VIDEO: ACP meeting highlights include talks on race, contraception, pickle juice

SAN DIEGO — In this video, Megan Lemay, MD, an associate professor of general internal medicine and addiction medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, highlights several sessions from the ACP Internal Medicine Meeting.

Many of the sessions focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, in which presenters “outlined the true public health crisis of racism in the United States, including how toxic stress experienced by minoritized people in the U.S. predisposed [them to] physiologic changes that will cause health problems like hypertension and diabetes,” Lemay said.

“I specifically attended a session about race-adjusted clinical algorithms that discussed how race’s inclusion in clinical algorithms, or even clinical algorithms that don’t include race, can further health disparities,” she said.

Lemay urged physicians that the next time they incorporate race in medical decision-making, “really ask yourself why, because we know that the idea of a central difference in the Black body is just cooked in racism and not truth.”

Lemay also discusses presentations involving various medications, from contraception to SGLT2 inhibitors, as well as research on “something that my patients in the South had been telling me for years,” which is that pickle juice alleviates leg cramps in patients with cirrhosis.

“Even though it was a very busy time attending all these sessions ... I really enjoyed and learned so much at ACP 2023,” she said.

Reference:

• Lemay M, et al. Internal Medicine Meeting 2023 highlights and doctor's dilemma: The finals. Presented at: ACP Internal Medicine Meeting; April 27-29, 2023; San Diego.