John King, MD gets a shout out for sharing a great website to match proposed manuscript titles or abstracts to potential journals for submission:

jane.biosemantics.org

Check it out and share whether you found it valuable too.

Levi Bonnell to present poster at APHA meeting

Congratulations to Levi Bonnell, MPH (CTS Doctoral candidate) and his team on the acceptance of their work as a poster at the American Public Health Association meetings.

Bonnell L, Littenberg B. Wshah S, Rose G. Automated identification of unhealthy drinking using routinely collected data: A machine learning approach. American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, November 13, 2018.

Background: Unhealthy drinking is prevalent in the United States and can lead to serious health and social consequences, yet it is under-diagnosed and under-treated. Identifying unhealthy drinkers can be time-consuming for primary care providers. An automated tool for identification would allow attention to be focused on patients most likely to need care and therefore increase efficiency and effectiveness. 

Objectives: To build a clinical prediction tool for unhealthy drinking based solely on routinely collected demographic and laboratory data. 

Methods: We obtained demographic and laboratory data on 89,325 adults seen at the University of Vermont Medical Center from 2011-2017. Logistic regression, support vector machines (SVM), k-nearest neighbor, and random forests were each used to build clinical prediction models. The model with the largest area under the receiver operator curve (AUC) was selected. 

Results: SVM with polynomials of degree 3 produced the largest AUC. The most influential predictors were alkaline phosphatase, gender, glucose, and serum bicarbonate. The optimum operating point had sensitivity 31.1%, specificity 91.2%, positive predictive value 50.4%, and negative predictive value 82.1%. Application of the tool increased the prevalence of unhealthy drinking from 18.3% to 32.4%, while reducing the target population by 22%. 

Conclusion: An automated tool, using commonly available data, can identify a subset of patients who appear to warrant clinical attention for unhealthy drinking.

Fwd: Spaces are still available for MEPS Data Users' Workshop

You are subscribed to the Mailing List for the MEPS Periodic Digest for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Spaces are still available for the upcoming MEPS Data Users' Workshop in Rockville, MD, on September 12, 2018. For registration and more information, visit the Workshops & Events page on the MEPS Web site at: https://meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/about_meps/workshops_events.jsp

Fwd: NHATS Round 7 Beta Data Released

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: NHATS Data <nhatsdata@westat.com>
Date: Mon, Aug 6, 2018 at 5:34 PM
Subject: NHATS Round 7 Beta Data Released
To: NHATS Data <nhatsdata@westat.com>

NHATS Round 7 Beta Data Released

The National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) is pleased to announce that Round 7 beta data files are now available at www.nhatsdata.org. Data are available in both SAS and Stata formats. An updated User Guide, round 7 annotated instruments, and a revised crosswalk between the instruments and the codebook can be found on our website http://www.nhats.org.

 

New website login feature

We have upgraded the login features of the NHATS website so that you may now reset your own password.

Introducing Alex Pond

There's a new face in the Given Courtyard: Alex Pond has started as a Program Assistant in the Department of Medicine where he will take responsibility for the CTS Graduate Program as well as helping out across all our activities.

Alex was born and raised in Burlington, Vermont.  He began his career at UVM working first at the Bailey/Howe Library and then Undergraduate Admissions before moving to Baltimore and joining the Graduate Admissions team at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.  Following his time in Baltimore he lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he supported the CHRISTUS St. Vincent Family Medicine Residency program, whose mission was to train physicians in a community based setting serving the people of Northern New Mexico. He is very excited to return home and be joining the CTS/GIMR team at the College of Medicine.

Welcome, Alex!


- Ben Littenberg

Lyndelle LeBruin - poster accepted at upcong opioid conference

Congratulations to Lyndelle LeBruin, MS, MPH whose poster on Impact of Prescription Opioid Use on CD4+/CD8+ ratio in HIV-infected adults was accepted for The U.S. Opioid Epidemic: The Need for Greater Innovation and Greater Treatment Capacity, Vermont Center for Behavioral Health Conference which is happening at the Hilton in Burlington October 11-12.

The U.S. Opioid Epidemic: The Need for Innovation and Greater Treatment Capacity

October 11-12, 2018
Burlington Hilton Hotel , Burlington, Vermont
The 6th Annual VCBH Conference will focus on the nation’s opioid epidemic, improving access to treatment, and effective pain/addiction management. These topics are among the major priorities of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Institutes of Health. Scholars from leading universities and medical centers will share their research and knowledge throughout the 2-day program. This year’s keynote speaker is Sharon Walsh, Ph.D., Director of the Center on  rug and Alcohol Research, and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Walsh focuses her research on pharmacological issues in opioid dependence and assessing novel treatments for opioid withdrawal. For conference program, registration and hotel links, please visit http://www.med.uvm.edu/behaviorandhealth/events/2018-conference

Can’t attend the conference? Watch it LIVE at: https://livestream.com/VCBH/Conference2018

Congratulations to recent CTS graduate Katharine Cheung

Katharine L Cheung, MS, MD, PhD, FRCPC
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Nephrology

We wish to congratulate Kat Cheung on the recent publication of two manuscripts from her recent PhD dissertation.

Cheung KL, Zakai NA, Callas PW, Howard G, Mahmoodi BK, Peralta CA, Judd SE, Kurella Tamura M, Cushman M. Mechanisms and mitigating factors for venous thromboembolism in chronic kidney disease: the REGARDS Study. J Thromb Haemost. 2018 Jul 8. doi: 10.1111/jth.14235. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 29984467.

Cheung KL, Bouchard BA, Cushman M. Venous thromboembolism, factor VIII and chronic kidney disease. Thrombosis Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.thromres.2018.07.029

 

 

Way to go Kat, you make us proud.