CCTS Feb. Forum low health literacy experts Drs. Joy Deupree, C. Ann Gokumo, Samantha Baker, and Daniel I. Chu led an interactive panel discussion with attendees.The February CCTS Forum featured several experts in low health literacy and its impact on health disparities, human subjects research, and costs, both economic and human. More than 40 investigators, faculty, staff, and community members joined us for the event on Wed., Feb. 14, which included research presentations and an interactive panel discussion with the audience.
Dr. Joy Deupree, UAB School of Nursing (SON) Assistant Professor and Director of Community Engagement and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Executive Nurse Fellow, presented an overview of low health literacy rates and associated determinants, in particular for the CCTS Partner Network region of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, where more than half of all residents are estimated to have low health literacy. "As many as six out of every 10 adults cannot adequately discuss their own health information in a clinical setting or understand discharge instructions and medication labels," she said. Low health literacy is associated with higher rates of adverse drug events, hospital re-admissions, excess hospitalizations, and unnecessary death. Its role in poor outcomes results in "billions spent on unnecessary health care costs."
Contrary to the stereotype that low health literacy is most frequently an issue for people with low SES or who speak English as a second language, Deupree said the largest group with low health literacy is seniors. "Aging correlates to lower health literacy, an important trend given a quarter of all U.S. adults will be over the age of 65 by 2030," she said. Noting it is difficult to predict who may be low health literate, Deupree reviewed the latest tools and techniques for assessing health literacy in clinical and research settings, including the Brief Health Literacy Screening Tool (BRIEF), which is being pilot tested in two UAB clinics. The advantages of BRIEF over other individual assessment tools are that it has only four items and takes less than two minutes to use.
Dr. C. Ann Gakumo, UAB SON Associate Professor and RWJF Nurse Faculty Scholar; Dr. Daniel I Chu, Assistant Professor, UAB Division of Gastrointestinal Surgery and 2018 James A. Pittman, MD, Scholar; and Dr. Samantha Baker, postdoc in the VA Quality Scholars Program, UAB Dept. of Surgery shared insights from their research exploring the impacts of low health literacy and numeracy on disparities in gastrointestinal surgery outcomes, high rates of hospital readmissions in the veteran population, and interventions to improve medication adherence in populations with HIV and high blood pressure. Dr. Robin Gaines Lanzi, Professor of Health Behavior and Director of Student Engagement at the UAB School of Public Health and Co-Director of the Behavioral and Community Sciences Core at the UAB Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), moderated the panel discussion.
The CCTS recognizes the importance of health literacy as it relates to the success of three major goals of the national CTSA program:
- to engage patients and communities in every phase of the translational process
- to promote the integration of special and underserved populations in translational research across the human lifespan and
- to innovate processes to increase the quality and efficiency of translational research, including multisite trials.
Many thanks to Drs. Deupree, Gakumo, Chu, Baker, and Lanzi, for joining CCTS to explore the evidence for and discuss solutions to low health literacy and numeracy challenges. Click here to watch the video of our Feb. Forum. Speaker slides are available on our CCTS Monthly Forum page. Mark your calendar for our next CCTS Forum on Wed., April 4, at 4pm.
Margarite Matossian won an award for her project “Patient-derived Triple Negative Breast Cancer Xenografts As A Translational Model to Discover Novel Kinase Pathways.”
CCTS was well-represented at the Southern Regional Societies Annual Meeting, which took place Feb. 22-24. TL1 trainees from CCTS Partner Tulane University—Tiffany Kaul, Margarite Matossian, and Rachel Sabol—presented award-winning posters on their research projects. Join us in congratulating them on their outstanding research.
CCTS hosted the Southern Society of Clinical Investigators (SSCI) Community of Scholars networking breakfast for our TL1 trainees on the last day of the meeting. New CCTS Training Academy Administrator Becky Reamy was on hand to answer questions about finding collaborators, how to discover who is conducting research on key translational topics, and upcoming opportunities to network, such as our annual dinner at the Translational Science 2018 (TS18) meeting in Washington, DC. This year’s trainee dinner will take place as per tradition at Lebanese Taverna on Thur. evening, April 19. RSVP for dinner to either
 Tiffany Kaul with her award-winning poster “L1 expression in induced pluripotent stem cells and adipose derived stem cells.” |
 Tulane University TL1 trainees Rachel Sabol (l) and Margarite Matossian (r). |
On Feb. 20, 2018, Dr. Eric Ravussin, Boyd Professor, Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC) Director, Douglas L. Gordon Chair in Diabetes and Metabolism, and Associate Executive Director for Clinical Science at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, a CCTS Partner Network institution, presented a talk at UAB on the latest science in energy expenditure and weight control last week. The event was hosted by the UAB NORC and Dept. of Nutrition Sciences.
