Mary Ellen Schneider

September 6 2024

A Nickle Ain’t Worth a Dime Anymore

Shrinkflation applies to more than the size of candy bars or the amount of cereal in a box. It also affects medical research as federally funded investigators face rising costs but compete for flat or declining grant dollars.

August 1 2024

Mentoring in Classical Hematology

Mark Crowther, MD, and Brianna Bakow, MD, discuss their mentor-mentee relationship and why career mentoring is critical for the field of classical hematology.

June 10 2024

Finding a prescription for housing instability

Homelessness and housing instability in the U.S. are increasingly being recognized as taking a toll on physical and mental health. ACP recently issued a new position paper calling on physicians and policymakers to address this crisis, working simultaneously on the medical needs of patients with unstable housing and the lack of affordable housing in America.

More than 650,000 individuals in the United States were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2023, with 39% staying in un

February 19 2024

Trials and Tribulations: Running Clinical Trials in LMICs Can Be a Challenge

The need for greater diversity in clinical trials and a growing understanding that there are large untreated patient communities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are driving interest in conducting trials in these traditionally overlooked locations.

January 22 2024

Hitting the Right Notes: Meet the Adverse Events

What do you get when you take a classical pianist, a classic rock guitar player, a music teacher, and a financial planner, and add some hematology and oncology physicians? The answer is the Adverse Events, an eight-member cover band that will be playing classic rock and pop favorites from the 1970s through the 2000s at this year’s ASH-a-Palooza trainee event on Friday afternoon, December 8, in San Diego as part of the 65th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition.

The

January 22 2024

When a Cure Isn’t an Option

Not that long ago, a diagnosis of incurable cancer was a death sentence. Treatment advances in the last two decades, though, have changed the outlook for many patients with hematologic cancers, extending life expectancies and turning some malignancies into conditions that can be managed like chronic illnesses.

Cancer Therapy Advisor • November 3 2023

New YouTube Policy Targets Cancer Misinformation

YouTube, like other social media platforms, has long been a source of misinformation about cancer, but the company is taking steps to combat this misinformation with a new policy.

October 3 2023

Do No Harm: Is Health Care Polluting the Earth?

Whether it is a sickle cell crisis or a nephrotoxicity during cancer treatment, hematologists are learning to recognize and address the health impacts of climate change every day. However, sometimes overlooked is the negative impact the health care sector itself has on the environment.

October 3 2023

Combating the crisis of loneliness

There's a newly declared epidemic that is harming health and contributing to mortality—loneliness and a lack of social connection—and primary care physicians are on the front lines.

Cancer Therapy Advisor • August 18 2023

Medicare Limits Cancer Patients’ Access to Home Infusions. A New Bill Could Change That.

Home infusion of cancer treatments has gained traction in some pockets of the United States over the last few years, but reimbursement and benefit design within fee-for-service Medicare are creating barriers to greater use, according to proponents of cancer care at home.

March 13 2023

The United States of Medicine

Almost overnight, the COVID-19 pandemic transformed telemedicine from a cumbersome service offered by a small number of physicians to an indispensable part of medical care. But as hematology practices and hospitals shift back to normal operations, many of the regulatory flexibilities that made telemedicine practical are in flux, creating confusion and uncertainty.

LWW • February 4 2023

Policy Efforts Aim to Disrupt White Bagging Trends in Oncology

A growing number of state legislatures and boards of pharmacy are considering ways to limit white bagging, a controversial practice in which health plans require patient-specific drugs to be dispensed from the plan's preferred specialty pharmacy and shipped directly to the provider for administration.

February 4 2023

Training Hematologists and Building Research Capacity in Tanzania

In 2013, there were just six hematologists working in the United Republic of Tanzania, one of the largest countries in East Africa and then home to more than 48 million people. These specialists were all located in the port city of Dar es Salaam, forcing patients to travel hours to receive care for conditions like sickle ce

February 4 2023

The Road to Resettlement

U.S. troops completed a chaotic – and at times, deadly – evacuation of Afghanistan on August 30, 2021, ending America’s 20-year presence in the country and kicking off a massive effort to resettle Afghan nationals around the globe.

Since then, approximately 70,000 Afghans have arrived in the U.S. as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) Operation Allies Welcome. After two decades of war and economic hardship, these refugees are arriving with medical conditions that are rarely se

February 4 2023

Trust Issues

At the beginning of 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) identified vaccine hesitancy as being one of 10 major threats to global health. At the time, the WHO noted that vaccine hesitancy, defined as “the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines,” threatened to reverse progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and polio.1

The WHO’s warning came nearly a year before the first cases of COVID-19 were identified and two years before a vac

February 4 2023

Convergence: FDA official urges big-picture focus in diversity planning for clinical trials

Medical product sponsors should focus on the overarching goal of enrolling diverse patient populations in clinical trials, rather than getting bogged down in differing terminology around race and ethnicity, according to Lola Fashoyin-Aje, MD, of the US Food and Drug Administration’s Oncology Center of Excellence.

February 4 2023

Subclinical hypothyroidism prompts personalized decisions

For diagnosing and managing subclinical hypothyroidism, clinical context such as age and symptoms matter, even in the face of an incomplete understanding of the condition.

February 4 2023

Improving HCV treatment and screening in primary care

Public health officials are looking to knock out hepatitis C virus (HCV) with a one-two punch that includes near universal screening of adults and a simplified “treat all” approach for those with infection. The goal is to get most infected patients cured or halt their disease progression.

February 4 2023

Cardiac rehab uptake remains low, despite benefits

Strong evidence shows that cardiac rehabilitation following a cardiovascular event or surgery reduces mortality and lowers hospital readmissions, but estimates from the American Heart Association suggest that only about 20% to 30% of eligible patients ever receive the intervention.

February 4 2023

Rethinking advance care planning

While more physicians are reporting having conversations about advance care planning with their patients, it's still far from common.

February 4 2023

Working to bridge medicine's stubborn gender wage gap

Women now outnumber men in U.S. medical schools, but after training, they can expect to earn significantly less than their male counterparts, regardless of their specialty choice, productivity, or level of seniority.

February 4 2023

Improving celiac disease diagnosis

Celiac disease should be part of the differential diagnosis for several classic clinical presentations, but atypical symptoms, including constipation, can cause doctors to overlook some patients.

February 4 2023

Managing the Fallout

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has the world watching, with a keen awareness of the country’s active nuclear power plants and the potential for a significant nuclear-radiologic event.

February 4 2023

Refill at the Global Pharmacy?

When hospital pharmacists in Germany order drugs, they may choose to buy medicines manufactured and sold in Germany or the same drugs that have been reimported from Greece or Belgium, where prices are lower. Pharmacists are not only allowed, but required, by the German government to source some medications from other countries if they can save money.