From
Dr. Alexander Chiu
Health Equity Collaborative in ENT w/ Dr. Alexander Chiu & Dr. Romaine Johnson | ENT Podcast Ep. 98
With Dr. Alex Chiu & Dr. Romaine Johnson · hosted by Dr. Gopi Shaw
Educational content from recorded physician discussions — not medical advice. Talk to your (or your child's) care team about your situation.
Podcast
Ep. 98 Health Equity Collaborative in ENT with Dr. Alexander Chiu and Dr. Romaine Johnson
Alexander Chiu · 41 min · Published Jun 2026
Video
Understanding Health Equity Research w/ Kevin Sykes, PhD, MPH | BackTable ENT Podcast Ep. 152
Alexander Chiu · 61 min · Published Jun 2026
Podcast
Surgeon Diana Ponsky: Wrong Labels and Winning Despite Them with Linda Kreter
Dr. Diana Ponsky · 34 min · Published Jun 2026
Video
Surgeons and Social Media - with Diana Ponsky MD
Dr. Diana Ponsky · 48 min · Published Jun 2026
Only a few other public items share this expert — go deeper there →
Only a few other public items share this author — go deeper there →
What the experts said
Many published articles document disparities (e.g., Black children have more severe sleep apnea and higher revision rates) but few address interventions to reduce these disparities
Language barrier intervention at Children's Hospital Dallas reduced post-tonsillectomy emergency room visits and phone calls by improving communication of post-operative instructions to non-English speaking families
African American Black patients consent less to surgery for head and neck cancer and have poorer outcomes when case-controlled for tumor staging, based on data published in 2012
The Health Equity Collaborative was started in February 2022 with 6 institutions and has grown to approximately 20 academic programs
High-impact journals are reluctant to publish qualitative studies despite their scientific rigor and value
Mixed methodology research (combining qualitative interviews with objective metrics) was developed partly as a response to get qualitative work published in journals that prefer hard data
Qualitative research using structured interviews to develop themes is as scientifically rigorous as survey research, despite being dismissed as 'someone's opinion'
Caregiver research for diseases and conditions in otolaryngology is woefully understudied, yet understanding and addressing caregiver burden may have greater impact on child health than prescribed medications
Community-participatory research requires talking to patients to understand what they want from research and how it will impact them locally, rather than conducting research that may not be applicable to the population being studied
Initial attempts to build the collaborative by paying people for their time and providing elaborate meals fell flat; finding intrinsically motivated people proved more effective
The American Academy of Otolaryngology received a grant from GSK to fund a core award for the next 3 years looking at health disparities studies
The collaborative aims to have every subspecialty use it to gather data and impact their local subspecialty areas
Romaine Johnson is working with the REET registry (American Academy registry for mostly private practitioners) to extract data and create an equity scorecard to measure equitable care delivery
The collaborative has two main initial focuses: research and professional identity/recruitment of underrepresented minorities into otolaryngology
Orthopedic surgery's Nth Dimension program has been more successful than otolaryngology in recruiting people of color over the past 5 years
Otolaryngology has the least representation for underrepresented minorities among medical specialties
Patient non-compliance with medications or treatment recommendations may stem from distrust, barriers to obtaining medication, or inadequate explanation rather than forgetfulness or unwillingness
Public health departments, family practice, and population health departments at academic institutions are more developed in equity work than otolaryngology and can serve as local resources
The American Board of Otolaryngology is interested in questions of professionalism, judgment, and justice as part of continuing certification, recognizing that a strong sense of justice and fairness plays a role in being a good physician
Research shows that people who achieve elite status tend to become more interested in maintaining their elite status over time rather than maintaining their initial idealistic goals