What’s particularly striking about the findings is that the “data set in question is one that reflects the ideal care model,” said Dr. Clyde Yancy, chief of cardiology at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. “And after controlling for as many things as you can there is still this nagging difference that unfortunately tracks to the race of the patient.” The new research means that all of us “finally have to acknowledge the perverse influence of subconscious bias,” said Yancy. “We should be aware of this and institute strategies that allow us to acknowledge this is operative in decision making and see ways to overcome it.”

“Since secondhand smoke has been found to negatively affect the functioning of blood vessels, our results suggest that smoke-free policies help to protect non-smokers from these effects,” said study leader Stephanie Mayne of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in email to Reuters Health. It’s not clear why the smoking bans were not linked to reductions in diastolic blood pressure or the risk of developing high blood pressure, said Mayne, who did the study while at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Dr. Larry Kociolek welcomed the new articles. “I think they are largely a call for heightened action,” said Kociolek, associate medical director of infection prevention and control at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “There’s nothing we’ve seen to suggest this is going away. And because of the profound (complications) associated with this diagnosis, we do need to escalate our public health response.” The biggest challenge right now is pinpointing the cause of AFM, Kociolek said. “Unlike polio where it was found to be caused by one particular virus, many children have not had either clinical or microbiologic evidence of infection and the vast majority have not had any virus identified in their cerebrospinal fluid.”

Northwestern Medicine, search firm Heidrick & Struggles, nonprofit Women’s Business Development Center, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and architecture firm Skidmore Owings & Merrill were among the 12 firms that hired interns last summer. The architecture firm’s two interns, both of whom were about to start college, worked in its sustainable engineering studio, where they learned CAD drawing and researched new technology, says Ali Irani, a sustainable engineer at the firm. “They were extremely helpful,” Irani says, particularly with research projects. Irani says it was good to work with younger students—the firm’s typical interns are further along in their college careers—and that the program will help build a pipeline of diverse employees.

While more people used telemedicine in states with laws requiring insurance coverage for these visits, the study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how state laws might directly impact adoption of telemedicine. It’s also possible that the study underestimated how many people used telemedicine for care because it only counted visits covered by insurance, said Dr. Jeffrey Linder, a researcher at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago who wasn’t involved in the study.

Even so, the findings confirm what’s been seen in many previous studies examining patient satisfaction and outcomes from surgery as well as from other types of treatment, said Dr. Karl Bilimoria, vice president for quality at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. “Patient experience is not a reflection of patient complications or other typical measures of healthcare quality,” Bilimoria, who wasn’t involved in the current study, said by email.