Reducing Health Disparities by Addressing Structural Racism and Providing Culturally and Religiously Appropriate Transplant Care.” Dr. Vélez-Bermúdez presented her work in progress, “Determining the feasibility and acceptability of a culturally-tailored lifestyle intervention to improve the health of Hispanic and Native American kidney transplantation recipients” and “Experiences of ethnically diverse living kidney donors: A qualitative pilot study.”
Scholar's Day poster presentations are a highlight of the academic year and a testament to the impressive scholarship happening across the institution. CHEK-D presented posters on New Mexico COVID data, the AKT-MP and IMPACT research projects.
CHEK-D Director, Dr. Larissa Myaskovsky, was recently accepted as a Fellow of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI). SPSSI Fellow status formally recognizes outstanding contributions to psychology and to the study of social issues. To learn more about SPSSI, please go to: https://www.spssi.org/.
The UNM Center for Healthcare Equity in Kidney Disease (CHEK-D) is pleased to announce that we are one of the sites that was selected for a new U01 consortium grant from the National Institutes of Diabetes Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK): “Interventions that Address Structural Racism to Reduce Kidney Health Disparities Consortium.”
CHEK-D partnered with Dr. Lilia Cervantes and colleagues at the University of Colorado Denver, Anschutz Medical Campus, to develop their research project entitled, “NAVIGATE Kidney: A community-engaged multi-level intervention to reduce kidney disparities among Latinx with kidney disease.” NAVIGATE-Kidney is a multi-level, community-engaged, language and culturally concordant community health worker intervention for Latinx with advanced CKD, that will reduce kidney health disparities, and address structural racism. Results from this study will provide important research evidence for solutions to reduce kidney health disparities and inform local, state, and federal health policy changes.
Other sites participating in the NIDDK U01 consortium are: Duke University, Emory University, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Northwestern University, and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. CHEK-D is very proud to add the University of New Mexico among this group of outstanding research institutions!
Dr. Larissa Myaskovsky, CHEK-D Director, was given a Excellence in Research Award for Population Science during the Health Sciences Center's 14th Annual award ceremony, hosted by the HSC Office of Research.
Click on this link to watch the presentation.
Dr. Miriam Vélez-Bermúdez was selected to attend the Rising Stars in Health Sciences Symposium, July 24 – 26, 2023, hosted by the Indiana University School of Public Health, Bloomington. She will be fully funded by Indiana University to attend the meeting. Dr. Vélez-Bermúdez is a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Healthcare Equity in Kidney Disease (https://hsc.unm.edu/research/centers-programs/chek-d/), and is funded by a T32 grant from the Cardiovascular Research Training Program (https://hsc.unm.edu/medicine/education/reo/training-programs/cardiovascular.html) at UNM Health Sciences.
K08 Career Development Award
Congratulations to Dr. Margaret Greenwood-Ericksen, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine (secondary appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences), on receiving a K08 Career Development award from the Academy for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)!
Dr. Greenwood-Ericksen’s award “Improving rural mental health equity through Medicaid policy evaluation,” is a federally-funded five-year mentored research development award to examine the impact of Medicaid policy on behavioral healthcare outcomes.
She is the first physician at UNM to be awarded an external Career Development Award. Her mentorship team includes Drs. Larissa Myaskovsky, Douglas Ziedonis, Cameron Crandall, and Caroline Bonham.
Dr. Greenwood-Ericksen completed medical school at the University of Arizona, residency training at Harvard, and received an MSc degree from the National Clinician Scholars Program at the University of Michigan. She is an emergency physician and health services researcher whose career is focused on transforming the structure of rural healthcare delivery to improve outcomes for vulnerable communities. Her research explores rural emergency care delivery models and associated outcomes to identify disparities and inform policy-level interventions. She has a particular interest in Medicaid policy and behavioral healthcare delivery to rural communities. She has published on rural emergency care quality and outcomes, health related- social needs, and care delivery models; and serves on national committees dedicated to rural quality and delivery.
Dr. Greenwood-Ericksen’s long-term career goals are to become an independent physician- scientist working to transform Medicaid policy and achieve equity in rural mental health outcomes, and a national expert on rural mental healthcare delivery within emergency medicine.
Click here to read the abstract.
The University of New Mexico’s Center for Healthcare Equity in Kidney Disease (CHEK-D) is pleased to announce our latest publication, “Predicting Kidney Transplant Evaluation Non-attendance” in the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings. This paper examined the medical and socio-cultural factors that predict non-attendance at patients’ initial evaluation clinic appointment for kidney transplantation, an important first-step on the long road to getting a kidney transplant.
Please access the paper here.
The University of New Mexico’s Center for Healthcare Equity in Kidney Disease (CHEK-D) is pleased to announce our latest publication, “Protocol for the AKT-MP Trial: Access to Kidney Transplantation in Minority Populations” in Contemporary Clinical Trial Communications. This trial compares two patient-centered methods to facilitate kidney transplant evaluation: kidney transplant fast track (KTFT), a streamlined KT evaluation process; and peer navigators (PN), a peer-assisted evaluation program that incorporates motivational interviewing. This pragmatic randomized trial will use a comparative effectiveness approach to assess whether KTFT or PN can help patients overcome barriers to kidney transplant listing.
