Seacoastonline.com – Mark McGovern, professor of psychiatry, will serve as keynote speaker at this year’s Erik Cogswell Memorial Conference to raise awareness about mental illness and provide people from diverse backgrounds with current resources and information. McGovern comments on the disparity in how treatment and recovery services are designed and delivered.

New Hampshire Union Leader – A new study by researchers at Geisel and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice finds that hospital care for children with complex medical issues varies throughout New England. Co-authors Shawn Ralston, associate professor of pediatrics, David Goodman, professor of pediatrics, and Wade Harrison, manager of special projects at TDI, hope that the study will shed light on how medical decisions are made to improve medical outcomes.

VPR – Quotes Shawn Ralston, associate professor of pediatrics, who is the co-author of a recent study which found that children with complex medical needs get different treatment depending on where in Northern New England they receive care. “This is a different patient population and there should be some variation in there. But there shouldn’t be variation at the level we are seeing,” says Ralston.

NHPR – Quotes Gilbert Fanciullo, professor of anesthesiology and and director of pain management at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, about how providers are increasingly aware of the risks of opioids, but that many patients demand them. “Patients are coming into our offices and saying, ‘I’ve tried everything, I still have this pain and I want it treated,'” Fanciullo says. “And it’s very hard for some doctors to tell the patient, ‘No.'” Fanciullo also comments on data from the state of New Hampshire, which found that the strength and number of opioids prescribed to some Medicaid patients who use multiple providers varied greatly from one pharmacy visit to the next. “There is no question that it is poor care, and there is no question that it is dangerous,” says Fanciullo.

Healio – Cites comments by Kathleen Bickel, assistant professor of medicine, on a recent study she conducted with fellow researchers to define what constitutes as high-quality primary palliative care delivered by medical oncology practices. “The small workforce of palliative care specialists are insufficient to meet the needs of all patients with cancer in the U.S. who might benefit from these services,” says Bickel.

Medical XPress – Cites a recent study conducted by Shawn Ralston, associate professor of pediatrics; David Goodman, professor of pediatrics, community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice; Wade Harrison, Geisel ’16, researcher at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice; and Jared Wasserman, Analytic Project Manager at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. The study examines the population of children with medical complexity in three states—Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, and found significant differences across the hospitals providing care in inpatient days, outpatient visits, emergency room visits and diagnostic tests.

Mother Jones – Cites comments from an opinion piece written in 2013 by H. Gilbert Welch, professor of medicine, community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, in an article about how breast cancer is not one disease—it’s many, and different types can behave in a variety of ways.

The Motley Fool – Cites research by Benjamin Crosier, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychiatry, in article about how Facebook’s restrictions on its user data is affecting academia. Crosier is researching links between social-media activity and problems such as drug addiction. Crosier, who had hoped to build an app, was denied access to the Facebook data he was using earlier this year and is now petitioning the social network, hoping he can resume his efforts.

Fierce Medical Devices – Quotes Lisa Schwartz, professor of medicine, community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical practice, about Apple’s ResearchKit platform, and expresses skepticism towards using the platform for research, as it relies on patient-reported information rather than facts to fuel clinical trials. “Just collecting lots of information about people—who may or may not have a particular disease, and may or may not represent the typical patient—could just add noise and distraction,” says Schwartz. “Bias times a million is still bias.”

MSN via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – Continued coverage of a recent study conducted by researchers from Dartmouth, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Oregon which found that teenagers who try vaping or e-cigarettes are more likely to turn to traditional cigarettes for their nicotine fix and become addicted smokers.