Journal of general internal medicine
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Healthcare provided without attending to patients' religious/spiritual needs contributes to inequities. ⋯ Muslim Americans have substantial unmet religious/spiritual resource needs in hospital settings. Patient-centered, equitable care may be enhanced by clinicians inquiring about, and mobilizing resources to attend to these.
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The United States has more foreign-born (FB) individuals than any other country and a large international medical graduate (IMG) workforce. Yet little is known about the trends of FB IMGs matching into primary care specialties residency programs or the alignment between FB individuals and FB IMGs. ⋯ Distribution of FB IMGs varies in primary care specialties compared to FB people in the US. Given the importance of aligning medical education with patients' needs, programs could take into account population demographics while assessing and admitting the applicants.
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Biomarkers are becoming crucial in ever more medical tasks and are proposed to change medicine in profound ways. By biomarking ever more attributes of human life, they tend to blur the distinction between health and disease and come to characterize life as such. Not only do biomarkers strongly influence the professional conception of disease by pervading ever more diagnoses, but they also impact patients' experience of illness. To manage how biomarkers influence patients, professionals, and societies, we urgently need to move from identifying potentially relevant biomarkers to determine their meaning and value to individuals, professionals, and public health.
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Incarceration can result in adverse socioeconomic and health consequences for individuals who have been incarcerated; these consequences extend to their children and may have impacts into later adulthood. ⋯ FMI during childhood was associated with adverse health-related outcomes for adults of all ages. Developing programs to improve access to education and economic opportunities for adults with FMI may help mitigate the disparities.
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Weight bias is characterised by negative attitudes towards people with a higher weight and is widespread in healthcare. Primary care professionals sometimes avoid discussing weight with patients due to concerns about upsetting them, insufficient training, resources, or referral pathways. There is, however, a responsibility for primary care professionals to address the health needs of patients, which may require discussing weight. ⋯ Primary care professionals and trainees favoured the holistic approach to discussing weight when patients presented with weight-related or non-weight related concerns. These findings have potential practical implications for health professional education.