Curriculum Design and Scholarship for New Educators: A Professional Development Workshop for Medical Students.

Introduction: Medical students' professional development includes their role as educators. Despite greater opportunities to join medical education curriculum development, medical students' engagement in these activities remains limited. A recent national study on student leadership in curricular change revealed a formal lack of leadership and training in medical education as significant barriers.

A Proposal for a Shared Medical School Curricular Ecosystem.

New digital platforms are transforming learning in higher education and providing high-quality education content at little or no cost. Educators can now reach large, even global audiences. Yet, many medical schools continue to develop and maintain custom but duplicative curricular content despite having limited faculty and financial resources.

Practical strategies for effective lectures.

Lecturing is an essential teaching skill for scientists and health care professionals in pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine. However, few medical or scientific educators have received training in contemporary techniques or technology for large audience presentation. Interactive lecturing outperforms traditional, passive-style lecturing in educational outcomes, and is being increasingly incorporated into large group presentations.

Training Pediatricians to Adhere to Asthma Guidelines.

Despite the proven efficacy of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute asthma guidelines, adherence to these recommendations is suboptimal among primary care physicians. Knowledge, skills, and attitudes among pediatricians influence adherence to the asthma guidelines. Workshop-based provider education interventions demonstrate short-term improvement in knowledge, but do not lead to long-term changes in patient outcomes.

Prospective evaluation of a portable depth-sensitive optical spectroscopy device to identify oral neoplasia.

A portable, depth-sensitive clinical spectroscopy device for noninvasive early diagnosis of oral cancer is described. We carried out a pilot study to evaluate the ability of the device to identify oral neoplasia using a previously developed diagnostic algorithm. A total of 79 oral sites in 33 subjects, including 28 patients with oral lesions and 5 healthy volunteers, were measured and analyzed.

A randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a distance asthma learning program for pediatricians.

Objectives: To assess provider acceptability of a distance learning program for pediatric asthma and pilot test its effects on physician knowledge, attitudes and treatment practices.

Design: Randomized controlled trial.

Setting: Louisville and the surrounding central Kentucky region.

Do asthma medication beliefs mediate the relationship between minority status and adherence to therapy?

Minority status has been associated with lower asthma medication adherence. We evaluated whether medication beliefs mediated this association. 86 adults with asthma on inhaled corticosteroid therapy completed surveys regarding selected beliefs about asthma medications.