Clinical Research.
Current Projects.
Sleep Apnea and Sleep Surgery.
Description Coming Soon.
Disparities in Prostate Cancer Research.
Description Coming Soon.
Select Past Projects.
Raciolinguistic Hierarchy.
Camila Mallad, Jad Fawaz, Maya Hammoud , Noor Alesawy, Shahzad Mian, Emad Abou-Arab
The Detroit Metropolitan area has the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States. While health care providers and trainees regularly interact with Arabic-speaking patients, a medical Arabic language course has not been previously offered by the University of Michigan Medical School. This project proposes a novel curriculum designed to bridge these gaps and improve healthcare professionals’ understanding of the Arabic language and culture to better serve this patient population’s needs.
DEI in Medical Education.
Kavya Davuluri, Samantha Gondy, Emily Crowley, Nikolas Grotewold, Imadeddin Hijazi, Samantha Lyons, Marcia Perry, Michael Gisondi, Laura Hopson
Healthcare organizations and cultures that do not incorporate policies of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into their climate or policies often exacerbate existing disparities in health. This project seeks to explore the perceptions and experiences of senior medical students and recent graduates of the training provided during medical school regarding care for vulnerable and diverse patient populations and to understand perceived needs around this type of training.
Teledermatology Video Visits.
Neil Vaishampayan, Nicole Trupiano, Haihan Zhang, Michael Tang, Sruthi Renati, Mari Paz Castanedo-Tardan, Trilokraj Tejasvi
The COVID-19 pandemic saw a steep increase in video visit utilization especially for dermatologic care. However, it previously was not abundantly clear which types of problems or patient populations were best suited for this type of visit. Through a retrospective study analysis of synchronous video visits from September 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021, we studied not only which dermatological diagnoses were most conducive to video visit management, but also which patients had the highest utilization of these services.
Teledermatology Management Concordance.
Colby Foster, Milad Eshaq
Management concordance after electronic consultation between primary care providers (PCPs) and dermatologists has been previously well documented. However, given the dramatic shift to virtual appointments in a post-COVID era, more research is needed to discuss and address concordance across the spectrum of visit types from outpatient PCP to teledermatologist (virtual) to face-to-face dermatologist appointments.
Social Bit.
Liam McCafferty, Archana Podury, Ian Corbin, Amar Dhand
Social interaction is thought to be one of the most important activities for the recovery of stroke patients. However, current technologies to measure social interaction are both prohibitively expensive and exclusive to verbal participants. We propose a new tool, SocialBit, which relies on neural networks to quantify social interaction from audio data collected via a smart watch.
Surprise Billing.
Map of United States showing the percentage of patients per state who received surprise bills.
Nathan H. Varady, Troy B. Amen, David Frecerro, Eric L. Smith, Antonia F. Chen
“Surprise billing” occurs when a patient receives an out-of-network medical bill that they were not expecting or that originated from an out-of-network provider that they did not choose. Often, these bills are unavoidable and only partially covered by a patient’s insurance company. These costs can lead to an unexpected and detrimental financial burden for patients. Past orthopaedic studies have reported that approximately 25% of patients receive surprise bills during common, elective surgical procedures (i.e. total hip and knee arthroplasty). In this project, we hope to investigate both the magnitude and the frequency of these costs for more specialized orthopaedic care.
Racial and Ethnic Disparities.
Troy B. Amen, Nathan H. Varady, Sean Rajaee, Antonia F. Chen
Previous reports on racial and ethnic disparities across multiple subspecialties prompted our investigation of these trends in specialized orthopaedic care. Using a nationally representative sample, we revealed important conclusions about the treatment of minority patients in specific orthopaedic surgeries. Data are currently in the process of publication.