RSV vaccine protects older adults for at least 3 seasons
An RSV vaccine continued to protect adults aged 60 and older against RSV-related hospitalization and emergency department visits for at least 3 seasons after vaccination, according to a new study by Kaiser Permanente in Southern California. RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, is a common respiratory ...
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Five questions for Dr. Casey Luc
Casey Luc, PhD, MPH, an epidemiologist with expertise in HIV epidemiology in underserved communities, is the fifth Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Epidemic Intelligence Service officer to ...
Five questions for Dr. Kevin Yu
Kevin Yu, PhD, is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Research & Evaluation at Kaiser Permanente Southern California. He earned his PhD in health informatics from Northwestern University, ...
Weekly grocery deliveries help lower blood sugar
Managing Type 2 diabetes can be challenging. Food choices matter, but healthy options aren’t always easy to afford or find. A Kaiser Permanente study found that adults with diabetes who were on Medicaid ...
Five questions for … Dr. Debbie Malden
October 19, 2021Debbie Malden, DPhil, MSc, is an epidemiologist with research experience in large-scale prospective cohort studies. Before joining Kaiser Permanente, Dr. Malden completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford, assessing risk factors for cardiovascular disease among a half million U.K. adults using both observational and genetic epidemiological techniques. In addition to her research on chronic disease, ...Read more...Sleep aids increase fracture risk in breast cancer survivors
October 8, 2021About 40% of breast cancer survivors use prescription medications to alleviate sleep problems, but these medications can increase their risk of bone fractures, according to research from Kaiser Permanente in Southern California published Sept. 29, 2021 in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment. For many of the 3.8 million breast cancer survivors living in the United States, getting ...Read more...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...