For Residents

Research offers insight during annual symposium

More than 500 residents, fellows and medical students shared original research on topics ranging from clinical to health policy during the ninth annual Research Symposium, organized by the AMA Resident and Fellow Section (RFS) and the AMA Medical Student Section. The event took place Nov. 11 in New Orleans prior to the Interim Meeting of the AMA House of Delegates.

A total of 220 residents and fellows participated in the symposium, which consisted of poster and oral competitions. Nisha Gupta, MD, a resident at Rochester, N.Y., General Hospital, is a new AMA member and one of the winners of the resident and fellow competition. "[The symposium was a] great opportunity to meet different people and also to hone my research and writing skills," said Dr. Gupta.

The overall winner of the resident and fellow poster competition was Yash Patel, MD. The AMA-RFS announced the following awards:

Poster competition, clinical vignette:

• First place—Nishit Patel, MD
• Second place—Nisha Gupta, MD
• Third place—Demetrios Paidoussis, MD
• Honorable mention—Shiv Kumar Agrawal, MD
• Honorable mention—Ricardo Correa, MD

Poster competition, clinical medicine:

• First place—Lokesh Shahani, MD
• Second place—Yun Xia, MD
• Third place—Saurabh Thakar, MD
• Honorable mention—Shaifali Sandal, MD
• Honorable mention—David Fleischman, MD

The overall winner of resident and fellow podium competition was Deepika Shah, MD. Honorable mention went to Rebecca Rawl, MD.

The slow-motion disaster of noncommunicable diseases

Representatives from 192 countries at a United Nations (UN) conference met for two days to discuss the impact of noncommunicable diseases on the world. It was a moment when international attention turned from the devastation wrought by well-known diseases such as AIDS and malaria to the quieter, though no less dangerous, threat of noncommunicable disease.

Although the diseases on which the meeting focused—cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, diabetes and cancer—may not ravage a society as quickly and visibly as uncontrolled infection, their death toll is real and increasing. In fact, of the 57 million people who died in 2008, 36 million died of noncommunicable diseases, which led World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan to conclude that this is "a slow-motion disaster" in a New England Journal of Medicine article. 

The authors note: "Many low-income countries have seen an ‘epidemiologic transition:' with fewer people dying at an early age from infectious causes, more are living long enough to bear the consequences of Westernizing trends such as tobacco use, an unhealthy diet and a sedentary lifestyle."

The AMA Healthier Life Steps™ program takes direct aim at such trends. The program makes it simple for physicians to help their patients identify small steps they can take to make lasting improvements to key lifestyle behaviors, such as poor diet, physical inactivity, tobacco use and excessive or risky alcohol consumption.

Find tips and resources for counseling your patients on living healthier, including a newly updated patient action plan for healthy eating. Available in English and Spanish, the action plan provides sample goals and steps, tips for success and additional resources.