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Stories from Texas Medicine, May 2022

Closing the Loop: Payers Address Social Drivers of Health - 03/15/2024

Houston family physician Lindsay Botsford, MD, received a call in late February from a Medicare patient with shingles. She prescribed an antiviral medication to treat the infection – and then the real work began.

Talk to Patients About: Natural Immunity vs. Vaccine Immunity for COVID-19 - 06/29/2022

Catching COVID-19 can provide people with a degree of immunity from being reinfected with the disease in the future. This prompts some to opt against vaccination and instead risk getting sick to obtain this “natural immunity” on the assumption they will get a mild case and it will protect them from future illness.

Dialing In on Disparities: CDC Grant Helps Texas Tackle COVID-Aggravated Health Gaps - 06/29/2022

It’s a short-term federal grant that Stephen Pont, MD, hopes can make a long-term impact.

Vaccine Equity Gains: COVID-19 Vaccine Rate Disparities Narrow Amid Physician-Led Outreach - 06/29/2022

When the COVID-19 vaccine rollout began in mid-December 2020, many physicians, advocates, and community leaders worried the health disparities laid bare by the pandemic would repeat themselves.  But improved data collection and innovative outreach efforts – many of them led by Texas physicians and medical students – have helped close these gaps.

Preparing the Path: All Physicians Can Play a Role in Mentoring to Improve Diversity in Medicine - 06/29/2022

Like every physician, Harlingen family physician Adela Valdez, MD, understands that her career in medicine happened in part because of hard work – but also because a lot of people guided her way.

Hidden Brain: Rooting Out Implicit Bias On an Institutional Level - 06/29/2022

At a recent professional conference, Palo Alto ophthalmologist Ann Caroline Fisher, MD, and a colleague led a roundtable discussion titled “Diversity, Equity, and Insanity: Can We Have a Candid Conversation?” She says the discussion revolved around a response to an article describing ophthalmology as one of the least diverse medical specialties. The response disparaged diversity quotas and other efforts to improve representation in medicine, including of people like her, a first-generation American born to a half Peruvian father and a half-Chinese mother.