Black, Indigenous, and people of color are underrepresented in the physician ranks, which may lead to health disparities, especially for Black patients.

That lack of diversity among physicians starts at the medical school level—prompting Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the US, and the Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) in Atlanta to create a 10-year, $100 million physician workforce diversity partnership called the More in Common Alliance. The partnership aims to increase the number of training opportunities at CommonSpirit hospitals across the country for Black physicians, as well as address both the ongoing provider shortage and the need for more culturally competent providers.

“This 10-year partnership is the first nationwide initiative between two of the country’s leading health organizations to address the underlying causes of health inequities, including underrepresentation of Black physicians,” MSM President and CEO Valerie Montgomery Rice said at a Senate committee roundtable in May. “This partnership lays the foundations for patients to have more access to Black clinicians and for Black medical students and graduates to gain community-based experience.”

Studies show that patients report better outcomes when healthcare professionals from similar backgrounds treat them. To that point, Black patients living in counties with Black primary care physicians have longer lifespans than those without, Stat reported.

Patients with hypertension or symptoms of cardiovascular disease are more likely to adhere to medication guidelines when treated by a doctor of the same race, a 2020 study by New York University and New York City health department researchers found.

The researchers suggest that “health policy should fund programs that support the recruitment and retention of a wide diversity of students and faculty to increase the level of concordance in patient-clinician encounters.”

That’s what the More in Common Alliance wants to do: establish training sites for Black and Indigenous medical students as well as those from other diverse backgrounds at CommonSpirit hospitals.

Keep reading here.—KW

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Kristine at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Kristine for her number on Signal.

From HAL to Skynet, AI gets a bad rap. With its fast rise, buzzy headlines, and seemingly limitless potential, it’s hard to know if AI will help us or upend us. A pressing question on many employees’ minds: Will AI take my job?

MIT researchers offer a picture of the future of AI in the workplace. Read Tech Brew’s explanation of what artificial intelligence is capable of, what its probable use cases are, and the implications for your job. Hint: Predictions might be more complex and hopeful than you might expect. Read or listen here.

There’s a new trend among kids and teens, and this one isn’t from TikTok—it’s kidney stones.

Though kidney stones are usually most often seen in middle-aged men, doctors are reporting more incidents in young people, with teenage girls at a particularly high risk, according to research cited by NBC News.

Hospitals—including the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC, and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia—have even started programs or opened clinics specializing in pediatric kidney stone treatment.

What are kidney stones? According to the Mayo Clinic, kidney stones are “hard deposits made of minerals and salts that form inside your kidneys.” Minerals crystallize and bond, creating the hard deposits, when the urine becomes concentrated. The stones can be as small as a grain of sand or as large as a golf ball (though that’s rare), and usually pass through the urinary tract.

Researchers aren’t sure why kids are getting kidney stones more often, NBC News reported, but they have several theories that point to antibiotic overuse, ultraprocessed foods, and climate change as contributing factors.

Antibiotic overuse: Antibiotics can change the gut microbiome in a way that makes it easier for kidney stones to form, Gregory Tasian, a pediatric urologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told NBC News.

A 2018 study, of which Tasian served as lead author, found that patients who took any one of five commonly prescribed oral antibiotics were 1.3x–2.3x more likely to develop kidney stones. The risk was greatest when the antibiotics were given at a young age.

Antibiotics are often overprescribed in the US, and according to the CDC, about one-third of those prescriptions are unnecessary.

Keep reading here.—MA

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Maia at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Maia for her number on Signal.

Struggling with anxiety, depression, or another mental health condition? There are several smartphone apps for that. But the help that’s seemingly available at your fingertips may not be appropriate, properly tested, or private—and that should give consumers pause before hitting download.

To help patients and professionals sift through the growing number of mental health apps, the American Psychological Association (APA) developed App Advisor, an evaluation model that looks at access and background, privacy and security, clinical foundation, usability, and data integration toward a therapeutic goal.

The tool does not recommend specific apps, but instead focuses on clinician and consumer education.

“We want people to connect to things that are safe and effective,” John Torous, who chaired the APA’s Smartphone App Evaluation Task Force until last month, told Healthcare Brew. “If we, overall, look at what’s happened in the landscape, there’s a lot of unsafe things still out there.”

Torous, director of the digital psychiatry division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s psychiatry department, said App Advisor came about in response to a growing number of questions from patients and professionals about the safety and efficacy of mental health apps.

Privacy concerns related to how data collected by apps is shared and stored have also increasingly garnered headlines and sparked federal action.

Many apps touted for mental health, for example, are actually “wellness” apps and lack the confidentiality or data privacy that patients expect from mental health professionals, Torous said. Even those that offer telehealth services often connect users with “coaches,” not licensed clinicians.

A recent review of 32 mental health apps from Mozilla, the not-for-profit behind the Firefox browser, found that more than half (19) lacked adequate privacy and security—with issues ranging from weak password requirements to recorded personal photos, videos, and messages shared with chatbots—and had “privacy not included” warning labels.

Keep reading here.—SY

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Shannon at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Shannon for her number on Signal.