Patricia Matthews-Juarez

Meharry Medical College · Department of Family and Community Medicine

The Biden administration decided to end the COVID-19 National and Public Health emergencies on May 11, 2023. These emergency declarations were established by the Trump Administration in early 2020. Under the COVID-19 emergency declarations, US citizens were provided with COVID-19 testing, vaccines, and treatments at little or no cost. The declarati...

Objective Authors explored ways to understand how families and communities remain hopeful, happy, and healthy. Background The 2021 National Council on Family Relations annual conference set the groundwork for the special issue, The Science of Families: Nurturing Hope, Happiness, and Health, asking authors to take a strength‐based, transformative,...

Background: The exposome serves as a popular framework in which to study exposures from chemical and nonchemical stressors across the life course and the differing roles that these exposures can play in human health. As a result, data relevant to the exposome have been used as a resource in the quest to untangle complicated health trajectories and...

Assess the effect of patient-centered communication (PCC) scale on the patient satisfaction of healthcare providers (HCPs). The 2020 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) was used to analyze the patient’s satisfaction of HCPs. This survey includes 2466 patients’ responses and were analyzed using the multivariable binary Hyperbolastic re...

COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and uptake among Southern states in the US has been problematic throughout the pandemic. To characterize COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and uptake among medically underserved communities in Tennessee. We surveyed 1482 individuals targeting minority communities in Tennessee from 2 October 2021 to 22 June 2022. Participants who...

Background: Literature presents limited information on histological subtypes and their association with other factors influencing the survival of melanoma patients. To explore the risk of death due to melanoma associated with histological subtypes, this retrospective study used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program (SEER) data fr...

The COVID-19 Omicron variant and its subvariants are now the dominant variants circulating in the US. Therefore, the original COVID-19 vaccine cannot offer full protection. Instead, vaccines that target the spike proteins of the Omicron variants are warranted. Hence, the FDA recommended the development of a bivalent booster. Unfortunately, despite...

Background: The objective of the study was to measure the risk of death due to COVID-19 in relation to individuals' characteristics, and severity of their disease during the dominant periods of Alpha, Delta, and Omicron variants have influenced mortality rates. Methods: This study was conducted using COVID-19 Centers for Disease Control and Prev...

This article explains the importance of a communities of practice (CoP) model for continually aligning medical education and clinical transformation with contemporary health issues. It describes the evolution and advantages of using CoP as a model for transforming medical education and clinical practice and applies the CoP methodology to addressing...

Transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) patients experience a greater burden of health disparities compared with their heterosexual/cisgender counterparts. Some of the poorer health outcomes observed in these populations are known to be associated with the prevalence of implicit bias, bullying, emotional distress, alcoholism, drug abuse, intimate part...

Purpose: We undertook a study to evaluate the current state of pedagogy on antiracism, including barriers to implementation and strengths of existing curricula, in undergraduate medical education (UME) and graduate medical education (GME) programs in US academic health centers. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study with an exploratory qu...

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AGOG) recommends the FDA-approved Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and boosters for all eligible pregnant women in the US. However, COVID-19 vaccine confidence and uptake among pregnant minority women have been poor. While the underlying reasons are unclear, they are likely to be ass...

Air pollutants, especially particulate matter, and other meteorological factors serve as important carriers of infectious microbes and play a critical role in the spread of disease. However, there remains uncertainty about the relationship among particulate matter, other air pollutants, meteorological conditions and climate change and the spread of...

The incidence of COVID-19 breakthrough infections—an infection that occurs after you have been vaccinated—has increased in frequency since the Delta and now Omicron variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus have become the dominant strains transmitted in the United States (US). Evidence suggests that individuals with breakthrough infections, though ra...

Purpose: Providing inclusive and comprehensive gender-affirming care is critical to reducing health disparities (gaps in care) experienced by sexual and gender minorities (SGM). Currently, little is known about how medical students and residents are being trained to address the health needs of SGM persons or of the most effective methods. Methods...

Background A wealth of scientific evidence supports the effectiveness of HIV prophylaxis and treatment. Homelessness is strongly associated with the health status and viral suppression among underserved populations and can undermine the national plan to eliminate HIV by 2030. This retrospective observational study examined the extent in which homel...

To end or curtail the COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential to incorporate mobile vaccination programs into the national vaccination strategy. Mobile COVID-19 vaccination programs play an important role in providing comprehensive vaccination from federally qualified institutions to underserved communities facing a higher risk for COVID-19 acquisition....

Background: Opioid use and overdose represent a major public health crisis in the United States. Training in opioid use disorder treatment is a complex and multi-faceted endeavor with topics that range from harm reduction and overdose reversal to medication-assisted treatment. Methods: We conducted a systematic review of literature on medical sc...

A wealth of scientific evidence supports the effectiveness of HIV prophylaxis and treatment. Homelessness has become one of the strongest predictors of health status and viral suppression among vulnerable populations and can undermine the national plan to eliminate HIV by 2030. This retrospective observational study examined the extent in which hom...

Purpose: Interpersonal violence (IV) is a leading cause of morbidity, disability, adverse mental health conditions, and mortality. Without additional training, physicians are likely to limit their attention to the presenting trauma without recognizing or addressing potential long-term effects. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was c...

