R&E investigator wins prestigious award
Jaejin An, PhD, was awarded the Early Career Investigator of the Year award at this year’s Health Care Systems Research Network conference held this month in St. Louis, Missouri. Dr. An is a pharmacoepidemiologist and cardiovascular outcomes researcher for the Kaiser Permanente Southern California ...
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Study identifies who is most at risk of tuberculosis
People born in countries with a high burden of tuberculosis (TB) and living in the United States have higher rates of TB disease, and may need more focused screening, according to new Kaiser Permanente ...
Doctors assess glaucoma risk among younger adults
Eye specialists at Kaiser Permanente Southern California studied whether using a standardized testing criteria among younger adults could improve care, reduce unnecessary testing, and potentially reduce ...
Five questions for … Dr. Aniket Kawatkar
Aniket Kawatkar, PhD, MS, is a research scientist who is interested in understanding the drivers of health care utilization and their associated economic, clinical, and patient-reported outcomes. Dr. ...
COVID-19 delta variant associated with increased risk of severe disease
October 7, 2021Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente Southern California found that COVID-19 cases caused by the delta variant increased rapidly from April 15 to July 21, particularly among people ages 18 to 44. The study was published October 7, 2021, in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, known as MMWR. ...Read more...COVID-19 severity associated with air pollution from non-freeway traffic
October 7, 2021A study of Kaiser Permanente Southern California members diagnosed with COVID-19 found that patients who had recently lived in areas with higher levels of air pollution from non-freeway roadways had a higher risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes. “Our analysis suggests that traffic-related air pollution may be a contributor to the severity of COVID-19,” said the study’s ...Read more...Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness wanes over time
October 4, 2021A recent study led by Kaiser Permanente found the Pfizer-BioNTech, BNT162b2, mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine is highly effective against hospitalization for 6 months after full vaccination, even in the face of widespread transmission of the delta variant. The study was published in The Lancet. (An earlier draft of the study was previously posted on The Lancet ...Read more...5 questions for … Dr. Sarah Carter
September 15, 2021Sarah Carter, DPhil, MA, is a postdoctoral research fellow at Kaiser Permanente Southern California’s Department of Research & Evaluation. She completed her doctoral work at the University of Southampton in England, where she studied childbirth intervention in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS). She is currently studying pre- and perinatal maternal health, environmental exposures, ...Read more...Vulnerable populations sought virtual care during pandemic
September 13, 2021Kaiser Permanente Southern California patients who were Latinx or low-income had the largest percentage increase in use of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Kaiser Permanente research recently published in Journal of Medical Internet Research. Increases in telehealth visits during the COVID-19 pandemic varied across age, sex, race/ethnicity, and household income groups, while decreases in ...Read more...Infant lung disease rates drop dramatically over 10-year effort
September 1, 2021Over the last decade, rates of a chronic lung condition known as bronchopulmonary dysplasia have dropped from 20% to less than 2% among very preterm babies at Kaiser Permanente Panorama City. As reported in JAMA Network Open, this decrease is associated with a novel system of care designed by Kaiser Permanente Southern California researchers. Meanwhile, the ...Read more...Young children gained weight during the pandemic
August 27, 2021A Kaiser Permanente study of nearly 200,000 children showed that children gained excess weight during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially those between 5 and 11 years old. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “When we compared the weight gain among children from 2019 to 2020, we found that there was more ...Read more...5 questions for … Dr. Darryl Palmer-Toy
August 26, 2021Darryl Palmer-Toy, MD, PhD, is the physician director of the Regional Reference Core Laboratories for Kaiser Permanente Southern California. He has been in this position for 5 years. In this role, Dr. Palmer-Toy oversees the ancillary, clinical chemistry, and immunochemistry departments, which perform about 20 million tests per year. A student of proteomics (the study ...Read more...Bariatric surgery associated with better health for mothers
August 13, 2021A study of more than 20,000 Kaiser Permanente members in Southern California showed that women with obesity who underwent bariatric surgery prior to pregnancy experienced improved outcomes such as a reduced risk of serious pregnancy-related blood pressure conditions, and lower instances of a newborn needing to be sent to the neonatal intensive care unit, or ...Read more...Risk of severe COVID-19 higher for patients who recently needed asthma care
August 10, 2021A study of Kaiser Permanente Southern California members diagnosed with COVID-19 found that patients who needed clinical visits for asthma care in the 12 months prior to infection faced a higher risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes than patients who did not have asthma. Of patients who had recent asthma-related visits, those who also received medications for ...Read more...