Healthcare and Medical News for Atlanta Physicians

COVID-19 Health Disparities: Leveraging a New Lens on Health Equity

By Nicole M. Franks, MD, FACEP, and Monique A. Smith, MD

The quest for Health Equity in America has been a long journey, and it has taken the COVID-19 pandemic to further expose a long history of racial injustice and healthcare disparities. In addition to the COVID-19 forced pause on how we live, technology and the availability of information continues to provide additional lenses for all to view how people are born, grow, live, ... Continue Reading

Getting the Message Right: Community Outreach During COVID

By Jada Bussey-Jones, MD and Frank K. Jones, MD

It was a sunny, spring day in Atlanta. The streets were empty because of a recently executed shelter-in-place order by Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. We were still in the infancy of the COVID pandemic, naïve to the tumultuous road that lay ahead.  In his role as President of the Atlanta Medical Association and with a goal of facilitating COVID-19 testing in the African-American ... Continue Reading

Protecting Our Community: Health System Collaboration During COVID-19

By Bryce Gartland, MD, SFHM; John A. Brennan, MD, FACEP, MHA; Jim Fortenberry, MD; Dan Salinas, MD; Charles L. Brown III, MD, FACC; Robert Jansen, MD, FACP, MBA; and Ira R Horowitz, MD, FACOG, FACS

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the importance of health system collaboration while we attend to this public health emergency. In many ways, it afforded us an opportunity to gain insight into our ethos as a collective healthcare community. We are proud to share we have not lost our core principle of why we chose to work in healthcare – to serve our fellow human beings by ... Continue Reading

Lessons Learned

By James P. Steinberg, MD, and Jesse T. Jacob, MD

A hospital epidemiology perspective on what we’ve discovered from the infection prevention response to COVID-19 Looking at some of the lessons learned from the response to the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of the hospital epidemiologist, we can improve preparedness for future events by understanding how our hospitals used contemporary knowledge and ... Continue Reading

Hospital Medicine

By Helen K. Kelley

The field of hospital medicine in the United States has grown rapidly in the past 20 years, from less than 1,000 practicing physicians to more than 44,000 today.  As in-hospital programs continue to develop, there is increasing demand for hospitalists who are eager to practice medicine in a complex and rapidly changing environment. Here, two Atlanta physicians share some of ... Continue Reading

Postmenopausal Osteoporosis: A Major Health Problem Hiding in Plain Sight

By N. Spencer Welch, MD

Postmenopausal osteoporosis is a major health problem hiding in plain sight. I say this because we see patients with osteoporosis and osteoporotic fractures every day in our clinics, but only a small percentage of these patients are properly evaluated and started on therapy. There are 10 million patients diagnosed with osteoporosis in this country, and 80% of them are women. ... Continue Reading

Migraine-Specific Biologics Now Available for Treatment of Headache

By Aliza S. Kumpinsky, MD

This is one of the most exciting times in headache medicine, with many new migraine-specific biologics available for both acute and preventive treatment. Migraine is a central nervous system disease that is both prevalent and disabling. In individuals age 15-49, it is the second leading cause of years lived with disability.1 The prevalence is 12% in the general population.2 ... Continue Reading

Dermatology – What’s Ahead

By Jamie D. Weisman, MD

New treatments, personalized care are just some of the exciting advancements to come To understand the future of dermatologic therapies, we need to understand where we have been. The biologic revolution in the treatment of dermatologic disease began in January 2002, when the tumor necrosis factor receptor blocker etanercept (Enbrel) was approved for the treatment of ... Continue Reading

Laser Focus: The future is bright for the use of lasers to treat a wide range of skin conditions

By Jason A. Clark, MD, FAAD

The health effects of light on the skin are well known. Ultraviolet (UV) light causes DNA damage and precancerous growths and is the primary risk factor for most skin cancers. As much as 80% of skin aging is thought to result from sun exposure.1 On the other hand, UV light exerts anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory effects that have been exploited for decades in office and ... Continue Reading

Melanoma: Working with your dermatopathologist for a precise and accurate diagnosis

By Melinda R. Mohr, MD

The gold standard for melanoma diagnosis is routine histopathology with hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stains. For clear-cut cases of melanoma, this alone is sufficient. However, as in all things in medicine, there are cases that fall within the gray zone. Is it an atypical nevus or is it melanoma? This is a question encountered on a daily basis in the practice of ... Continue Reading

Immunotherapy in Lung Cancer

By Ioana Bonta, MD

The tantalizing idea of harnessing the immune system to fight cancer has fascinated researchers and clinicians equally for many years. The belief that the body possesses natural defenses to combat cancer existed for a long time, with multiple anecdotal reports of tumors miraculously shrinking, either spontaneously or after an infectious episode. The link between the immune ... Continue Reading

General Considerations of Advanced Treatment for Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis

By Nitin Gupta, MD

Recent years have seen advancement in treatment options for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). New agents, with new mechanisms of action, are being tested via clinical trials along with new availability for routine clinical use. From a clinical standpoint, the myriad of treatment options make this an exciting time to practice medicine. We will discuss the different classes of ... Continue Reading

Biologics in Dermatology

By Jamie Weisman, MD

In 2002, the FDA approved etanercept (Enbrel) for the treatment of psoriatic arthritis. The next year, alefacept (Amevive) and efalizumab (Raptiva) were approved for plaque psoriasis, followed by etanercept in 2006 and adalimumab (Humira) in 2008. The completion of my dermatology residency at Emory University in 2002 coincided with the introduction of these drugs. Emory’s ... Continue Reading

Vitamin D

By Helen K. Kelley

Vitamin D is a nutrient that is needed to maintain good health for every part of the body – from keeping bones strong and helping the body absorb calcium to working with parathyroid function and the immune system. It is also a nutrient in which most adults are deficient. Atlanta Medicine recently spoke with two Atlanta rheumatologists, who shared their knowledge of current ... Continue Reading

Silent Killer: Epidemic of Low Health Literacy Makes COVID-19 Worse

By Dr. Iris Z. Feinberg

The darkness of the COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on a silent killer for which vital signs and oxygen saturation measures do not help. It’s called health literacy – the gap between how health messages are communicated and what patients and health consumers can understand to make good health decisions. One in five Americans reads at elementary levels,1 which includes ... Continue Reading

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