Tulane awarded $2.5 million to study if removing copayments improves diabetes outcomes

Sylvester Tumusiime • October 16, 2020

The rising cost of medication in the United States can be a challenge for many patients with Type 2 diabetes. High out-of-pocket expenses can cause some to forgo treatment, leading to disease complications, hospitalizations and even death. 


The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) awarded a $2.5 million grant to Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine to work with community partners to determine if a value-based benefit approach using zero-cost copayments on drugs can improve medication adherence and outcomes for diabetes patients. 


“Medication treatment non-adherence is prevalent and costly in diabetes management where cost-related non-adherence with medication therapies has to be addressed as part of the social determinants of health,” said Dr. Lizheng Shi, interim chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Tulane and principal investigator for the study.


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Louisiana Public Health Institute and University of California San Francisco Receive Nearly $5 Million for COVID-19 Research and Analysis

By Sylvester Tumusiime • January 4, 2021
The Louisiana Public Health Institute (LPHI) and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) have launched a patient-driven study to analyze how COVID-19-related policies affect individuals and the spread of the disease. The study is made possible through a funding award of $4,979,798 from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). The two-year collaborative project consists of two data collection efforts. The first occurs through the COVID-19 Citizen Science mobile app-based study developed by Mark Pletcher, MD, MPH, Jeff Olgin, MD, and Gregory Marcus, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco. The mobile app delivers short daily and weekly surveys to gain insight into respondents’ physical and mental health, behaviors, and experience with local policies related to slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus. Read Complete Article

Will telehealth impact diabetes care for Medicare patients?

October 2, 2020
How do you care for a chronic disease when visiting a doctor in person could be risky or not an option at all due to the COVID-19 pandemic? That’s a concern for many people living with diabetes now. Researchers at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, the Louisiana Public Health Institute (LPHI), Ochsner Health System and Pennington Biomedical Research Center are studying how telehealth practices are being adopted and implemented during the pandemic for patients with diabetes on Medicare. The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) awarded the team $421,629 as an enhancement to an existing grant awarded in 2016. That grant was designed as a series of natural experiments to evaluate targeted health policies to prevent diabetes and its complications. Louisiana has among the of highest prevalence diabetes, hypertension and other chronic conditions in the U.S. These same conditions increase patients’ risk for severe COVID-19 illness and death. Read Full Article