Rheumatoid Arthritis Awareness
Daniel H. Solomon, MD, MPH
Solomon reports receiving honoraria from the American College of Rhuematology for his role as Editor-in-Chief of arthritis & Rheumatology; receiving royalties from UpToDate from chapters on NSAIDs; and receiving salary support from research contracts between Brigham and Women's Hospital and Abbvie, Amgen, CorEvitas, Janssen, and Moderna.
VIDEO: Structural racism and implicit bias in RA treatment
Transcript
Editor’s note: This is a previously posted video, and the below is an automatically generated transcript to be used for informational purposes. Please notify cperla@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.
I think like all areas of medicine, rheumatology has focused in the last years on diversity, equity inclusions, structural determinants of health.And I think that in the practice world, the clinical world, I know that we're thinking about ways to make sure that we're improving our access for all patients, whether that means by distance to the Brigham.
So we're using virtual visits more frequently. You know, I can only speak for my practice in Massachusetts where we have a very generous Medicaid program which makes it easy for patients to gain access to the medicines and the doctors they need.
But that's not the case in every state. You know, luckily we have generous patients who have developed philanthropic funds to help patients who need transportation, and need a food voucher, et cetera, et cetera.
But we now actually screen for structural determinants of health. In our EHR, our electronic health record, has ways of looking whether patients are likely to have problems with structural determinants of health, whether that's food insecurity, or transportation, or housing. And we've developed programs where people reach out to them and ask them about these issues. Because clinicians, in a busy 15 or 20 minute visit, can't spend enough time on those issues.
And so we've recognized that other people can help us and we've employed those people, whether that's in a research setting or in typical clinical care setting. I think we're doing both at Brigham and Mass General, Brigham in general. And recognizing that if a patient's insecure and feels stressed, they're probably not gonna respond as well to the best interventions. And so the more we can do to reduce those stressors, whether those be housing, food, et cetera, et cetera, we're gonna be able to treat our patients and achieve better outcomes.
