Overrepresented in medicine, invisible in leadership; Truvian in the shadow of Theranos; & 'the CDC has a lot of work to do'

To surgeon Peter Yu, the most obvious parallel is the NFL, where the vast majority of players are Black, but Black head coaches are rare. 

July 26, 2023 Check out STAT+

Sponsored By

By Elizabeth Cooney Reporter, Morning Rounds Writer

Good morning. "Overrepresented." The "model minority." Asian Americans in medicine live with assumptions about their notable presence in the ranks of physicians, but they are invisible when it comes to the top of the pyramid. Usha Lee McFarling tells us what doctors make of this conundrum and the attitudes underlying it.

special report Overrepresented in medicine, Asian American doctors are largely invisible in leadership Sylvia Jarrus for STAT It's a puzzle that confounded even an expert. Orthopedic surgeon Charles Day (above) has spent years documenting the lack of diversity in his, the whitest specialty. Then for Day, who is Taiwanese American, the datasets and personal experience collided. Asian Americans are considered overrepresented in medicine relative to the U.S. population, while many people from other non-white racial and ethnic groups are struggling to gain entry into the profession in significant numbers. But still, white doctors are more than four times as likely as their Asian American colleagues to be promoted to medical school department chair positions in a wide array of surgical specialties, and Black and brown doctors are more than twice as likely to be promoted. To surgeon Peter Yu, the most obvious parallel is the NFL, where the vast majority of players are Black, but Black head coaches are rare. "You can do a hand count," he said. "It's the same in our profession." STAT's Usha Lee McFarling has more.  in the lab Truvian shows its blood-testing data for the first time. Let the Theranos comparisons begin In the shadow of Theranos, the now-demonized blood-testing company that inspired books, movies, and prison sentences based on its fraudulent claims, another blood diagnostics company said yesterday its benchtop instruments pretty much matched results from large centralized labs. But before crying foul on bringing up Theranos, consider that many questions that bubbled up back then are rising to the surface again about Truvian Health because the visions are so similar.  It's the first time Truvian has presented data, not yet vetted by a scientific journal. So STAT's Jonathan Wosen asked experts to weigh in: "It's one study, and it's published by the people who make the instrument, so there's always some grains of salt there. But, I mean, the data is reasonable," said Geoffrey Baird of the University of Washington, Seattle. "Central laboratory [testing] is not going to go away," said Alan Wu of San Francisco General Hospital. Read more on how it works. public health Mandy Cohen: 'The CDC has a lot of work to do' CDC's new director is in Atlanta, where she held her first all-hands meeting in her first week on the job. Mandy Cohen told STAT's Helen Branswell she's also been quizzing her predecessors. "Bill Foege was the leader who eradicated smallpox. I absolutely wanted to understand how he thought about that work," she said, "but at the same time, understanding Bob Redfield, who was here when Covid hit and how he approached that work." What's next: "The CDC has a lot of work to do. I think the world is very different in 2023 than it was just in 2019. … I do think it's time for a new chapter." On rebuilding trust: "One, I think that starts with transparency. Clear communication that is simple and easy to understand. Second is good execution, making sure that we do what we say we're going to do. And then third is about building relationships." Their full conversation's here.

---

---

Closer Look Living with paralysis: 'People make assumptions about you' Photo illustration: Casey Shenery for STAT Nikki Saltzburg (above) has been paralyzed from the waist down almost her whole life. The 45-year-old staff psychologist at Florida Atlantic University was injured by a series of medical errors, including a faulty diagnosis and a medication-induced blood clot. She now has a stoma to divert urine that she calls Freddy, "because it looks like an alien to me, like Freddy Krueger." She recently spoke with STAT's Simar Bajaj about navigating the health care system as a disabled person: How has health care been challenging? Doctors often assume that I'm on disability, assume I'm Medicare or Medicaid. I work full time, I have a Ph.D., I have a family that I'm supporting. What other assumptions do you run into? When you have a disability, people make assumptions about you, and they make judgments about your character and your abilities. That's why it's always been personally important to me to be independent, as independent as I can be, and prove those assumptions wrong. Read the full interview. pandemic For patients with cancer, the risk of severe Covid is at its lowest since 2020 In the spring of 2021, as vaccine euphoria was sweeping a world hopeful Covid might be in the rearview mirror, people with cancer or other conditions that lower immunity and weaken vaccine response felt left behind. As one person told me then, "It's not over yet for patients like me." New research from the U.K. paints a brighter picture, tracing more recent SARS-CoV-2 variants to less severe effects for patients with cancer, thanks also to vaccines, antivirals, and monoclonal antibodies.  Hospitalization rates for Covid-infected cancer patients fell from 31% in early 2021 to 7% in 2022 and death rates dropped from 21% to 3%. Still, cancer patients face twice the risk of bad outcomes as other people. "Patients with cancer must therefore be empowered to live more normal lives, to see loved ones and families, while also being safeguarded with expanded measures to reduce the risk of transmission," the authors write in Scientific Reports. academia Opinion: How to solve the Marc Tessier-Lavigne problem Only four paragraphs in a 95-page report on Marc Tessier-Lavigne's fall from grace mention lab culture. The celebrated neuroscientist resigned from Stanford's presidency —  but not his lab leadership — for failing to take sufficient steps to correct data manipulation in scientific papers that he co-authored. Lab culture was not what it should be, the report said, where multiple people manipulated data and there were "oversights" in amending the scientific record. "Those paragraphs flag important issues that more of us who work in universities should heed," C.K. Gunsalus of the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign points out in a STAT First Opinion. There's a disturbing dynamic of hypercompetiton, in which lab members are divided into winners and losers, based on their experimental results. "Research excellence is about more than what is achieved; it also encompasses how work is done, and by whom," she writes. Read more. On this week's "First Opinion Podcast," editor Torie Bosch speaks with health professionals Stephanie Edmonds and Ginny Ryan about why they think physicians should let patients call them by their first names. Listen here.

---

More around STAT

Check out more exclusive coverage with a STAT+ subscription Read premium in-depth biotech, pharma, policy, and life science coverage and analysis with all of our STAT+ articles.

---

What we're reading What it's like to live with a tick-borne disease, New York Times Gynecologist accused of sexually abusing over 200 patients is sentenced to 20 years in prison, Associated Press Congress's PBM reforms won't end America's drug pricing woes. Here's what they would do, STAT An ultra-processed diet made this doctor sick. Now he's studying why, WBUR Biogen says it will cut costs by $700 million, slash 1,000 jobs, STAT

---

Thanks for reading! More tomorrow,

elizabeth.cooney@statnews.com

---

Enjoying Morning Rounds? Tell us about your experience Continue reading the latest health & science news with the STAT app Download on the App Store or get it on Google Play

STAT, 1 Exchange Place, Boston, MA ©2023, All Rights Reserved. I no longer wish to receive STAT emails

Update Newsletter Preferences     •    Contact Us     •    Advertise with Us     •    View in Browser