News

The numbers of recommended vaccine doses, including measles vaccine, administered to children decreased dramatically after the declaration of a national state of emergency on March 13, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published in Pediatrics. While the decrease was lower and recovered in children under 2 years of age, ...

A Kaiser Permanente study of nearly 50,000 people with COVID-19 suggested that regular physical activity provided strong protection from hospitalization, intensive care unit admission, and death. Even exercising inconsistently lowered the odds for severe COVID-19 outcomes when compared to people who were not active at all. The study, led by investigators in Kaiser Permanente Southern California, ...

The vast majority of patients make their end-of-life care wishes known to loved ones, and nearly 90% of the time those wishes were carried out according to Kaiser Permanente research published April 6, 2021, in the medical journal JAMA Network Open. “There is a common perception that people don’t often document or tell others about their ...

Researchers from Kaiser Permanente Southern California are collaborating with Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, the makers of the 2 first authorized COVID-19 vaccines, to study their vaccines’ effectiveness in real-world settings in preventing the disease and reducing its severity. Questions these studies will evaluate range from how long protection lasts to how well vaccines perform against variants ...

The Care Improvement Research Team has awarded funds for 7 new research projects led by Southern California Permanente Medical Group scientists and physician researchers on COVID-19 and other health topics to help improve the care physicians provide for their patients. “This kind of research provides important new evidence to our frontline clinicians,” said Nancy Gin, MD, ...

Shireen Fatemi, MD, FACE, FACP, is an endocrinologist at the Kaiser Permanente Panorama City Medical Center. She was recently named the 2020 Southern California Permanente Medical Group Physician Researcher of the Year. Dr. Fatemi is the chief of Endocrinology in the Department of Internal Medicine and former assistant area medical director at Panorama City. She ...

Research led by internal medicine residents at the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center has surfaced new insights into Takotsubo syndrome, a condition that closely resembles a heart attack. Most importantly, the findings link beta-blocker treatment with improved clinical outcomes. This project began in 2019, when residents Christopher Lau, MD, Sarah Chiu, MD, and Rohith Nayak, ...

People with type 2 diabetes may develop diabetic retinopathy, an eye condition that can lead to vision loss. Now, a study of over 77,000 Kaiser Permanente Southern California members shows that greater severity of diabetic retinopathy is strongly associated with a higher risk of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure, and death from any cause. “Preventive ...