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Reposted by Audrey D. Zhang

AcademyHealth @academyhealth.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

AHRQ grant cancellations are no longer theoretical, they're happening. We've heard from many researchers and institutions affected by notices ending continuation funding for ongoing projects. Read what we know so far, why these cancellations matter, and how we're responding.

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AHRQ Has Begun Canceling Research Grants. Here's What We Know.

Researchers across the country have begun receiving official notices from AHRQ informing them that continuation funding for their grants will not be awarded.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Looking forward to sharing our work on how telemedicine waiver expiration could contribute to increased burden of in-person care in older adults, recently published in @jamanetworkopen.com: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Screenshot of slide titled "Telemedicine Reimbursement Changes and Health Care Contact Days for Older Adults"

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Great to present our work on the potential impact of telemedicine waiver expiration on increasing in-person burden of care for older adults in traditional Medicare at #SGIM26!

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

As telemedicine policy continues to evolve, and these waivers come up for renewal again in 2027, these findings highlight the importance of considering patient burden as part of telemedicine policy decisions.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

The added burden would fall disproportionately on older adults with multiple chronic conditions and those who have difficulty getting places - groups that may already face barriers to getting care.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Assuming all affected telemedicine services were replaced by in-person care, we found that about 75% of older adults using telemedicine would require additional in-person days for medical care - more than 300 additional in-person contact days per 1,000 older adults.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Many telemedicine services in Medicare still depend on temporary waivers, which Congress must renew every year. We wanted to understand what telemedicine waiver expiration could mean for patients' burden of care.

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Reposted by Audrey D. Zhang

Kara Gavin @karagavin.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Attention all who have ever received AHRQ funding to fuel #healthcare research: You have 6 days left to submit expert testimony to the House Appropriations Committee as they consider the agency's future funding. @academyhealth.bsky.social has tips: ahsituationreport.substack.com/p/academyhea...

ahsituationreport.substack.com

AcademyHealth Action Resource: Submit Testimony to Congress on AHRQ Funding

Our new resource offers tips and best practices to help you contact lawmakers and advocate for a fully-funded AHRQ.

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Reposted by Audrey D. Zhang

Miranda Yaver @mirandayaver.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

My book Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality is out on 4/23! It’s available through @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org and Amazon, Strand, Powell’s, etc. Out in less than 3 weeks, it combines survey & interview research to explain health ins barriers. www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

cambridge.org

Coverage Denied

Cambridge Core - Epidemiology Public Health and Medical Statistics - Coverage Denied

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

The conversation around patients’ treatment burden is sometimes framed around reducing the amount of health care - fewer visits, fewer meds. But it may not just be the amount of health care so much as the system that surrounds that care that contributes significantly to the experience of burden.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Increasing numbers of chronic conditions, depression, and sensory, functional, and mobility impairments were all associated with greater perceived burden of health care, suggesting opportunities to improve patient capacity as a means of reducing overall burden.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

We found that administrative and financial burden were the most commonly cited sources of burden for older adults - more so than doctors’ visits or medications.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

This survey within the Health and Retirement Study focused on patients’ self-reported experience of burden. There was a wide range of treatment burden levels, but almost 90% of older adults reported at least some treatment burden, with 5% reporting levels previously described as “unsustainable”.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Patients' perceived treatment burden is important not only because it reduces quality of life (esp. important in folks with serious illness and/or limited life expectancy), but also because it impacts adherence and potential future health care engagement and outcomes.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

🚨 New paper: As a PCP, I often hear from patients that managing their health care feels like a full-time job. To understand this better, we analyzed the first nationally-representative US survey of older adults’ self-reported treatment burden: agsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

agsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Treatment Burden Among Older Adults in the United States, 2022

Background Treatment burden refers to the patient-perceived effort of managing health and health care, which impacts quality of life and engagement in care. International studies of treatment burden...

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

ICYMI, out in print this week. While we framed this Viewpoint with optimism, it can conversely be said that eroding health survey infrastructure means we’re flying a little more blind each day on priorities like chronic disease, maternal health, and substance use: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

jamanetwork.com

Enhancing Health Survey Infrastructure for Chronic Disease

This Viewpoint discusses an opportunity to promote safeguarding, expanding, and modernizing the national health survey infrastructure as a crucial part of a comprehensive approach to address chronic d...

