Health Topics – Johns Hopkins Medicine Podcasts

Anchor lead: What can be done to help minority populations avoid COVID-19 infection? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Minority groups are experiencing increased risk for COVID-19 disease and death, US data show, with the CDC set to release numbers some time in May. For now, Sherita Golden, Johns Hopkins vice president and chief diversity officer, says developing specific messaging to help these communities understand their risk is key.

Golden: We really have to take the social distancing seriously. We need to reduce the stigma associated with having the illness. So that people don’t feel embarrassed and feel empowered to go get medical treatment if they’re not doing well because that’s also going to prevent them from exposing other people. Not hiding symptoms and honestly telling other friends and family that they are symptomatic so they can seek treatment and quarantine appropriately. Some of the responsibility lies with us as an overall community and a public health system to really address those social conditions that continue to put these populations at risk.   :34

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.

Anchor lead: What are the factors that lead certain groups of people to higher COVID-19 risk? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Black and Latino people, although they constitute a minority of the US population, are experiencing COVID-19 illness and death out of proportion to their numbers, data shows. Sherita Golden, Johns Hopkins vice president and chief diversity officer, says a number of factors are involved.

Golden: Many of these individuals live in crowded housing conditions that really creates a challenge to implementing social distancing. We really should call it more physical distancing just to prevent the spread of the infectious particles. Many of these individuals are in essential job areas, so cleaning and environmental services, food services, public transportation services, home health care. They don’t have the luxury of being able to work at home. On top of that many of these people are in jobs that don’t have paid sick leave.  :32

Golden says because of that, people will continue to work while ill. She recommends immediate multifactorial support from public health and government. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.

Anchor lead: How can balance be struck between clinical trials and patient care? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Should an unproven drug or treatment be used in a person with COVID-19? While many potential therapies have been identified, the best way to assess them is in a clinical trial, where one group of people is treated with the therapy under investigation while in the other that therapy is not used. Yet for critically ill people trials may not bring results fast enough. Brian Garibaldi, a critical care medicine expert and researcher at Johns Hopkins, comments.

Garibaldi: I think it’s very easy to say we’re not going to give any therapy outside of a clinical trial, but then when you’re talking to a patient or their families, and there is nothing available that we know works, and there’s a lot of media support for certain therapies, that doesn’t justify giving that therapy but it certainly has led to the conversation of hey, this thing might be available I’m not sure if it works, there are potential side effects which we also don’t understand yet. That has to be a shared decision between the physician and the patient or their surrogate.  :29

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.

Anchor lead: How can clinicians develop best practices for treating COVID-19 patients? Elizabeth Tracey reports

COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus Sars-CoV2, manifests differently in different people, making it more difficult to manage and treat. Brian Garibaldi, a critical care medicine expert and researcher at Johns Hopkins, says gathering individual patient data into a large database may help.

Garibaldi: While we’re trying to look for patterns of disease that can help us classify patients, recognize patients who might have higher risk factors to have a bad outcome, figure out how better to mobilize care for those patients at higher risk to improve outcome, I think we still have to recognize that this is never going to be a one size fits all mechanistic link, but we have to start somewhere. We’ve formed a COVID precision medicine center of excellence that’s going to house some of this data and really figure out how do we bring in all these streams of data.  :30

Hopkins Centers of Excellence aim to employ many tools to gather, analyze, and integrate research results into the best individualized care for patients. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.