{"id":68243,"date":"2019-03-15T10:31:33","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T14:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=68243"},"modified":"2019-03-15T10:31:33","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T14:31:33","slug":"students-win-national-award-for-eliminating-transportation-barriers-for-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2019\/03\/15\/students-win-national-award-for-eliminating-transportation-barriers-for-patients\/","title":{"rendered":"Students Win National Award for Eliminating Transportation Barriers for Patients"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_68244\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-68244\" style=\"width: 319px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/camed\/files\/2019\/03\/Justin-Siu_Simone-Vais.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"309\" height=\"197\" class=\"wp-image-68244 size-full\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-68244\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Justin Siu and Simone Vais<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Two medical students from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have received the Lancet Global Health Award for Best Student Poster for their presentation, \u201cUber Health: A Novel Method of Eliminating Transportation Barriers To Care Among Urban OBGYN Refugee Women.\u201d The award was presented at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health.<\/p>\n<p>Simone Vais, a third-year student and Justin Siu, a second-year student, began this work as part of a summer research project. It focuses on overcoming transportation barriers to health-care access at Boston Medical Center&#8217;s (BMC) Refugee Women&#8217;s Health Clinic (RWHC).<\/p>\n<p>Lack of transportation has been shown to be a major barrier to health-care access nationwide. It disproportionately impacts patients of lower socioeconomic status. This barrier is particularly\u00a0burdensome for patients\u00a0at the RWHC,\u00a0many of whom report\u00a0lack of familiarity with the public transportation system,\u00a0triggers to past trauma\u00a0in encountering large crowds on buses and trains, and who tend to live in clustered communities that are not well linked to the Boston public transit grid.<\/p>\n<p>The pilot project offers roundtrip rides to clinic for patients who\u00a0report experiencing transportation insecurity,\u00a0using Uber Health &#8212; a health care branch of the Uber platform that enables providers to\u00a0schedule and pay for rides\u00a0on behalf of\u00a0their patients.<\/p>\n<p>After nine months, the students found their project decreases patient no-show rates, improves patient satisfaction and\u00a0has led to\u00a0significant cost savings. The students now are working on securing additional funding to extend the pilot to continue to provide this service to patients.<\/p>\n<p>Ms. Vais is interested in health care quality improvement, with a\u00a0focus on improving access to care for underserved populations. She is\u00a0working on expanding the use of Uber Health to combat transportation insecurity beyond the RWHC, through new pilot studies at BMC&#8217;s Pediatric Sickle Cell Clinic and General Pediatrics department.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Siu holds a master\u2019s degree in global medicine management from University of Southern California and is interested in integrating his knowledge in clinical management with a career in global medicine. He has traveled to Thailand, Panama and Tijuana for various clinical projects and co-led the Global Health Equity Program elective course at BUSM last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Justin Siu and Simone Vais received the Lancet Global Health Award for Best Student Poster for their presentation, \u201cUber Health: A Novel Method of Eliminating Transportation Barriers To Care Among Urban OBGYN Refugee Women.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12772,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[89,91,123],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68243"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12772"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68243"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68246,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68243\/revisions\/68246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}