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Reposted by Audrey D. Zhang

Ezra Golberstein @egolberstein.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

NSDUH is one of the only ways we can track trends in substance use in the US. NSDUH is one of the only ways we can track adolescent mental health problems in the US. We cannot afford to fly blind on these critical issues.

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Reposted by Audrey D. Zhang

Ezra Golberstein @egolberstein.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

One big thing that AHRQ does is run the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey. This may sound like a trivial thing if you are outside the field. But the Congressional Budget Office relies on this information when modeling health policy changes. That is a huge deal.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Many more pieces like this could be written to show the impact of sustained federal investment in US biomedical research. This one has a great table highlighting the role of NIH funding in some of our greatest gains against chronic disease in the past 80 years. www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10....

Table: Ten key advances in CVD and stroke research funded by the NIH. Advances: Framiningham Heart Study, tPA treatment for ischemic stroke, statin therapy for CVD prevention, CRT for heart failure, RCTs for blood pressure management, improving care of children with heart conditions, developing and evaluating stents for treating coronary artery disease, gene editing for CVD, lifestyle interventions to reduce CVD risk, precision medicine

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Reposted by Audrey D. Zhang

Library Innovation Lab @harvardlil.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

We just launched a 16TB archive of every dataset that has been available on data.gov since November. This will be updated day by day as new datasets appear. It can be freely copied, and we're sharing the code behind it to help others make their own archives of data they depend on.

lil.law.harvard.edu

Announcing the Data.gov Archive | Library Innovation Lab

Today we released our archive of data.gov on Source Cooperative. The 16TB collection includes over 311,000 datasets harvested during 2024 and 2025, a complet...

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

I've caught myself thinking some version of this meme now when I hear folks describing their studies as target trial emulations.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

The intensity and seriousness of cancer care has prompted attention to the wide-ranging impact of "time toxicity" of care on patients and caregivers. We would benefit from improved understanding of such burdens and their tradeoffs in other areas as well: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

jamanetwork.com

Patient, Caregiver, and Clinician Perspectives on Time Burdens of Cancer Care

This qualitative analysis explores time-consuming aspects of cancer care that were perceived as burdensome, identifies the individuals most affected by the time burdens of cancer care, and evaluates t...

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

"If someone had asked us in the summer of 2021 what we most needed to facilitate Mom’s healing and well-being, our wish list would have been modest." So often our health care system fails to live up to its name of providing care: www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10....

healthaffairs.org

The Idea Of A Good Daughter | Health Affairs Journal

A public health professor and her mother failed to receive long-term care support from the health care system when they needed it most.

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Reposted by Audrey D. Zhang

Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 27/12/2023

Want to see if your research has had an impact on public policy? Enter your info in SagePolicyProfiles to see the citations of your own publications in policy documents. You get a profile page. Here is mine as an example: policyprofiles.sagepub.com/profile/5920...

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Reposted by Audrey D. Zhang

Michael L. Barnett @mlbarnett.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

I didn't know any of this policy story - worth the read. TL;DR 1980s regulatory changes enabled monopsony behavior by big chains, basically destroying the small local grocer.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

For something short, quiet, and contemplative, I enjoyed A Month In the Country (JL Carr), Held (Anne Michaels), and Orbital (Samantha Harvey). For something long, fast-paced, and plot-driven, I second the recommendation for The Bee Sting (Paul Murray)!

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Reposted by Audrey D. Zhang

John Graves @johngraves.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

As the baby boom generation enters its prime years for long-term care needs, its difficult to come up with a more challenging backdrop than an immigration system about to be cut off at its knees (think: nursing home aides) and states having to fill in funding gaps from Medicaid spending shortfalls.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

A lot to think about in this review from a research perspective - what are the essential components of the underlying concept of "decision fatigue"? How do we operationalize that definition? How does this concept apply not only to clinicians, but to patients and caregivers?

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 27/10/2023

#NewLitHighlights #HealthPolicy Nurse practitioners and physician assistants are now responsible for over a quarter of outpatient visits in traditional Medicare - still a lot of room to understand how to optimize their role in clinical care: www.bmj.com/content/382/...

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 24/10/2023

Reading the replies has been fascinating - it looks like there's a want for expectation-setting from first/senior authors what is needed from middle authors ("we think this is close to ready" vs "we welcome your feedback on x, y, and z specifically"). Not something I'd thought a lot of before!

