Description of a Multi-faceted COVID-19 Pandemic Physician Workforce Plan at a Multi-site Academic Health System.

Background: The evolving COVID-19 pandemic has and continues to present a threat to health system capacity. Rapidly expanding an existing acute care physician workforce is critical to pandemic response planning in large urban academic health systems.

Intervention: The Medical Emergency-Pandemic Operations Command (MEOC)-a multi-specialty team of physicians, operational leaders, and support staff within an academic Department of Medicine in Calgary, Canada-partnered with its provincial health system to rapidly develop a comprehensive, scalable pandemic physician workforce plan for non-ventilated inpatients with COVID-19 across multiple hospitals.

Patients With Substance Use Disorders Leaving Against Medical Advice: Strategies for Improvement.

: In this issue of the Journal of Addiction Medicine, 2 studies fill an important gap in knowledge by examining predictors of leaving against medical advice from inpatient withdrawal management settings. The studies identify important risk factors for leaving against medical advice and highlight important areas for inpatient withdrawal management. These include the use of substance specific standardized protocols and initiation of opioid agonist treatment instead of opioid detoxification given harms associated with opioid withdrawal.

The Open Medicine student peer review program.

has provided an opportunity to acquire experience in peer review for a group of graduate students in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary. To date, approximately 40 students have regularly participated in the peer review of manuscripts for . Participating students attend group sessions on the practicalities of reviewing papers, the revision and resubmission process, and specific topic areas that arise from particular papers.

The association between neighbourhoods and adverse birth outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of multi-level studies.

Many studies have examined the role of neighbourhood environment on birth outcomes but, because of differences in study design and modelling techniques, have found conflicting results. Seven databases were searched (1900-2010) for multi-level observational studies related to neighbourhood and pregnancy/birth. We identified 1502 articles of which 28 met all inclusion criteria.

Does dog-ownership influence seasonal patterns of neighbourhood-based walking among adults? A longitudinal study.

Background: In general dog-owners are more physically active than non-owners, however; it is not known whether dog-ownership can influence seasonal fluctuations in physical activity. This study examines whether dog-ownership influences summer and winter patterns of neighbourhood-based walking among adults living in Calgary, Canada.

Methods: A cohort of adults, randomly sampled from the Calgary metropolitan area, completed postal surveys in winter and summer 2008.