HJNO Jul/Aug 2023

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  JUL / AUG 2023 39 For weekly eNews updates and to read the journal online, visit HealthcareJournalNO.com to live healthy, balanced lives.” — Tochi Iroku- Malize, MD, MPH, MBA, FAAFP, president, Amer- ican Academy of Family Physicians. “Today’s children and teens do not know a world without digital technology, but the digital world wasn’t built with children’s healthy mental development in mind. We need an approach to help children both on and offline that meets each child where they are while also working to make the digital spaces they inhabit safer and healthier. The Surgeon General’s Advisory calls for just that approach. The American Academy of Pediatrics looks forward to working with the Surgeon Gen- eral and other federal leaders on Youth Mental Health and Social Media on this important work.” — Sandy Chung, MD, FAAP, president, American Academy of Pediatrics. “Social media use by young people is perva- sive. It can help them, and all of us, live more connected lives – if, and only if, the appropriate oversight, regulation and guardrails are applied. Now is the moment for policymakers, companies and experts to come together and ensure social media is set up safety-first, to help young users grow and thrive. The Surgeon General’s Advisory about the effects of social media on youth men- tal health issued today lays out a roadmap for us to do so, and it’s critical that we undertake this collective effort with care and urgency to help today’s youth.” – Susan L. Polan, PhD, associate executive director, Public Affairs and Advocacy, American Public Health Association. For more information about the Office of the Surgeon General, visit www.surgeongeneral.gov/ priorities. The University of Queensland- Ochsner HealthMedical Program Celebrates High Residency Match The University of Queensland-Ochsner Health (UQ-Ochsner) Doctor of Medicine (MD) program and Ochsner Graduate Medical Education on March 17 celebrated Match Day 2023 — a rite of passage in which applicants from around the globe learn who has been selected for which U.S. residency program to start the next chapter of medical training. This year, 78 medical graduates from UQ- Ochsner’s Class of 2022 entered the match and received a 96% match rate through the National Residency Match Program (NRMP) — one that exceeded the national match rate for U.S. med- ical schools. Pediatrician Lindsay York, MD, Joins DePaul Community Health Centers Pediatrician Lindsay York, MD, has joined DePaul Community Health Centers (DCHC) and will begin seeing patients on June 12 at DCHC’s new Westbank Expressway health center, 1629 Westbank Expressway, Suite A (next to Texas Roadhouse) in Harvey, Louisiana. From 2011 to 2023, York operated York Pediatrics in Marrero, Louisiana. York graduated from the University of Geor- gia with honors and went on to earn a Master of Public Health in Tropical Medicine from Tulane University. Later, she attended Louisiana State University Medical School in New Orleans and completed a pediatric internship and residency at Tulane-Ochsner, where she received training in both the trauma and PICU departments. York is board-certified through the American Board of Pediatrics, Pediatric Advanced Life Support, and Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments. Study Finds Eight Factors Put Black Adults at Greater Risk of Early Death Black adults who live in the United States have a 59% higher risk of premature death than White adults. A new study from Tulane University published in Lancet Public Health has found that this gap can be entirely explained by disparities in eight areas of life critical to health and well-being: employ- ment, income, food security, education level, access to healthcare, quality health insurance, home ownership, and marital status. These eight factors are called social determi- nants of health, conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a CDC survey used to determine disease prevalence and risks across the country, Tulane researchers modeled the impact of each factor on a person’s life expec- tancy. When all unfavorable social determinants were accounted for, the 59% mortality disparity was reduced to zero. “It totally disappeared,” said Josh Bundy, lead author and epidemiologist at Tulane’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. “There’s no difference between Black and White premature mortality rates after accounting for these social determinants.” While the mortality gap has been largely pinned on socioeconomic factors such as education level, income, and employment status in recent years, researchers have acknowledged that these fac- tors only explained most of the gap, Bundy said. “This is the first time that anyone completely explained the differences,” Bundy said. “We didn’t expect that, and we were excited about that finding because it suggests social determi- nants should be the primary targets for eliminat- ing health disparities.” Socioeconomic factors were still found to play a major role, accounting for approximately 50% of the Black-White difference in mortality in the study. However, the other nearly 50% of the dif- ference was explained by marital status, food security, and whether someone has public or pri- vate health insurance — softer indicators that can speak to a person’s social support network, sta- bility, or job quality. Unfavorable social determinants of health were more common among Black adults and were found to carry enormous risk. Having just one unfavorable social determinant of health was found to double a person’s chances of an early death. With six or more, a person has eight times higher risk of premature mortality. Jiang He, the corresponding author and Joseph S. Copes Chair of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said these results “demonstrated that race-based health disparities are social, not biological, constructs.” Bundy agreed, adding that the findings explain how “structural racism and discrimination lead to worse social risk factors, which may lead to pre- mature death.” “So how do we eliminate the structural differ- ences between races?” Bundy said. “And regard- less of race, if you have six or more of these fac- tors, you’re at a really high risk. How do we