The Rise of Telemedicine in the Age of Covid-19

Telehealth services have been used for years to provide healthcare to underserved communities such as patients in rural settings. As defined by the Health Services and Resources Administration, telehealth is the use of electronic information and telecommunication technologies to support long-distance clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, health administration, and public health. While telehealth and more specifically telemedicine is not new, the COVID-19 pandemic created an environment where remote clinical services were needed more than ever before. Practitioners made use of video chat programs with patients in place of in-person office visits to help prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Due to the need to keep patients safe while providing healthcare during the health crisis, federal and state government regulators made changes to telehealth policies allowing a greater number of people to make use of these types of services. Though some rule changes are temporary, other changes to policy may be permanent as the increased use of telehealth brought to light the value of remote clinical services in a broad range of medical fields. Still, along with the realization that telehealth tools help patients, some consider concerns and issues that may need to be addressed in order to ensure telehealth and telemedicine is used responsibly and that underserved patients continue to benefit from its use.

Ebooks

Monkeypox Outbreak 2022

Monkeypox is a viral disease that experienced a worldwide breakout in 2022

While the scourge of COVID-19 continues to affect the lives of people all over the world, many have turned their attention to another viral disease, monkeypox, which is circulating in several countries across the globe.

Monkeypox, a rare disease caused by the monkeypox virus, is related to the smallpox virus causing similar but less severe symptoms. It is transmitted to people through close contact with infected individuals or animals, even materials contaminated by infected individuals such as bedding. Though most common in some Central and West African countries, there have been occasional monkeypox outbreaks in other parts of the world, including the global outbreak of the virus in May of this year.

Listed below are a few resources—websites, articles, and fact sheets—on monkeypox.

Monkeypox Facts and Data

Monkeypox Key Facts. World Health Organization 5/19/2022
Monkeypox virus (MVP). Washington State Department of Health data & faq page updated 8/18/2022
Monkeypox Signs and Symptoms. CDC info page updated 8/5/2022
Biden--Harris Administration's Monkeypox Outbreak Response. Statement/fact-sheet 6/28/2022

Preventing the Spread: Sexual Health and Vaccination

Safer Sex, Social Gatherings, and Monkeypox. CDC's monkeypox prevention fact sheet (includes versions in other languages) updated 8/5/2022
Public Health Sexual Health Clinic at Harborview. Monkeypox vaccination Harborview Clinic hours and availability updated 8/9/2022
Monkeypox Vaccine. Public Health -- Seattle & King County updated 8/16/2022

Pets & other animals

How to keep your pets safe from Monkeypox -- and what to do if they do get it. NPR article published 8/16/2022
Investigating Monkeypox in the Wild. U.S. Department of Interior, U.S. Geological Survey fact sheet 7/2004
Monkeypox in Animals. CDC info page updated 8/17/2022

Resource Spotlight: National Breastfeeding Month

Promotional banner for National Breastfeeding Month from the Indian Health Service

August is national breastfeeding month and many global and national health organizations, such as the CDC, promote breastfeeding as the healthiest form of nutrition for infants. Exclusive breastfeeding of newborns for the first six months is recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and maintaining breastfeeding beyond six months--up to two years--when other foods are introduced, is encouraged.

The AAP also notes the need for nursing mothers to be given support in the workplace as well as from healthcare workers to meet this goal. So while breastfeeding education is essential for new mothers, it is also critical that physicians and other child healthcare practitioners receive proper training to help support their nursing clients.

Books

White Blood : A History of Human Milk : How Babies Have Been Fed from Antiquity to Modern Times and Why it Matters (2021 print)

Skimmed : Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice (2020 eBook) “... skyrocketed. Over half a century later, baby formula is a seventy-billion-dollar industry and Black mothers have the lowest breastfeeding rates in the country...”

Breastfeeding : A Guide for the Medical Profession (2022 eBook)

Ethnographies of Breastfeeding : Cultural Contexts and Confrontations (2015 print) “…this important book takes a rich ethnographic survey of breastfeeding all over the world.”

