Erica Spatz

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Erica Spatz
Born
Staten Island, New York, US
OccupationCardiologist
Known for
  • Nonprofit speciality healthcare
  • Heart attack research in low-income and other communities
  • Research in phenomena of "convenience" in medical care
Academic background
Education
Academic work
InstitutionsYale University School of Medicine

Erica S. Spatz is an American general cardiologist. She is an associate professor and clinical investigator at the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation at the Yale University School of Medicine.

Early life and education[edit]

Spatz was born and raised in New York where she attended Curtis High School in Staten Island. In her senior year of high school, she received a scholarship from the Posse Foundation to attend Vanderbilt University. She completed her Bachelor of Science degree with honors in human and organizational development from Vanderbilt in 1997 and enrolled at The Medical School for International Health of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev for her medical degree.[1] Spatz returned to North America following her medical degree and finished her residency at Montefiore Medical Center and fellowship at Yale New Haven Hospital, obtaining a Master of Health Science from Yale School of Medicine in 2010.[2]

Career[edit]

Following her residency, Spatz was referred to the National Clinician Scholars Program (NCSP) at Yale School of Medicine, run by Harlan Krumholz.[3] During her time with NCSP, Spatz co-founded Project Access-New Haven, a nonprofit community-based organization whose mission is to improve access to care for patients in New Haven.[1]

Spatz' research focuses on individual- and community-based strategies to prevent cardiovascular disease and advance health equity. Alongside Adam Beckman, she calculated hospitalization and mortality rates from heart attacks amongst Medicare patients from 1999 to 2013, comparing low-income with high-income communities. They demonstrated that while heart attacks declined during this period, the rates in low-income communities were persistently higher than high-income communities, concluding that low-income communities required targeted approaches to reduce incidents of heart attacks.[4] Continuing with this idea, she collaborated with the Eastern Caribbean Health Outcomes Research Network (ECHORN) Study to study hypertension patterns amongst Caribbean adults - a population experiencing high rates of hypertension, stroke, and heart disease.[5] They are assessing 24-hour blood pressure patterns and their relationship to stress, sleep quality, and physical activity, as well as their association with social determinants of health. In 2018, Spatz and Krumholz were co-recipients of a $1.2 million, four-year grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering to develop a wrist-worn, cuffless blood pressure monitoring system.[6] Spatz's research also focuses on patient engagement and shared decision making. In one study, she sought to understand why a significant number of people do not take their prescribed medication, even when doing so could add years to their life. Spatz's findings highlight the little-discussed phenomena of "convenience" in the context of medical care, finding that some people would be unwilling to take a pill or even drink a cup of tea on a daily basis if prescribed by a doctor, even if doing so could add years to their life. These findings catalyze the medical community to more deeply reckon with how "convenience," "inconvenience," and what is essentially a desire not be told what to do can be major forces at play in patient compliance.[7] In 2019, Spatz led the first study focusing on the effect motivation text messages had on providing additional support to Chinese patients with heart disease.[8] She also published a study sponsored by Women's Health Research at Yale which showed that a sex-specific classification system could define and group types of heart attacks that were more common for women.[9] During the COVID-19 pandemic in North America, Spatz's Project Access-New Haven helped launch a mHealth platform to assist low-income communities with accessing their health records and increase their participation in clinical studies.[10]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "Cardiologist reaches globally and locally, brings heart to Yale". possefoundation.org. Posse Foundation. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  2. ^ "Erica Spatz, MD, MHS". medicine.yale.edu. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  3. ^ Parry, Julie (November 26, 2019). "Meet Yale Internal Medicine: Erica Spatz, MD, MHS, Associate Professor (Cardiovascular Medicine)". medicine.yale.edu. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  4. ^ Peart, Karen N. (May 11, 2016). "Heart attacks trending down, but low-income communities still lagging behind". news.yale.edu. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  5. ^ Belli, Brita (October 17, 2019). "Study Explores Why Caribbean Adults Have Higher Hypertension Rates". medicine.yale.edu. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  6. ^ "Krumholz, Spatz receive funding to develop new 24/7 blood pressure monitor". news.yale.edu. November 27, 2018. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  7. ^ O'Riordan, Michael (April 9, 2018). "Pills or Even Tea More Palatable Than Exercise for the Treatment of Hypertension, US Adults Say". tctmd.com. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  8. ^ Teare, Kendall (April 8, 2019). "Text Messages Show Promise as Next Step for Improving Heart Health in China". medicine.yale.edu. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  9. ^ Harrison, Rick (May 1, 2019). "A better way to classify young women's heart attacks". news.yale.edu. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  10. ^ Wicklund, Eric (September 24, 2020). "Study Finds Underserved Communities Are Receptive to mHealth Tools". mhealthintelligence.com. Retrieved November 24, 2020.

External links[edit]

Erica Spatz publications indexed by Google Scholar

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