BY ADAM ATKINSON

North Country This Week

POTSDAM — A Potsdam paramedic and biomedical engineering professor has started a locally produced and focused medical review magazine. The publication focuses on health care in the North Country.

Founding editor Brent Faber, with co-editors Alison Coates and Jessica Shumway, have recently produced their second volume of the Northern New York Medical Review.

NNYMR contains articles from local healthcare professionals on topics like the link between breast cancer and hypertension, COVID-19 and emergency medical services, hospital admissions for GI conditions among other things, all with a local focus and local research.

The Review was established as a way to help build connections among clinicians and host conversations about research in medicine and healthcare in Northern New York, Faber said. He said the idea to produce the Review came from a 2019 workshop he attended in New York City where he learned that competing hospitals shared information and other data through a locally produced medical journal.

“Our infrastructure remains largely disparate and competitive and our geography almost forces a sense of isolation. But between and among our hospitals, clinics, and home-grown rescue squads are dedicated clinicians at all levels -- public health advocates, researchers, EMTs, students, and patients who are working to improve healthcare, better understand the health-related challenges that we face, and build our knowledge about what it is to practice rural medicine in Northern New York,” Faber said.

The editorial team of NNYMR brings a diverse range of backgrounds to the publication.   

Faber, a paramedic with Potsdam Volunteer Rescue Squad who worked for a few years in process improvement at Canton-Potsdam Hospital, currently works in the Biomedical Engineering Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute teaching science writing, medical writing, epidemiology, and the societal dynamics of medicine. He returns to Potsdam every other weekend and most holidays to run 911 calls with PVRS.

Co-editor Alison Coates teaches in the Physician Assistant program at Clarkson and specializes in rural health research. She is a Rural Health Fellow with the National Rural Health Association and a member of the Board of Directors, New York State Association for Rural Health.

Co-editor Jessica Shumway is a Physician Assistant in Saranac Lake and a longtime advocate of rural medicine across Northern New York.

“My role as an editor is to recruit writers from across the medical community to share their insights, research, and knowledge. I think we've been successful in our first two issues. Issue number one was research heavy with reports about breast cancer, Parkinson's disease, and infectious disease. But we also led with an editorial by Dr. Eyal Kedar who was an early supporter of the project,” Faber said.

“Issue number two was more diverse as we recruited people from physicians, to medics, to family members to write about their experiences during the pandemic. We also included never before published research into gastro-intestinal conditions in St. Lawrence County,” he said.

Faber said there is a lot of interest in health in NNY but very little data, and even less data that gets published.

“We also have dedicated clinicians working day-by-day who have important stories to tell and expertise to share. We want to publish well-researched data about health in NNY and also provide a forum for clinicians from across NNY to share their stories, concerns, and insights,” Faber said.

Faber said NNYMR is working to publish basic data about diseases and conditions in NNY.

“This is data that has never before been gathered and put together about NNY populations. Alongside the research we want to publish accounts by NNY clinicians - doctors, EMTs, nurses, NPs, PAs, and others who work with patients. These are more personal and they offer knowledge, insight, and experience about what it is like to practice medicine in NNY,” he said.

Feedback on the publication has been excellent so far, and reviews from researchers have been supportive, Faber said.  

“We hope that as we continue to publish relevant and interesting work the publication will grow organically. But it will take some time to become better known and for people to see us as a place to publish their work. We understand that. We need to reach out to local writers and work to build our reputation and readership. Some of our work would be great for case studies in local health courses for example and we need to reach out to instructors and let them know that this research is available for them,” Faber said.

The editorial team is already planning the next issue with a focus on sports medicine in Northern New York to coincide with the 2022 Lake Placid Ironman.

“The Lake Placid Ironman has produced research and knowledge about sports medicine that has influenced endurance sports around the world — and it was discovered and pioneered right here in NNY. There are terrific stories here that we are eager to tell,” the editor said.

To read articles from the publication, learn more about the contributing writers, and the editorial team visit www.nnymedicalreview.org/ .