Please access the paper here.
The University of New Mexico’s Center for Healthcare Equity in Kidney Disease (CHEK-D) is proud to present our latest publication, "Are Cultural or Psychosocial Factors Associated with Patient-Reported Outcomes at the Conclusion of Kidney Transplant Evaluation?" in Clinical Transplantation. This longitudinal study examined whether cultural factors and psychosocial characteristics, assessed at the start of kidney transplant evaluation, are associated with patient-reported outcomes (including quality of life and satisfaction with service) at the completion of evaluation.
Please access the paper here.
CHEK-D Director, Dr. Larissa Myaskovsky, partnered with colleagues, Drs. Lilia Cervantes from the University of Colorado, John Steiner from Kaiser Institute for Health Research, and Bruce Robinson from the Arbor Research Collaborative for Health, on a perspective piece for the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). The perspective discusses how community health workers—lay non-medical individuals who are trusted and share the lived experience and characteristics of the community they serve—can help reduce kidney health disparities for racial and ethnic minorities and people who experience poverty. Dr. Cervantes was a CHEK-D featured grand rounds speaker for the UNM Department of Internal Medicine in 2020. CHEK-D is partnering with Dr. Cervantes on a research project to reduce disparities in access to kidney replacement therapy using community health workers.
Please access the paper here.
The University of New Mexico’s Center for Healthcare Equity in Kidney Disease (CHEK-D) Director, Dr. Larissa Myaskovsky, shared her expertise in the newly released Chronic Kidney Disease: Finding a Path to Prevention, Earlier Detection, and Management report and companion roadmap from the Milken Institute Center for Public Health. Though it ranks as the eighth leading cause of death in the country, as many as 9 out of 10 American adults with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are unaware of their condition. Data indicates this health condition disproportionately affects historically underserved communities, imposing further social and financial burdens on these communities. This report and roadmap call on different stakeholders and identify numerous actionable steps they can take to prevent CKD, deliver earlier detection, and to slow its progression to kidney failure.
The University of New Mexico’s Center for Healthcare Equity in Kidney Disease (CHEK-D) is proud to present our latest publication, “Protocol for the IMPACT Trial: Improving Healthcare Outcomes in American Transplant Recipients Using Culturally-Tailored Novel Technology” in the Journal of Renal Nutrition. This trial aims to reduce post-transplant health issues in kidney transplant recipients by providing them with individualized, culturally-tailored diet and exercise plans, developed by a registered dietitian nutritionist and physical therapist, immediately after transplant. This paper describes the procedures of a clinical trial pilot study that will be tested in 20 kidney transplant recipients at the University of New Mexico Hospital. This project was supported by Award Number C-4157 from Dialysis Clinic Inc. (DCI), a national non-profit dialysis provider, and an award from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health grant #UL1TR001449.
Please access the paper here or at the JRN website.
The University of New Mexico’s Center for Healthcare Equity in Kidney Disease (CHEK-D) is pleased to announce our latest publication, “The Combined Roles of Race/Ethnicity and Substance Use in Predicting Likelihood of Kidney Transplantation” in Transplantation. We examined whether race/ethnicity in combination with ongoing substance use predicted incidence of kidney transplantation in a sample of 1152 patients, enrolled between March 2010 and October 2012. We found that the combination of minority race/ethnicity and substance use may lead to unique disparities in likelihood of transplantation. To facilitate equity, strategies should be considered to remove any barriers to referral for and receipt of substance use care in racial/ethnic minorities. This longitudinal study was completed at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and was funded by NIDDK grant #R01DK081325 and DCI grant #C-3924.
Dr. Myaskovsky recently served as a Guest Speaker at the AcademyHealth Disparities Interest Group 2021 Virtual Networking Event.
Click here for the description.
In a new study published in JAMA Network Open, a team led by CHEK-D mentee, Dr. Margaret Greenwood-Erickson, Assistant Professor in the UNM Department of Emergency Medicine, found that people treated in rural emergency departments had comparable outcomes to those receiving care in urban emergency departments. The team reviewed the administrative claims of two matched groups of 473,152 Medicare patients each who sought emergency care in either urban or rural hospitals between 2011 and 2015.
Please see this link for the UNM HSC write up and this link for the article in JAMA Network Open.
The University of New Mexico’s Center for Healthcare Equity in Kidney Disease (CHEK-D) is pleased to announce our latest publication, “Medication, Healthcare Follow-up and Lifestyle Nonadherence: Do They Share the Same Risk Factors?” in Transplantation Direct. We conducted a prospective cohort study to assess the association between kidney patients’ pre-transplant characteristics (including sociodemographic, condition-related, health system, and patient-related cultural and psychosocial factors) with nonadherent behaviors in three different domains post-transplant, including medication adherence, healthcare follow-up, and lifestyle behavior changes. In our analysis of 173 transplant recipients, we found that different nonadherence behaviors may stem from different motivation and risk factors, and concluded that adherence interventions should be individualized to target specific risk factors.
Please see this link for a brief summary and this link for the article in Transplantation Direct.
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The CHEK-D is committed to significantly and positively impacting research, education and outreach activities to increase healthcare equity and reduce disparities by partnering with dedicated faculty, staff and community leaders.
