Endocrine Society members Melanie Haines, MD, and Priya Vellanki, MD, discuss the Endocrine Society’s Endo Cares event that took place during ENDO 2022 in Atlanta with Endocrine News editor, Mark A. Newman. [VIDEO]
On Sunday June 12 during ENDO 2022, Endocrine News editor Mark A. Newman spoke with Melanie Haines, MD, and Priya Vellanki, MD, about the Endo Cares event that they participated in the previous day in Clarkston, Ga.
Clarkston, which lies just to the east of Atlanta, is home to a large refugee community where more than 60 languages are spoken. Therefore, the EndoCares event focused on this largely underserved community with a day of healthcare screenings, COVID-19 vaccines and boosters, and even a healthy cooking demonstration by a nutritionist for 200 attendees, as well as community leaders including the mayor of Clarkston.
“We diagnosed several people with diabetes, new diagnoses of hypertension, and actually sent two people to the emergency room, underscoring the need for these screenings,” Vellanki says, adding, “We even called an Uber [to get them to the ER].”
As a member of the Endocrine Society’s Patient Engagement Committee, Haines says that she was interested in participating in the Clarkston event as part of the Society’s renewed effort to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion and “do my small part to help improve access and reduce health disparities in underserved communities,” she explains. “It was such a gratifying experience.”
Vellanki says that she works in a “safety net” hospital in Atlanta and routinely deals with patients from underinsured and underserved patients, “but even to me this event highlighted the barrier that people have who ar new immigrants and refugees to even have access to get into our door,” she says. “It highlights the role that we as physicians have to think beyond our clinic because most of care happens before they come to our office and after they come to our office in their communities.”
To watch the entire video, click here.
To read a Q&A with Christine M. Burt Solorzano, MD, associate professor of pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Va., and chair of the Society’s Patient Engagement Committee, click here.
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