For the Love of Health

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women in America - accounting for 1 in 3 new cancer diagnoses each year. And while there isn’t a big difference across races in terms of rates of getting breast cancer - there are huge gaps in what happens after diagnosis.

In this episode we sit down with Scott Siegel, Ph.D., director of cancer control and population sciences at ChristianaCare, and Dr. Dawn Leonard, chief of ChristianaCare's division of breast surgery, to discuss that alarming disparity.

They shed light on the urgent issues at play, including higher rates of advanced breast cancer and the aggressive triple negative breast cancer prevalent in Delaware. They explain how a victory in eliminating a racial disparity for a completely different form of cancer is spurring the call to action to address breast cancer. And we discuss how success in Delaware could apply nationwide.
Scott Siegel, Ph.D., is a psychologist and director of Population Health Research at ChristianaCare. In this role Siegel works collaboratively with multidisciplinary teams in the health system and with governments, universities, and community-based organizations to improve population health.

Dawn Leonard, MD, FACS, specializes in breast surgery at ChristianaCare. Dr. Leonard joined ChristianaCare with more than 17 years of practice and leadership experience, most recently at Georgetown University Hospital and as the site director at a community hospital with a Regional Breast Health Program. Dr. Leonard has earned multiple recognitions as a "Top Doc" in Breast Surgery and awards for excellence in healthcare, service and scholarship.
Links

• Researchers Find Disparities in Breast Cancer Screening in Delaware Linked to Race and Geography
• ‘Getting the Village Back Together’: ChristianaCare’s Plan for Reducing Breast Cancer Disparities in Delaware
• Searching for the Roots of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Where Women Live
• Basic Information About Breast Cancer (CDC)

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From Chat GPT to self-driving Teslas, in some ways it feels like we're living in the future we were promised in movies and television. Similar technologies are having a huge and growing effect across the healthcare industry.

In this episode Kat Collard, ChristianaCare Chief Nursing Informatics Officer, and Susan Birkhoff, Ph.D., Program Director for Technology Research and Education at ChristianaCare, open up the world of robots in patient care. They shed light on how mechanical marvels are enhancing efficiency and improving patient outcomes.
Hear about ChristianaCare's own cobot, Moxi, which is designed to handle the tedious, and yet surprisingly complex, task of collecting and transporting supplies. Learn about the dramatic benefits of that work and the challenges of integrating robots into an ever-dynamic hospital environment.
If you are curious about the future of healthcare and how robots are part of that, this conversation promises to be a fascinating and informative listen.
Katherine Collard is chief nursing informatics officer at ChristianaCare, responsible for the strategy and implementation of IT systems that directly impact nurses. In addition to leading the system's work with Moxi, she has also led teams in improving documentation for nurses particularly around pressure injury identification on admission. This process led to a significant improvement in identification on admission avoiding significant penalties.
Susan Birkhoff, PhD, is a nurse and a scientist leading and supporting interprofessional research education, systemwide technology evaluation, and grantmanship. She conducts research studies that investigates the implementation of technology-based solutions to improve complex health problems.
Links

• Meet Moxi, ChristianaCare's New Cobot (video)
• Driving Nursing Outcomes through Robotics
• 6 Nurse AI Robots That Are Changing Healthcare in 2023
• How Robots Are Redefining Health Care: 6 Recent Innovations
• Medical Robots Transforming Healthcare: 11 Examples

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If you've been involved in any type of fitness routine, you've likely tried exercises that focus on the body's midsection. Maybe you've tried crunches or planks, but have you heard of the Row Dog or the Upside Down Turtle?
On this episode of For the Love of Health, ChristianaCare Physical Therapists Brian Catania and Travis Ross deep dive into their nationally recognized Sling Activation Sequence and why you need to be thinking about the core differently.
Brian Catania, MPT, SCS, ATC, is a physical therapist and site manager of ChristianaCare Rehabilitation Services at Glasgow who has attracted national attention for trailblazing new types of therapy.
Travis Ross, PT, DPT is an outpatient orthopedic and sports Physical Therapist at ChristianaCare in Newark, Delaware since 2006. He co-created the Sling Activation Sequence, which has been used to prevent and reduce injuries by athletes across the country.
Links

• VIDEOS: ChristianaCare Sling Activation Sequence
• VIDEOS: ChristianaCare Standing Sling Activation Sequence
• NFL Teams Use Exercises Developed by ChristianaCare to Protect Football Players from Injuries
• NFL puts core strengthening program of Delaware therapists in its playbook
• These physical therapists have a new approach for strengthening the core, and the NFL is taking notice
• For a Stable, Strong Core, Forget About Crunches

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Choosing your profession can be difficult no matter what path you choose. But when medical school is part of that path, life can get a little more complicated.
Sometimes fate can step in, in the form of a mentor. On this week's episode of For the Love of Health, Dr. Marshala Lee-McCall, Director of the iREACH Harrington Community Partnership Fund, and ChristianaCare OB/GYN resident Dr. Kristyn Mitchell share how their mentor/mentee relationship became so much more and discuss how mentorships are important for achieving equity and representation in healthcare
Marshala Lee-McCall, M.D., MPH serves as the Harrington Trust Physician Scholar and Director of iREACH's Harrington Community Partnership Fund. In this role she is responsible for strengthening community partnerships and developing new models of patient-centered health care delivery and methods for addressing the social determinants of health.
Kristyn Mitchell, M.D. is a first year resident in ChristianaCare's Obstetrics & Gynecology program.

Links

• ChristianaCare News - Mentorship Matters: Kristyn Mitchell, M.D., Returns to ChristianaCare to Serve Her Neighbors
• ChristianaCare Mentorship and Teamwork
• ChristianaCare Institute for Research on Equity and Community Health
• ChristianaCare Underrepresented Minorities in Medicine
• ChristianaCare Office of Inclusion and Diversity
• Contact the Harrington Trust: [email protected]

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Becoming a parent is both life-changing and challenging. One of the first challenges some new parents face is the need for their baby to receive life-saving care in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). A small number of hospitals across the United States, including ChristianaCare, offer "couplet care" - having mother and baby cared for in the same NICU room - as a way to make a stressful situation a bit less stressful.
Dr. David Paul, chair of the Department of Pediatrics at ChristianaCare, and Tamie Hotchkiss, assistant nurse manager in the NICU, join us for this episode to explain how this revolutionary approach to care works and how it benefits both parents and babies.
We walk through the journey families have before and after couplet care, discuss how moms and babies qualify this specialized care, along with what care looks like when couplet care is not an option.
Learn where the concept of couplet care comes from and why it is such a rarity in American health care.
Dr. David Paul is one of the nation's leading neonatologists who's been recognized for his excellence in teaching, research and care. He was appointed Chair of Department of Pediatrics in June 2014. He has been a practicing neonatologist in the community since 1994 serving at ChristianaCare's Christiana Hospital and Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children as well as several other hospitals. A champion for the prevention of infant mortality, Dr. Paul has led the Delaware initiatives to decrease infant mortality and premature birth for over a decade.
Links

• Pregnancy and Childbirth at ChristianaCare
• JAMA: Association of a Zero-Separation Neonatal Care Model With Stress in Mothers of Preterm Infants
• A new day for mothers and babies in Delaware (Delaware News Journal)
• Mother-Newborn Couplet Care from theory to practice to ensure zero separation for all newborns
• Increasingly, NICUs Integrate Families into Care with Single-Family Rooms

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