Ravussin’s talk, “Putting Together the Puzzle of Energy Expenditure and Its Role in Weight Control,” touched on several complexities involved in energy metabolism and balance. He expounded on the concept that after episodes of weight loss, one’s metabolic rate is lower than would be expected for someone with the new body composition. As expected, the decrease in metabolic rate makes it hard to keep losing weight and/or keep the lost weight off.
One example of this phenomenon, called “persistent metabolic adaptation,” is illustrated in a manuscript by Fothergill, et al. (2016) where the investigators measured the metabolic rates and body compositions of participants from “The Biggest Loser” at the end of the competition and then six years later. The authors found those with greater long-term weight loss also had greater ongoing metabolic slowing (resting metabolic rate or RMR) that was sustained even when regaining back as much as 70% of the lost weight.
In a later article, Ravussin discussed the implications of these findings, stating "Laziness is clearly not a factor in the weight regain seen in contestants of 'The Biggest Loser.' In fact, it may be challenging to find a more dedicated group of individuals. Thus, an emerging frontier in obesity research is weight loss maintenance. We need to better understand the biology behind weight regain if we are to improve treatment."
In his remarks, Ravussin emphasized the important health benefits that are realized with even moderate weight loss (5%-15% of total body weight), which may also help avoid the calorie handicap that is associated with more dramatic weight loss. He suggested planning for weight loss maintenance should begin "during the initial period of loss."
Special thanks to CCTS Program Manager Madeline Gibson who contributed content for this news brief.
CCTS Training Academy Co-Director Dr. Michael Mugavero describes the CCTS mission (above) as well as the broad array of translational trainings CCTS offers (below) at Medical Grand Rounds on Feb. 14.Dr. Michael Mugavero, Associate Director and Co-Director, respectively, for the UAB Centers for Outcomes Effectiveness Research and Education (COERE) and For AIDS Research (CFAR), has joined CCTS as our Training Academy Co-Director. Wearing the latter “hat,” Mugavero introduced CCTS to the large audience of clinicians attending Medical Grand Rounds on Feb. 14, 2018. He stressed the rich array of collaborative and translational training opportunities CCTS offers “across the career arc.”
The event also featured the latest studies of CCTS Alum and 2017 Harold Amos Scholars Latesha Elopre, MD, MSPH (UAB Infectious Diseases) and Greg Payne, MD, PhD (UAB Cardiovascular Disease) under the heading, “Filling the Academic Medical Pipeline: The Innovative Research of UAB’s Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program Awardees.”
Dr. Elopre is examining barriers to the use of PrEP, a highly effective HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, among Black women in several counties in Alabama, where they face a disproportionately higher risk for contracting HIV compared to White women. Her goal is to develop an intervention to increase use of PrEP to reduce the rate of infection for Black women, who account for 69% of all HIV diagnoses among women in the South.
Dr. Payne discussed his work on novel mechanisms of inflammation in cardiovascular disease and cardiac transplant rejection. His most recent research, which is sponsored by the American Heart Association, seeks to better understand the role of extracellular matrix (ECM)-derived chemokines (matrikines) to progressive vascular inflammation and acute rejection in cardio transplant patients.
The prestigious Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation offers four-year postdoctoral research awards to historically disadvantaged physicians who are committed to developing careers in academic medicine and to serving as role models for students and faculty of similar background. Both Amos scholars received CCTS panels prior to their awards. Dr. Elopre also received a panel in preparation for her K award. We applaud their inspirational research that seeks to reduce disparities and improve outcomes for vulnerable populations.
New faces at the CCTS Training Academy include Dr. Michael Mugavero, Dr. Becky Reamey, and Jeanne Merchant.
On Friday, Feb. 9, a roomful of K-scholars gathered at the latest Training Interdisciplinary & Emerging Research (TIERS) session to learn about the full spectrum of CCTS resources available to them and to brainstorm new initiatives to meet early investigator professional development and career planning needs. The discussion was led by Dr. Becky Reamey and Jeanne Merchant, both new to the CCTS Training Academy. Drs. David D. Chaplin and Michael Mugavero, Training Academy Co-Directors, also attended TIERS to facilitate the brainstorming session.
After filling out a brief survey on CCTS supports they had used in the past and which they might use in the future, the scholars made suggestions as to what additional topics or activities CCTS might offer. Ideas included how to choose a study section; how to find mentors outside of one’s field; how to form a team for a scientific project; hosting a grant writing retreat and biosketch workshop; mentoring “speed dating”; and transitioning from a K to an R grant.
TIERS meets at PCAMS from 11am-noon on the second Friday of the month. Check our Recurring Events page for the latest updates.
Dr. Becky Reamey discussed CCTS professional development supports for early-stage investigators at a recent TIERS session.