Journal of general internal medicine
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Housing instability is a key social determinant of health and has been linked to adverse short- and long-term health. Eviction reflects a severe form of housing instability and disproportionately affects minority and women residents in the USA; however, its relationship with mortality has not previously been described. ⋯ In this cross-sectional analysis, county-level eviction rates were significantly associated with all-cause mortality with the strongest effects observed among counties with the highest proportion of Black and women residents. State and federal protections from evictions may help to reduce the health consequences of housing instability and address disparities in health outcomes.
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Patients with limited-English proficiency (LEP) face multiple barriers to equitable healthcare. Interventions that go beyond interpretation, such as the use of bicultural-bilingual patient navigators, hold promise for addressing multi-level barriers. However, data about how to operationalize the tasks that are key to such interventions across diverse LEP communities are lacking. ⋯ We identified several tasks and impacts that enabled CCMs to address multi-level barriers to care experienced by patients with LEP and their families across diverse cultural and linguistic groups. Findings suggest opportunities for the generalizability of programs such as ours for multiple LEP populations. Additionally, interventions having a greater scope than interpretation and including relationships with communities may be more successful in addressing barriers to equitable care at the individual, system, and community levels.
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The burden of COVID-19 on healthcare workers (HCWs) is reported to be increasing, yet the psychometric scales now in use evaluate only single aspects; few measure the pandemic-specific burden on HCWs comprehensively. ⋯ The psychometrically sound questionnaire we developed to measure pandemic-specific burdens for HCWs provides an understanding of comprehensive burdens on HCWs and may serve to evaluate interventions to reduce the burdens.
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Information on COVID-19 vaccination effects on mortality among patients hospitalized with COVID-19 could inform vaccination outreach efforts and increase understanding of patient risk. ⋯ Patients vaccinated for COVID-19 had reduced mortality, especially for obese/severely obese and older individuals. Vaccination's protective effect against mortality declined over time and hospitalized obese and older individuals may derive especially great benefit from prior vaccination against SARS-CoV-2.