Frontline perspectives on barriers to care for patients with California Medicaid: a qualitative study.

Background: While insurance is integral for accessing healthcare in the US, coverage alone may not ensure access, especially for those publicly insured. Access barriers for Medicaid-insured patients are rooted in social drivers of health, insurance complexities in the setting of managed care plans, and federal- and state-level policies. Elucidating barriers at the health system level may reveal opportunities for sustainable solutions.

Partisan Differences in Legislators' Discussion of Vaccination on Twitter During the COVID-19 Era: Natural Language Processing Analysis.

Background: The COVID-19 era has been characterized by the politicization of health-related topics. This is especially concerning given evidence that politicized discussion of vaccination may contribute to vaccine hesitancy. No research, however, has examined the content and politicization of legislator communication with the public about vaccination during the COVID-19 era.

Association Between Crowdsourced Health Care Facility Ratings and Mortality in US Counties.

Importance: Mortality across US counties varies considerably, from 252 to 1847 deaths per 100 000 people in 2018. Although patient satisfaction with health care is associated with patient- and facility-level health outcomes, the association between health care satisfaction and community-level health outcomes is not known.

Objective: To examine the association between online ratings of health care facilities and mortality across US counties and to identify language specific to 1-star (lowest rating) and 5-star (highest rating) reviews in counties with high vs low mortality.

Online Reviews of Mental Health Treatment Facilities: Narrative Themes Associated With Positive and Negative Ratings.

Objective: Previous studies indicate that patients' satisfaction with mental health care is correlated with both treatment outcomes and quality of life. The aims of this study were to describe online reviews of mental health treatment facilities, including key themes in review content, and to evaluate the correlation between narrative review themes, facility characteristics, and review ratings.

Methods: United States National Mental Health Services Survey (N-MHSS) facilities were linked to corresponding Yelp pages, created between March 2007 and September 2019.

Changes in legislator vaccine-engagement on Twitter before and after the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Widespread SARS-CoV-2 vaccine uptake will be critical to resolution of the COVID-19 pandemic. Politicians have the potential to impact vaccine sentiment and uptake through vaccine-related communication with the public. We used tweets (n = 6,201), abstracted from Quorum, a public affairs software platform, to examine changes in the frequency of vaccine-related communication by legislators on the social media platform, Twitter.

Who is Biking for? Urban Bikeshare Networks' Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic, Disparities in Bikeshare Access, and a Way Forward.

Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people have contracted the SARS-CoV-2 virus and died of COVID-19 at higher rates than White people. Individuals rated public transit, taxis, and ride-hailing as the modes of transportation putting them at greatest risk of COVID-19 infection. Cycling may thus be an attractive alternative for commuting.

State Legislators' Divergent Social Media Response to the Opioid Epidemic from 2014 to 2019: Longitudinal Topic Modeling Analysis.

Background: The opioid epidemic is widely recognized as a legislative priority, but there is substantial variation in state adoption of evidence-based policy. State legislators' use of social media to disseminate information and to indicate support for specific initiatives continues to grow and may reflect legislators' openness to opioid-related policy change.

Objective: We sought to identify changes in the national dialogue regarding the opioid epidemic among Democratic and Republican state legislators and to estimate changing partisanship around understanding and addressing the epidemic over time.

Increasing Short- and Long-Term Buprenorphine Treatment Capacity: Providing Waiver Training for Medical Students.

In the face of an ongoing opioid crisis in the United States, persistent treatment gaps exist for vulnerable populations. Among the 3 Food and Drug Administration-approved medications used to treat opioid use disorder, many patients prefer buprenorphine. But physicians are currently required to register with the Drug Enforcement Administration and complete 8 hours of qualifying training before they can receive a waiver to prescribe buprenorphine to their patients.

Author Correction: Variability in Language used on Social Media Prior to Hospital Visits.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Variability in Language used on Social Media prior to Hospital Visits.

Forecasting healthcare utilization has the potential to anticipate care needs, either accelerating needed care or redirecting patients toward care most appropriate to their needs. While prior research has utilized clinical information to forecast readmissions, analyzing digital footprints from social media can inform our understanding of individuals' behaviors, thoughts, and motivations preceding a healthcare visit. We evaluate how language patterns on social media change prior to emergency department (ED) visits and inpatient hospital admissions in this case-crossover study of adult patients visiting a large urban academic hospital system who consented to share access to their history of Facebook statuses and electronic medical records.

Recognizing Racism in Medicine: A Student-Organized and Community-Engaged Health Professional Conference.

This piece details the evaluation and implementation of a student-led educational intervention designed to train health professionals on the impact of racism in health care and provide tools to mitigate it. In addition, this conference, cosponsored by medical, nursing, and social work training programs, facilitates development of networks of providers with the knowledge and skills to recognize and address racism in health care. The conference included 2 keynote speakers, an interprofessional panel, and 15 workshops.