Journal of health care for the poor and underserved
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J Health Care Poor Underserved · Jan 2016
Reducing Medical School Admissions Disparities in an Era of Legal Restrictions: Adjusting for Applicant Socioeconomic Disadvantage.
A diverse physician workforce is needed to increase access to care for underserved populations, particularly as the Affordable Care Act expands insurance coverage. Yet legal restrictions constrain the extent to which medical schools may use race/ethnicity in admissions decisions. ⋯ We found that socioeconomic and under-represented minority disparities in admissions could be eliminated while maintaining academic readiness. Adjusting applicant academic metrics using socioeconomic information on medical school applications may be a race-neutral means of increasing the socioeconomic and racial/ethnic diversity of the physician workforce.
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J Health Care Poor Underserved · Jan 2016
Emergency Department Use for Dental Problems among Homeless Individuals: A Population-Based Cohort Study.
To evaluate emergency department (ED) visits for dental problems among Toronto's homeless population (Ontario, Canada). ⋯ The high rate of ED visits for dental problems by people who are homeless suggests that access to dental care is inadequate. The large number of repeat visits indicates that ED settings are ineffective for treatment of dental problems.
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J Health Care Poor Underserved · Jan 2016
Gender-affirming Surgeries in the Era of Insurance Coverage: Developing a Framework for Psychosocial Support and Care Navigation in the Perioperative Period.
Transgender people have a gender identity different from their birth-assigned sex. Transgender people may seek gender-affirming surgeries to align their body with their identified gender. ⋯ However the expansion of covered gender-affirming surgeries to safety-net populations has highlighted the need for an expanded presurgical process which includes a psychosocial assessment and care navigation. The proposed framework expands the preoperative assessment to include these components, and can be used to guide both health systems and insurance providers in the development of transgender medicine programs.