Family Medicine in the News

El Confidencial, a Spanish online newspaper, quoted Tildabeth Doscher, assistant clinical professor of family medicine at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, in a story on the death of a Brooklyn man due to opioid misuse. “The thing about opioids is that, in the brain, there are different kinds of receptors that latch onto opioids. Let’s say they fill up,” said Doscher. “To relieve pain, to relieve yourself on opioids, you have to take more and more, more and more. This is called tolerance. The more tolerance you have, the more you need.”

Healio published a piece by Patrick Glasgow, clinical assistant professor of family medicine in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, describing why and how he chose family medicine as his specialty, in a series on primary care.

Jericho Road has announced the official opening of its new Community Health Center, located at 182 Breckenridge Street in Buffalo. The new medical center is made possible thanks to a mutually beneficial partnership with the Jacobs School’s family medicine residency program. “This partnership with UB is really big for us,” says Myron Glick, MD, Jericho Road’s founder and CEO. Roseanne C. Berger, MD, senior associate dean for graduate medical education and associate professor of family medicine, said, “Jericho Road is a sought after training location for UB residents and students. Their work fulfills the desire to provide humanistic care and make a difference.”

A front-page article in the Buffalo News on rural Allegany County in need of COVID-19 vaccines quotes Annmarie Zimmermann, MD, clinical assistant professor of family medicine and a member of UB’s family medicine rural health residency program. "I think the state system of having this all be online didn’t work very well for the elderly,” Zimmermann said. As her practice has gotten vaccine doses, staff has called in senior patients and, in some cases, helped them register on office computers,, according to the article. Those who can get an appointment often must travel 80 or more miles to a vaccine clinic in Buffalo or Rochester, a challenge in communities where some lack access to reliable transportation.

Since its inception in 2014, the University at Buffalo Human Rights Initiative, a medical student group, has played an important role in helping to document and assess evidence of torture in people seeking refuge and asylum in Western New York. Recently, the group was asked to assist their counterparts in Syracuse and at SUNY Upstate Medical University. Kim Strong Griswold, MD, professor of family medicine and psychiatry, the UB group’s faculty mentor, gave a virtual talk, “Insights and Best Practices for Medical Evaluations in the Context of Immigration Applications,” as part of a panel presentation for potential medical volunteers in Syracuse. “The Jacobs School group is an established Physicians for Human Rights clinic,” Griswold says. “Because we’ve been doing medical evaluations for years and have been training our students in this important work, we were asked to provide some assistance as the Syracuse effort gets off the ground.”

The Buffalo News published a column by Mary Brennan-Taylor, research instructor of family medicine in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, about her deceased mother, who would have turned 100 on Dec. 26. Brennan-Taylor remembers her mother’s extraordinary life and her tragic and preventable death due to medical errors. The column states: “Mom was a ‘light a candle rather than curse the darkness’ kind of gal so, inspired by her philosophy, Team Alice was born. A multipronged initiative of UB’s Center for Successful Aging, Team Alice works with patients and caregivers, the health system and researchers to keep the fragile elderly safe.”

EHR Intelligence reported that a survey among clinicians showed that better training in electronic health records can improve satisfaction among electronic health records (EHR) users. The story cites as an example the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Science’s decision to partner with Cerner Corp and the Great Lakes Integrated Medical Record to develop electronic medical records training program for medical students in the Jacobs School, led by Andrew B. Symons, MD, clinical associate professor of family medicine and vice chair for medical student education in the department. “Our hope is that by the time students enter their third year they will be quite facile with emergency medical response,” he said. “We even expect they will be offering insights to their attending physicians and administrators.”

In Good Health published an interview with Patrick D. Glasgow, MD, clinical assistant professor of family medicine. Glasgow discussed the value of preventive care, noting: “I think, overall, medicine and society are becoming aware of the social determinants of health, and how they’re just as important. That can include issues like maintaining transportation, insurance coverage and cost.” He added that the partnership of his family medicine clinic with Erie County Medical Center was a benefit because it provided access to case managers and social workers who help patients and providers address those issues.

“Immigration reform is a key issue for our electorate. Individuals and families seeking asylum have become lightning rods for this federal administration,” says Kim Strong Griswold, MD, professor of family medicine and psychiatry, in an “Another Voice” piece printed by the Buffalo News. “In Buffalo, we welcome refugees – legally resettled through the Office of Refugee Resettlement – and have long cared for people seeking asylum who are represented by a cadre of immigration attorneys,” say Griswold and co-author Danielle Bernas.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 6,000 mental health professionals volunteered to help meet the needs of New Yorkers — including Tildabeth Doscher, MD, clinical assistant professor of family medicine. Doscher brought the hub and spoke model — an opiate treatment model started in Vermont — to Western New York. Hubs are facilities that intensively focus on opioid use disorder treatment options, and spokes are facilities that integrate addictions care into primary health care.

An article about the television show “Intervention” explains that pressuring an addict to agree to go to rehab may be more dangerous than leaving that person to fend for themselves. If a person is not fully motivated to recover, they are more likely to relapse, and the physical impact of using after detox is quite taxing on an addict’s already-fragile body. “When a relapse occurs, someone may take a dose that they think is going to be effective — and it may even be half of what they were taking before — but because they've lost their tolerance, those tend to be lethal,” says Richard D. Blondell, MD, professor of family medicine.

MD Magazine carried a piece by Richard D. Blondell, MD, professor emeritus of family medicine, regarding steps that America can take to deal with the opioid epidemic through treatment and prevention.

Roseanne C. Berger, MD, senior associate dean for graduate medical education and associate professor of family medicine, is quoted as part of news coverage of COVID-19.  “We wish there would be a way to get rapid and quick testing, which is a concern that many of us have. We don't know what we don't know,” she said.

An article on the origins of today’s opioid epidemic featured commentary from Richard D. Blondell, MD, professor emeritus of family medicine. Blondell said that the federal agencies responsible for regulation were asleep at the wheel. “The expectation was that you’re going to get these drugs from a doctor, so drug companies were pushing it, doctors were writing (prescriptions), patients were demanding it, pharmaceutical companies were selling it, and it’s all financed by health insurance,” Blondell said.

The Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences offers several classes and programs that incorporate integrative medicine such as a program for senior medical students that includes exposure to acupuncture, chiropractic, holistic-focused dietitians and homeopathy. Kara M. Kelly, MD, professor of pediatrics and chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology, says that extreme diet supplements and interventions — and methods that may be prohibitively expensive with no evidence as to their effectiveness — have given all of integrative medicine a bad name. But there are plenty of therapies that can be helpful, and that’s one of the benefits of having therapies available in a hospital setting, Kelly says. David M. Holmes, MD, clinical associate professor of family medicine, teaches a class on managing chronic pain without using opioids, where students are exposed to pain management specialists, an acupuncturist, a chiropractor and a physical therapist.