Chronic Conditions

Dr. Heather Johnson was recently invited to participate in the Wisconsin Hypertension Symposium, which brought together clinical providers, policy makers, health insurers, and state and national organizations such as the American Medical Association and the American Heart Association to develop action plans to improve hypertension diagnosis and control in Wisconsin. Dr. Johnson's research showing that young adults are less likely to be diagnosed and treated for hypertension was referenced during the symposium to demonstrate disparities in hypertension care between populations in Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality released the Rural Wisconsin Chronic Disease Toolkit, and updated the Toolkit for Improving Hypertension Care & Outcomes and the Toolkit for Improving Diabetes Care & Outcomes.

Individuals in Wisconsin can now view the prevalence of obesity at the Zip Code level.

Dr. Elizabeth Cox and collaborators have been awarded UW2020 funding to build a translational research pipeline to personalize diabetes prevention and treatment. The project will establish a data registry and biobank of individuals with diabetes, called the Diabetes Research Accelerator for Wisconsin (DRAW), as a step towards delivering personalized diabetes care and facilitating interdisciplinary translational diabetes research at UW-Madison.

Dr. Heather Johnson recently served as the keynote speaker at the 7th Annual National Wear Red Day event at Fountain of Life Church. The goal of the event was to educate African American on the risk factors for cardiovascular disease and lifestyle changes that women can make to reduce their risk. Wear Red Day also included networking and fellowship opportunities. The event was one of many across the nation for American Heart Month, "Go Red for Women."  Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death among American women over the age of 25, and African American women are disproportionately affected. 

In a recent study by Dr. Andrew Quanbeck et al., coaching primary care doctors on opioid prescribing guidelines resulted in a 11% drop in opioid doses at UW Health clinics. Conversely, doses increased by 8% at other clinics in the health system where the coaching program was not implemented. The results from the study come at a crucial time as the opioid abuse epidemic continues in the state and nationwide. 

1 in 3 women will unfortunately die from heart disease. In a recent video on Discover Wisconsin, Dr. Heather Johnson discusses signs and symptoms of heart disease, as well as tips for living a heart-healthy lifestyle that can reduce your chances of heart problems. View the video below or on the Discover Wisconsin site here.

Elizabeth Cox, MD, PhD was recently awarded a 3-year Innovative Translational Science Award from the American Diabetes Association for her project, “Identifying Actionable Self-Management Barriers for Adults with Type 1 Diabetes.” Building upon her prior work developing PRISM (Problem Recognition in Illness Self-Management), a 10-minute survey to identify diabetes self-management barriers among youth, the newly funded research will develop and validate a version of PRISM to assess diabetes self-management barriers among adults.

We're excited to welcome Edmond Ramly, PhD as a new faculty member at HIP! Edmond is a health systems engineer and new Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. His work focuses on designing best practices for ambulatory care that balance standardization and local adaptations. Recently, he has worked closely with Dr. Christie Bartels to implement work system redeisgn for hypertension protocols.