Breastfeeding: New Anthropological Approaches (2017) “…unites sociocultural, biological, and archaeological anthropological scholarship to spark new conversations and research about breastfeeding.”

Your Guide to Breastfeeding for African American Women (2011 eBook)

Articles

Additional Resources - Nursing Mothers

Lactation Station Locations – UW Tri-Campus and Medical Centers
UW Medicine Patient Education Breastfeeding Factsheets:
- Breastfeeding Resources – includes videos, milk banks, books, and return-to-work information. (clinician review: 03/2019)
- Breastfeeding Resources – includes local and national organizations, info on preterm infants, books, classes, and supplies. (clinician review: 04/2017)
Washington State Department of Health Lactation Support – curated list of general lactation support pages for a variety of needs.

Additional Resources - Clinicians and Students

UW Center for Public Health Nutrition’s free online training for early childhood professionals Healthy Kids, Healthy Future: Breastfeeding Support (updated 2020, available in English and Spanish)
Drugs and lactation database (LactMed). The LactMed® database contains information on drugs and other chemicals to which breastfeeding mothers may be exposed.
Toxic Chemicals in Breast Milk How We can Solve this Problem (2021 UW Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences factsheet)

Resource Spotlight: Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls

Woman with red handprint on her mouth, a symbol of solidarity with missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls

The World Health Organization reports that violence against women is a global public health problem. This includes physical, sexual, and psychological abuse by intimate partners as well as non-partner violence and coerced sexual violence.

One particularly alarming crisis is the violence experienced by Indigenous women and girls of North America. American Indian and Alaska Native women experience higher rates of violence than non-Native women. This issue is further compounded by the difficulties over the years in bringing non-Native perpetrators to justice due to the complexities of tribal courts versus federal court jurisdiction in these cases; this is a concern because interracial violence is more common than intraracial violence in Native American communities. Progress has been made this year with President Biden’s Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act which includes the expansion of Tribal courts criminal jurisdiction over non-Native perpetrators of stalking, child abuse, sex trafficking and sexual assault.

This change, along with more coverage on the topic, will hopefully make a difference in Native communities where many cases of missing or murdered women and girls remain unsolved.

Local, State and National Resources

State Launches M.I.P.A. – Missing Indigenous Person Alert System

Indian Health Service: The Federal Health Program for American Indians and Alaska Natives: Intimate Partner Violence Prevention.

Microsoft Feature Stories: A Newspaper shines a light on missing Indigenous women with the help of technology. (2022 article)

National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center.

WomenSpirit Coalition. Washington State Native American Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

Harvard International Review article: Indigenous Women: The Invisible Victims of Femicide in Mexico. (2020)

UW Joins PLOS Community Action Publishing and Global Equity Model

New agreement covers 100% of article costs for UW-affiliated authors and specific publications.

The UW Libraries has joined the PLOS Community Action Publishing and PLOS Global Equity programs. The agreement with PLOS, a nonprofit open access publisher, covers 100% of the article cost for UW-affiliated corresponding and contributing authors, benefitting UW authors and readers everywhere. The agreement includes six PLOS journals:

PLOS Community Action Publishing

PLOS Biology
PLOS Medicine
PLOS Sustainability and Transformation

PLOS Global Equity Model

This agreement with PLOS is our third transformational "read and publish" publisher agreement, joining earlier agreements with Cambridge University Press Gold and Hybrid Journals and ACM Open. This investment was made possible through Provost Reinvestment Funds dedicated to expand support for open access publishing by UW authors. For a description of our open access agreements visit the UW Libraries Investments in Open Access page.

Questions about this agreement can be sent to: SustainableScholarship@uw.edu

Health Sciences Common Book Indigenous Speaker Series is Live!

UW Libraries to Replace Nexis Uni with Westlaw Campus Research

UW Libraries is replacing Nexis Uni with Westlaw Campus Research. Access to Nexis Uni will end on June 30, 2022. The UW Libraries is facing a difficult budget situation that requires a thorough review of all resources to determine which resources efficiently and best suit the needs of the UW community, including students, faculty, staff, visiting researchers, and the public.