To transform primary care with the goal of achieving health equity, changes in the way the health care workforce is selected, trained, and ultimately delivers care should be expedited. Research has repeatedly shown the immense impact of the social determinants of health and the gaps related to health equity in the United States. Despite this knowle...

Background American Indian/Alaskan Native (AI/AN) communities are second only to White Americans in mortality from opioid use disorder (OUD), while the smallest racial/ethnic minority population group in the USA. Those in rural communities experience significant health care disparities, including poorer treatment access for substance use disorder....

Scientific evidence is accumulating about the range of adverse health, mental health, and risky behavioral sequelae across the life continuum arising from exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Research findings show a clear relationship between the number of ACEs experienced by a person during childhood and the adverse health outcomes o...

(1) Background: Cardio-metabolic diseases (CMD), including cardiovascular disease, stroke, and diabetes, have numerous common individual and environmental risk factors. Yet, few studies to date have considered how these multiple risk factors together affect CMD disparities between Blacks and Whites. (2) Methods: We linked daily fine particulate mat...

Little is known about how medical students are trained to identify and reduce their own biases toward vulnerable patient groups. A survey was conducted among US medical schools to determine whether their curricula addressed physician implicit biases toward three vulnerable patient groups: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ)...

The report defines the theory behind communities of practice as a model to transform medical education and clinical practice for vulnerable populations (LGBTQ, persons experiencing homelessness, and migrant farm workers). It also offers lessons learned from this model to demonstrate value creation by communities of practice in medical education.

Background: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) individuals experience higher rates of health disparities. These disparities may be driven, in part, by biases of medical providers encountered in health care settings. Little is known about how medical, nursing, or dental students are trained to identify and reduce the effect...

Traditional research approaches, including genome-wide association studies (GWAS), epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) and Gene × Environment (G × E) studies are limited in their ability to handle the multiplicity of chemical and non-chemical toxicants to which people are exposed in the real world, over their life course, their impact on epig...

Objectives: The aim is to identify exposures associated with lung cancer mortality and mortality disparities by race and gender using an exposome database coupled to a graph‑theoretical toolchain. Methods: Graph‑theoretical algorithms were employed to extract paracliques from correlation graphs using associations between 2162 environmental exposure...

Objective: We have conducted a study to assess the role of environment on the burden of maternal morbidities and mortalities among women using an external exposome approach for the purpose of developing targeted public health interventions to decrease disparities. Methods: We identified counties in the 48 contiguous USA where observed low birthw...

Recent advances in informatics technology has made it possible to integrate, manipulate, and analyze variables from a wide range of scientific disciplines allowing for the examination of complex social problems such as health disparities. This study used 589 county-level variables to identify and compare geographical variation of high and low prete...

The lack of progress in reducing health disparities suggests that new approaches are needed if we are to achieve meaningful, equitable, and lasting reductions. Current scientific paradigms do not adequately capture the complexity of the relationships between environment,personal health and population level disparities. The public health exposome is...

Despite staggering investments made in unraveling the human genome, current estimates suggest that as much as 90% of the variance in cancer and chronic diseases can be attributed to factors outside an individual's genetic endowment, particularly to environmental exposures experienced across his or her life course. New analytical approaches are clea...

Race and socioeconomic status are well known to influence lung cancer incidence and mortality patterns in the U.S. Lung cancer incidence and mortality rates are higher among blacks than whites. In this article we review opportunities to address disparities in lung cancer incidence, mortality, and survivorship among African Americans. First, we summ...

This paper applies the hybrid model of partial least squares (PLS) regression and GM (1, N) to study the relationship between adverse health outcome and its risk factors. PLS is a dimension reduction tool that has the ability to handle collinearity issue. The grey model is part of the state-of-the-art Grey Theory System originally developed by Julo...

The role that social media plays in the lives of military families is enormous, whether the service person is on duty in the United States, overseas, or in a war zone. It also plays a role in the reintegration of military personnel into civilian life. Definitions and concepts of social media, health, and well-being are presented. The authors examin...

In the NIMHD-funded Health Disparities Research Center of Excellence at Meharry, faculty and scholars are trained to better address environmental health issues by integrating longitudinal, multi-systemic, spatially, and temporally referenced analytical methods. These methods include computational, multilevel, and spatial analyses through a transdis...

It is unclear what impact human genomics research will have on the nation's efforts to close the gap in health disparities between and among racial/ethnic and disadvantaged groups. The literature suggests that understanding socio-economic and cultural factors are important for understanding the complex issues offer by genetic explanations of racial...

Using three statistical models (GLR, GEP, and GM), the effect of Hurricane Katrina on low birth weight and preterm delivery babies for African American women is examined in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The study results indicate that risk factors associated with low birth weight and preterm delivery for American African women include unemplo...

This study evaluates the cultural context of the behaviors and beliefs of African-American women to determine the success or failure of breast cancer prevention and control interventions. Cultural and psychologic reactions, such as fear, distrust, fatalism, and other "historic rooted" factors, are major determinants to participation in these interv...

The (Health Professions Shortage Areas) HPSA designation process was developed as a mechanism to identify primary care shortage areas eligible for participation in specific federally funded programs including a 10% Medicare supplement, the National Health Service Corps, and health professions training programs. The purpose of this paper was to expl...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brandeis University, 1982. "UMI: 8313211." Includes bibliographical references (p. 148-156). Photocopy.