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 19/10/2023

I assume the draft is close to done and try not to line-edit. Exceptions include if there are critical omissions in the analysis, wording that is ambiguous or could mislead the reviewers, or we're way over word limit - but even then, usually framed as suggestions in comments.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 12/10/2023

Fiction - The Bee Sting (Paul Murray). Multiple-perspective tragicomic family saga. An object-level summary really doesn't do the book justice - my favorite by far for the year. Non-Fiction - Endurance (Alfred Lansing). Great writing, an Antarctic adventure that's all the better knowing it's true.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 11/10/2023

Great advice on making the most of the shifts between clinical and research time as a clinician-investigator, applicable to folks at multiple levels. Wish I'd seen some of these tips before learning them the hard way! (via @BryantShuey) jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

jamanetwork.com

Preparing to Attend on the Inpatient Medical Wards

Transitions are a way of life in academic medicine. While much has been written about these changes, less attention has been devoted to a more common shift: the

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Reposted by Audrey D. Zhang

Loren Adler @lorenadler.bsky.social · 06/10/2023

If you've got any research (even in the pipeline) that might help better understand the effects of anti-obesity medications on health care and other federal spending, CBO wants to see it: www.cbo.gov/publication/...

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 06/10/2023

I've turned down requests to review when I don't think I can meet the stated deadlines (usually 2 weeks), but I could work with a longer time frame (like 4 weeks). But there's usually no option to communicate this upfront! As an editor, do you prefer that I just accept the request or decline it?

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 06/10/2023

Not so many people here discussing #FDAPolicy #RxPolicy yet, but this one will be one to follow - for the first time, FDA exercises its FDORA power to expedite withdrawal of drugs initially approved via accelerated approval: www.bloomberg.com/news/article... #HealthPolicy

bloomberg.com

FDA Tests New Power to Pull Some Fast-Tracked Drugs Off Market

Its first target is a cancer treatment from Oncopeptides given accelerated approval in 2021, which has since faced a study questioning its effectiveness.

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Reposted by Audrey D. Zhang

Adrianna McIntyre @adrianna.bsky.social · 26/09/2023

PSA: deck.blue is basically a clone of Tweetdeck for BlueSky—it even lets you curate personal lists, independent of feeds If you haven't used any bsky apps before, you need to create an "app password" (under Settings > Advanced) to log in

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 03/10/2023

This looks like it will be an excellent opportunity to better understand how a wide and diverse range of people contribute to dementia care and its associated outcomes - I'll be looking forward to getting my hands in the data.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 01/10/2023

#HiSciSky! I'm an #PrimaryCare physician and health services researcher studying prescribing and medication use to improve quality of care for older adults. Interests include #GIM #Geriatrics #Deprescribing #RxEpi #HealthPolicy #RxPolicy. Looking forward to connecting with friends old and new!

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Reposted by Audrey D. Zhang

Aaron Schwartz @aschwartz.bsky.social · 21/09/2023

Any time you are tempted to dismiss descriptive research as unimportant, keep in mind: a medical diagnosis is a description. "You have lymphoma" seems like an important thing to know, right? Describing our world is important.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 27/09/2023

I compiled a database of all the Choosing Wisely guidelines that I could send you if you're interested, but it's only categorized by specialty organization and not specialty itself. You can email me at my username @ Gmail if interested.

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 01/11/2022

Great to see our recent study covered in ⁦@statnews⁩ by @TaraBannow⁩ - we found over 1/3 of both physicians and APCs received industry payments in 2021: www.statnews.com/2022/10/31/advance…

statnews.com

Advanced practice clinicians slightly more likely to take...

A slightly higher share of advanced practice clinicians t...

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 31/10/2022

This is only the first step in understanding how this source of industry payments affects medical care at large - building on foundational work from @jsross119 @TheWonkologist @DKorenstein and others!

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 31/10/2022

Our findings shed additional light on a previously under-explored channel of industry influence in medical care, adding to work from @QuinnGrundy and Lisa Bero in Australia: jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaintern…

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Audrey D. Zhang @audreydzhang.bsky.social · 31/10/2022

The most common type of payment for both physicians and APCs was for food/beverage. Overall, APCs were more likely to receive payments for food/beverage and physicians more likely to receive payments of every other type (e.g. consulting, commercial interests).

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