(Press-News.org) December 2, 2010 – (BRONX, NY) – Nearly a quarter of Americans live in rural areas, which consistently report higher cancer mortality rates than urban and suburban areas. Among the complex causes for this disparity is that only 10 percent of physicians practice in rural areas and almost 4 out of 10 rural residents live at least an hour from an urban area. Finding the time, transportation, and financial resources for travel to urban academic medical centers, the standard bearers for quality cancer care, often proves difficult. Most rural residents have their cancer treated in their communities, although a survey suggests rural physicians are less likely to attend national medical conferences and may have difficulty keeping up with important oncology literature.
To help address this disparity, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University recently released a new web-based continuing medical education (CME) program designed to bring clinical research findings and expert advice on oncology via e-newsletter to physicians practicing in rural and small-town community settings. The goal of the program, Advances in Oncology for Community-based Oncologists, is to prepare physicians for the rapid integration of treatment advances into their clinical practices.
T.S. Ravikumar, M.D., an editor of Advances in Oncology for Community-based Oncologists and the NCCCP medical director at Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania, notes the importance of continuing outreach. "It is estimated that 85 percent of cancer care in the United States is delivered at the community level, far from the academic and research programs that change definitions of best care," said Dr. Ravikumar. "Programs like this e-newsletter can further support the education of those practitioners who are treating the majority of oncology patients in the U.S. today."
Christine Pellegrino, M.D., assistant professor of medicine at Einstein, is course director for the program. "In this age of web-based and interactive training methods," said Dr. Pellegrino, "it is critical to harness these technologies in the service of providing the best medical care to patients, wherever they live. By targeting medical specialties through new continuing education programs, we can do a great deal to reduce the information gap between local physicians and urban specialists."
Advances in Oncology for Community-based Oncologist aims to provide interactive learning in an easy-to-access electronic format that outlines timely changes in standards of care in medical oncology, practice management and highlights from recent research and literature.
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The CME program is a joint effort with Montefiore Medical Center, the University Hospital and Academic Medical Center for Einstein, and In 2 MedEd, LLC. The activity is supported by an educational grant from Pfizer Inc.
About Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University
Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University is one of the nation's premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. During the 2009-2010 academic year, Einstein is home to 722 M.D. students, 243 Ph.D.students, 128 students in the combined M.D./Ph.D. program, and approximately 350 postdoctoral research fellows. The College of Medicine has 2,775 fulltime faculty members located on the main campus and at its clinical affiliates. In 2009, Einstein received more than $155 million in support from the NIH. This includes the funding of major research centers at Einstein in diabetes, cancer, liver disease, and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is concentrating its efforts include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities. Through its extensive affiliation network involving five medical centers in the Bronx, Manhattan and Long Island - which includes Montefiore Medical Center, The University Hospital and Academic Medical Center for Einstein - the College of Medicine runs one of the largest post-graduate medical training programs in the United States, offering approximately 150 residency programs to more than 2,500 physicians in training. For more information, please visit www.einstein.yu.edu
NEW YORK (Dec. 2, 2010) -- There is new hope for people with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), a fast-growing cancer of the blood and bone marrow. Research led by Weill Cornell Medical College and published today in the online edition of the journal Cancer Cell reveals a surprising and unexpected cancer-causing mechanism. The investigators discovered that newly identified mutant enzymes in AML create a chemical poison to cause leukemia. Their findings should prove useful in treating patients by providing a molecular target against which to develop new drugs against one ...
The interest in the biological effects of non-ionizing Electro Magnetic Fields (EMFs) and Static Magnetic Fields (SMFs) on the whole organism, as well on cellular systems, has noticeably increased in recent years in consideration of their increased production (from the generation and transmission of electricity, to domestic appliances and industrial equipment, to telecommunications and broadcasting) and the possible health risk for humans. About one century ago, associated with the wide use of electricity, artificial electric and magnetic fields became a part of our living ...
Richmond, Va. (Dec. 3, 2010) – Research at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center led by Charles E. Chalfant, Ph.D., associate professor of biochemistry and molecular Biology, discovered a previously unknown mechanism in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells that contributes to their ability to maintain and grow tumors. Narrowing in on this mechanism could provide a breakthrough for the development of effective therapies for NSCLC and other cancers.
The findings, recently published in Journal of Clinical Investigation, provide the first example of a ...
It's nice to have success—but it can also make you worry that the jealous people will try to bring you down. New research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, has found that the fear of being the target of malicious envy makes people act more helpfully toward people who they think might be jealous of them.
In previous research, Niels van de Ven of Tilburg University and his colleagues Marcel Zeelenberg and Rik Pieters had figured out that envy actually comes in two flavors: benign envy and malicious envy. They studied people ...
DALLAS – Dec. 3, 2010 – Thanks to findings by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers, individuals with a potentially life-threatening condition predisposing them to blood clots, or thrombosis, might someday receive therapy to prevent the condition.
The findings, available online and in a future issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, offer new clues into the mechanisms underlying antiphospholipid syndrome (APS).
"Patients with APS have circulating antibodies that cause exaggerated thrombosis. The longstanding mystery has been how these antibodies initiate ...
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Exposure to nicotine during pregnancy leads to a decrease in adult stem cells and a change in synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus of the offspring, according to new research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham presented at Neuroscience 2010, the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego in November. Researchers say this could be a possible cause for behavioral problems such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) seen in children whose mothers smoked.
Adult stem cells in the hippocampus, the area of the brain most connected ...
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Electronic cigarettes (or e-cigarettes), also called "electronic nicotine delivery systems," are increasingly used worldwide even though only sparse information is available on their health effects. In the United States, e-cigarettes are readily available in shopping malls in most states and on the Internet. But how safe are e-cigarettes?
To address this question, researchers at the University of California, Riverside evaluated five e-cigarette brands and found design flaws, lack of adequate labeling, and several concerns about quality control and ...
Earth observation scientists at the University of Leicester have recorded stunning images of the UK's winter landscape by orbiting satellites.
European Space Agency satellite instruments have been observing the icy blast in the UK from their vantage points in space.
Leicester scientists have used two instruments, MERIS and AATSR, which have returned stunning images of a snow-bound UK from observations on November 29th and December 1st.
In the MERIS images, the colour scale runs from white snow and clouds to green vegetation. In the AATSR images, the non-snow areas ...
They might just be the smallest Christmas tree decorations ever. Tiny spherical particles of gold and silver that are more than 100 million times smaller than the gold and silver baubles used to decorate seasonal fir trees have been synthesized by researchers in Mexico and the US.
Writing in the December issue of the International Journal of Nanoparticles, materials engineer Xavier E. Guerrero-Dib, of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León and colleagues there and at The University of Texas at Austin, describe the formation of gold, silver and alloyed, bimetallic nanoparticles ...
The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL).
In this release:
Population trends, not climate, causing increased flood fatalities in Africa
Earth's lakes warming in response to climate change
Ozone hole affects upper-atmosphere temperature and circulation
Solar wind contains more oxygen than previously thought
Predicting variability in radiation belt dynamics
Iron oxide observed in Earth's airglow
Anyone may read the scientific abstract for any already-published paper by clicking ...