UW Librarians reviewed the content in Nexis Uni, considered the accessibility of the interface, the decline in usage, the significant subscription cost, and determined that campus legal, news, and business research needs are better met with different resources.

If you have saved documents to a personal account with Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic), export them before June 30 or they will be lost. Export options include saving the documents as PDFs or in Word; uploading them to Dropbox or Google Docs, or emailing or printing them.

Westlaw Campus Research has superior browsing and point & click navigation, making it far easier to use than Nexis Uni. It has robust content and research tools that better support user needs. Due to the lower cost of Westlaw Campus Research, UW Libraries will be able to invest the savings into other library resources.

Replacement Resource Guide:

If you used Nexis Uni for…	Now use…
News Sources	Global Newsstream, US Newsstream, Access World News, or Factiva
Legal Research	Westlaw Campus Research, Hein Online, or LegalTrac
Business Information	Factiva for business news, D&B Hoovers for company information

If there is information you need that is not available in these resources, please contact your liaison librarian or use Interlibrary Loan for document delivery.

If you have questions about these library resources, please submit a message through our Ask Us email form or contact your liaison librarian.

Resource Spotlight: Older Americans Month

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Community Living (ACL) designated May as Older Americans Month. The theme for 2022 is Age My Way encouraging independent living for older adults. To help promote aging in place, ACL recommends helping older adults stay connected to their communities and supporting them with the necessary resources to help them thrive. The National Institute on Aging, a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, provides information and resources on their Aging in Place: Growing Older at Home page. While these federal agencies look to the practical ways we can help our older adult community members and adults with disabilities, the Office of Disease and Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP) spotlights an alarming health concern for aging Americans, the very real problem of elder abuse in its many forms. Explore this and other elder justice issues on ACL’s Elder Justice website.

Resource Spotlight: National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day

May 7^th is National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a U.S. Department of Health & Human Services agency, created this awareness day to highlight the importance of children’s mental health to their overall development and well-being. Childhood mental health issues have increased since 2010 and pediatric health experts warn that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these issues, creating a youth mental health crisis as detailed in the U.S. Surgeon General’s Protecting Youth Mental Health advisory issued in 2021. Also this past year, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health advocating for governmental policy changes that support families with evidence-based interventions in healthcare, school, and community settings. Recognizing that changes are needed at every level, one of SAMHSA’s awareness day goals include supporting communities and organizations in efforts to educate the public on childhood mental health issues and offer resources for those in need.

Seattle Public Library’s Exploration Guides for youth offer a collection of free educational online resources such as videos, podcasts, and eBooks on a variety of topics including mental health. Children and teens may select subjects of interest from their particular grade level. Elementary school children will find mental health videos chosen especially for them in the We All Have Mental Health collection. Middle and high school students will also find age-appropriate mental health content within their respective exploration guides, middle school’s Emotional Wellness & high school’s Name It to Tame It – Understanding Mental Health.

Resource Spotlight: National Minority Health Month

April is National Minority Health Month. This year’s campaign is Give Your Community A Boost!

Though COVID-19 restrictions are lifting throughout the United States, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Minority Health (OMH) reminds us that COVID-19 vaccinations and booster shots are still essential in the fight against the virus and plays an important role in helping to protect our communities of color. Due to health inequities, African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic or Latino people have a greater risk of becoming sick and dying from COVID-19. The CDC notes that promoting vaccine equity for racial and ethnic minority groups is needed to improve immunization rates amongst these communities.

Resources

American Medical Association (AMA) Prioritizing Equity video series brings to light various health issues and their impact on marginalized communities.
Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Beyond the White Coat podcast includes episodes on racial health disparities and vaccine equity.
HSL’s Minority Health research guide provides minority population profiles and presents a variety of resources including local and national organizations, multimedia and books to learn about and aid those who are socially disadvantaged.
HSL’s Vaccines & Immunization research guide offers information and resources for health care providers who counsel patients on immunizations and appropriate vaccinations.
Harborview Medical Center’s ethnic medicine website EthnoMed contains both cultural and medical information about Seattle’s refugee and immigrant communities.

Author: Michael Moore