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Benzodiazepines are commonly used to treat anxiety and panic disorders. White patients are more likely to receive a benzodiazepine prescription than non-White patients in different medical settings. Racial-ethnic disparities have also been found in prescription of opioids from the emergency room. It is not known whether racial disparities in benzodiazepine prescriptions exist at the emergency department level. This study aims to analyze the relationship between benzodiazepine prescriptions for anxiety in an emergency department setting.Data for this cross-sectional study was obtained from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) Years 2009-2018. Patients ≥ 18 years of age presenting to the emergency department with anxiety were identified. Adjusted survey logistic regression was conducted to evaluate the patient characteristics and receipt of benzodiazepines.This study analyzed 1,174,556,119 emergency department (ED) visits out of which 2.8% had a diagnosis of anxiety disorder. Prevalence of anxiety was higher in the following groups: females, younger age range (18-34 years old), and non-Hispanic (NH) White. Rates of benzodiazepine prescription for patients with anxiety were higher for NH-White and Hispanic patients at 29% and 28% respectively than for NH-Black and NH-Other (24% and 21% respectively). Compared to NH-White patients, NH-Black patients were 36% less likely to be prescribed a benzodiazepine (prevalence ratio (PR) = 0.64; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.54-0.76) and Hispanic patients were 19% less likely to be prescribed a benzodiazepine (PR = 0.81; 95% CI = 0.68-0.96). Age, sex, or type of insurance did not show a statistically significant influence in the prescription of benzodiazepines.These findings reveal that NH-Black and Hispanic patients with anxiety are significantly less likely to be prescribed benzodiazepines than their NH-White counterparts in the ED. Further studies are needed to determine the root causes of these health disparities and strategies to combat them.

Advancing Health Equity Through Innovations and Technology This year’s summit was unique given the COVID-19 pandemic: a major global outbreak that has imposed severe restrictions in all aspects of our life. At the outset, we were faced with three mutually exclusive options. First option was to cancel the summit in its entirety: this was the easiest and most obvious choice once the COVID-19 pandemic forced a near total lockdown all over the country with unprecedented disruptions of normal daily activities as the disease announced its thunderous touchdown on United States (US) soil. It was also the most-logical response faced with uncertainty regarding summit logistics and expected poor attendance due to the raging pandemic. Second option was to conduct a digital summit restricted to local audiences at Baylor College of Medicine: this option entailed implementing a virtual summit with attendance restricted to participants from our institution only. It sounded like a reasonable choice but that would impede the presence of diversity of topics, perspectives, insights and experiential learning opportunities, which are what render the summit exciting and worth attending. And finally, the last option was to conduct a digital unrestricted summit open to all interested audiences throughout the US. The conduct of a virtual summit open to all participants from around the country was initially considered daunting given the likelihood of amplified technical problems associated with an array of internet access differentials around the country, which would require a strong Information Technology (IT) presence throughout the sessions. Nonetheless, the attractiveness of going national with a virtual summit, despite the pandemic and logistical challenges, slowly gained converts and became the dominant choice. The response and level of participation in this first virtual summit showed an unanticipated surge despite the increase in registration fees to cover IT costs. This year, we had attendees from all regions of the US as well as from the United Kingdom. The range of topics was quite diverse encompassing health disparities in relation to cancers, nutrition, musculo-skeletal disorders, amputation rates, vaccination uptakes and COVID-19 infections. Various solutions were passionately presented to address these disparities including novel health technologies, community engagement and partnerships, improvement in health literacy and alternative therapeutics. There were no hitches despite the complex breakout sessions, and above all, attendees were satisfied and offered outstanding evaluation scores. This was definitely a summit that metamorphosed from pessimism to a triumphant success! Copyright © 2020 Salihu et al. Published by Global Health and Education Projects, Inc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in this journal, is properly cited.

The goal of this investigation is to compare rates of admission from the emergency department (ED) and the characteristics of patients with intellectual disability (ID) who get admitted from the ED. This was a retrospective study using data from the United States' Nationwide Emergency Data Sample (NEDS) to investigate the associations between the diagnosis of ID and admission to the hospital in patients ≥ 18 years during the years 2016–2017. Adults with ID were almost four times as likely to be admitted to the hospital from the ED as patients who were not identified as having ID. Identifying the major contributors to increased admission for patients with ID may help improve their care.