Congrat's to Dr. Martin

Kudos to the SCRHRC's Amy Martin! Her graduate course, "Perspectives in Rural Health," won the Tenth Annual Delta Omega Award for an Innovative Public Health Curriculum. Delta Omega is the honorary society in public health, founded in 1924 at Johns Hopkins.

Amy's award will be presented at the Delta Omega business meeting in conjunction with the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting in Denver this November. If you're planning on being at APHA, the Delta Omega meeting will be held at the Grand Hyatt Denver, 1750 Welton Street, Denver, CO on Monday, November 8, 2010 from 4-5:30 p.m, with a reception to follow.

Let's hear it for training the next generation of rural health practitioners and researchers!

Presenting Research at Academy for Health Equity conference

Holdy folks -- I have recently returned from the presenting a poster at the Academy for Health Equity conference in Englewood (suburb of Denver), Colorado. It was a small conference, but it was a good experience.

This is a relatively new group; it started in 2006 as a result of the 2006 Minority Health conference. It sounds like there was a realization at the meeting that there was no group at that time solely dedicated to the elimination of health disparities worldwide. This group is young and energetic, and I would encourage those researchers involved in health disparities to get involved with this group. Although the number of participants was small, that will only change if others attend.

Two presentations really stuck with me -- Dr. Adewale Troutman with Louisville Metro Public Health and Wellness gave a phenomenal keynote presentation about health as a human right, which got everyone jazzed for the remainder of the day's sessions. The closing keynote by Dr. David Williams with the Harvard School of Public Health gave a strong presentation about the progress we have made in terms of health disparities and where we still need to do. The power of research presented well has the ability to motivate and cause change. I'm very glad I was able to hear these talks.

And, I gotta say, the conference cuisine was the best of all of the conferences I have had this year. It was clear that what was on my plate was actual food in all instances, and it was actually pretty tasty. Kudos to the Marriott Park Meadows! The bar has been raised for the Denver Convention Center in November.

Congrats to another alum

The SCRHRC team would like to congratulate former team member Daniel Patterson, MPH, PhD on being named to the National Emergency Medical Services Advisory Council of the US Department of Transportation. And it all started back in South Carolina! Dr. Patterson is now an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine. He also serves as director of research for the Center for Emergency Medicine of Western Pennsylvania.

2010 AcademyHealth Final Thoughts

Good day blogosphere! Jordan here - giving some final thoughts to the AcademyHealth conference held this past week in the Cradle of Liberty, Boston. I, like Jeff, am in the PhD program in the Health Services Policy and Management department in the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina.

The conference was filled with interesting sessions and had designated times for poster presentations and exhibits. The first day, I followed my main interest of Health IT and attended sessions that focused on that topic, however, the following days, I spread my wings and attended sessions dealing with primary care, prescription drugs, how to build an academic career, and palliative care.

I would be wide of the mark without mentioning a realization that Jeffery and I had dealing with the level of "geekdom" in which we had risen. Our last morning, (Tuesday) we found ourselves in a difficult predicament: at 8:00 AM, after dismantling and packing the posters to be shipped back to Columbia, we had not yet eaten breakfast and a session on hierarchical linear modeling was beginning. Thus we found ourselves in the uncommon position of deciding whether to eat now and risk missing past of the session, or going to the session and postponing our dietary needs. Like any good student of Dr. Probst, we chose the later. This ended up being a good decision, as this session truly did add to our statistical analysis knowledge and also adds to our "social gathering/small talk" repertoire.

In conclusion, the 2010 AcademyHealth conference, for me was a great experience. It offered an opportunity to see what my peers from other programs were researching, also it offered other networking opportunities with other professors and researchers. I look forward to next year's conference - to be held in Seattle.

Interesting presentations at Academy Health -- but...

Since Academy Health did not overlap with the annual meeting of the Association of University Programs of Health Administration this year, I [Jan] was able to attend more sessions than in previous years, and actually *pay attention,* versus worrying about missing something at the other conference. There were multiple excellent research method presentations.

Lee Mobley offered interesting remarks on geographic sampling, particularly the need for geographically based samples and geographic contiguity. While I'm not sure I'm 100% in agreement with all of her conclusions, her presentation was truly thought provoking, which is about the highest accolade one can offer. There were also excellent presentations on health disparities, long term care, and multiple other sessions attended by our SCRHRC staff.

But: Rural is *seriously* under-represented at an association that bills itself as a premier health policy and research group. One excellent presentation deal with reimbursement at skilled nursing facilities (SNFs). The investigator, when asked after the presentation, was unaware that SNFs could be located within rural hospitals. Similarly, one of our posters addressed Board issues at critical access hospitals. When asked, only one person who stopped to glance at the poster knew what a critical access hospital is. I continued the experiment at a breakfast session on HSR, where I was seated at the policy table. No one around the table, which included representatives of two funders in addition to folks from major, urban universities, knew what a critical access hospital was, either.

"Yikes" is sort of an understatement about this. Right now, the existence of rural-specific health issues and policies seems to fall in the "don't know that we don't know" quadrant for AcademyHealth. Those of us concerned about rural communities should begin a campaign to establish a "rural" interest group.

SCRHRC at Academy Health

Following up on Jeff's comments: some photos of our team and their posters.

More Summer Conference fun

Hi all -- Jeff here. I'm a research associate for the Center and a PhD candidate in USC's health policy and management program. I'm in Boston with several of us from the Center, and we just finished Day 1 at Academy Health.

A number of us participated in the poster session. I think Dr. Probst wins the conference prize for having the most posters at the conference. She at least wins the prize for having the most from the Center.

The poster session went well. Despite a location by the restrooms, and not near the dessert table in the Exhibit Hall, I had some good conversations with a number of people about our poster "Oral Health in Rural SC: The Importance of the Relationship Between School Nurses and the Dental Community." Some appreciated the 8.5x11 versions of the posters. Some people just can't get enough of the trinket, even a paper one.

I enjoyed talking with the folks around me during the lulls in traffic at the poster session. There's a lot of interesting work in health services research. As a student, it's really gratifying to carry on discussions about research -- design, methods, etc. -- with more experienced researchers. Everyone I have met so far has been very willing to share their knowledge and experiences. As I start to think about dissertation topics, it's been great to hear their insights.

Fellow student staffers Jordan and Alexa (you'll be hearing from Jordan soon) concluded with the evening with dinner at PF Chang's. So good! Here is a photo of Jordan and Alexa eating tasty mini-desserts. A full day of networking and sessions is best ended with a little refined sugar.

More soon... ---Jeff