Annals of family medicine
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Annals of family medicine · Mar 2022
Randomized Controlled TrialPhysicians' Choice of Board Certification Activity Is Unaffected by Baseline Quality of Care: The TRADEMaRQ Study.
Physicians' use of self-assessment to guide quality improvement or board certification activities often does not correlate with more objective measures, and they may spend valuable time on activities that support their strengths instead of addressing gaps. Our objective was to study whether viewing quality measures, with peer comparisons, would affect the selection of certification activities. ⋯ Physicians did not use quality performance data in choosing certification activities. Certification boards are being pressed to make their programs relevant to practice, less burdensome, and supportive of quality improvement in alignment with value-based payment models. Using practice data to drive certification choices would meet these goals.
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Annals of family medicine · Mar 2022
Conceptualizing, Contextualizing, and Operationalizing Race in Quantitative Health Sciences Research.
Differences in health outcomes across racial groups are among the most commonly reported findings in health disparities research. Often, these studies do not explicitly connect observed disparities to mechanisms of systemic racism that drive adverse health outcomes among racialized and other marginalized groups in the United States. Without this connection, investigators inadvertently support harmful narratives of biologic essentialism or cultural inferiority that pathologize racial identities and inhibit health equity. ⋯ Race should not be used as a measure of biologic difference, but rather as a proxy for exposure to systemic racism. Future studies should go beyond this proxy use and directly measure racism and its health impacts. VISUAL ABSTRACTAppeared as Annals "Online First" article.
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Annals of family medicine · Mar 2022
Implementing High-Quality Primary Care Through a Health Equity Lens.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of centering health equity in future health system and primary care reforms. Strengthening primary care will be needed to correct the longstanding history of mistreatment of First Nations/Indigenous and racialized people, exclusion of health care workers of color, and health care access and outcome inequities further magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released a report on Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care, that provided a framework for defining high-quality primary care and proposed 5 recommendations for implementing that definition. ⋯ We are poised to reinvigorate primary care because the recent pandemic and the attention to continued racialized police violence sparked renewed conversations and collaborations around equity, diversity, inclusion, and health equity that have been long overdue. The time to transition those conversations to actionable items to improve the health of patients, families, and communities is now. Appeared as Annals "Online First" article.