This was my third time attending AcademyHealth‘s Annual Research Meeting (ARM), but it was my first time feeling like I wasn’t lost in the crowd.  For a conference with nearly 3000 attendees who all like looking at how healthcare works, it can be hard to find where you belong.

My current conference modus operandi – I love the plenary sessions, I don’t go to paper sessions unless I know the presenter, I stalk the poster halls looking for EMS, and this year I worked the booths like nobody’s business. This post then serves as a summary to the Twitter bonanza that accompanied my attendance.  Given the large number of concurrent sessions this is not a summary of ARM, but rather a summary of my experience at ARM.

ARM & EMS
There were zero presentations and two posters on the topic.  Both posters had to do with a state level overview of MIH/CP programs, one on California, one on Texas.  My hypotheses as to why: EMS providers don’t know that ARM exists, and ARM researchers don’t know that EMS is trying to get into the research game.

Meet the Experts Student Breakfast
If you are a student attendee go to this session, yes it’s always at 8AM on a Sunday morning, but it’s worth the extra effort.  Although they should have had a buzzer or bell every 15 minutes to enforce the “Round Robin” aims of the session, it’s a great way to meet and greet with people just as fresh as you are while also having the opportunity to schmooze with more established careerists in a safe space.

Keynote – Race, Ethnicity, and Health: The Role of Research

• Chair: Eduardo Sanchez
• Speakers: Paula Braveman, Eliseo Perez-Stable, and Joan Reede
• It’s not enough to “do no harm” we must also “do some good”
• Structural racism is this generation’s Jim Crow, leads to lower health outcomes
• Women and racial minorities in academia can’t climb as high or as fast as white men
  • But having diversity in medical schools is a good thing

Favorite quote: Everyone must advocate for diversity, particularly those at the top

Systems Science Approaches for Public Health and HSR

• Chair: Ernest Moy
• Speakers: Brian Castellani, Douglas Luke, Claire Wang
• The three most common methods for a systems science approach to research are system dynamics, network dynamics, and agent-based modeling
• IOM – For the Public’s Health: Investing in a Healthier Future
• Examples of predictive models
  • Nurses play a critical role in disease transmission (cool visuals)
  • Health Affairs – Penny-per-ounce tax on soda evaluation
  • Lancet – Model for age at initiation and frequency of type 2 diabetes screening
  • Health Affairs – Hep C treatment models
  • Complexity – Allostatic load as a complex clinical construct 
• Public Health 3.0
  • JAMA – Income and life expectancy in the US
  • AJPH – Systems thinking and health disparities
  • JPHMP – Systems thinking in 49 communities on healthy eating, active living, and childhood obesity
  • PCCH – Place and health as complex systems 
• ASPR map of Medicare beneficiaries that use electricity-dependent DME
• Capra – Web of Life: A new scientific understanding of living systems
• Byrne – Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: The state of the art
• Sociology & Complexity Science Blog – Authored by Speaker B. Castellani

Favorite quote: Just because the arrow exists, doesn’t mean there is a meaningful relationship, that’s why qualitative insight is valuable.

The Growing Intersection between Data Journalism and HSR: Propublica Surgeon Scorecard

• Chair: Susan Dentzer
• Speakers: Marshall Allen, Olga Pierce, Helen Burstin, Mark Friedberg
• Definitions
  • Data Journalism Handbook
  • Research: HHS.gov
  • Health services research: AcademyHealth, AHRQ
• ProPublica mission
  • NPSF & LLI – Through the Eyes of the Workforce
  • Surgeon Scorecard
  • Methodology
  • Patient Safety Facebook Community
  • Journalist have code of ethics, but different from physicians and researchers
• RAND methodological critique of Surgeon Scorecard
  •  Propublica’s rebuttal
    • RAND’s response
  • Only peer-reviewed evaluation of Surgeon Scorecard
• Consumer Reports comparison of buying a refrigerator to buying healthcare
• Vermont’s Blueprint for Health

Favorite quote: Our challenge to the health services research community: put us out of business!