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Mina Ruth Silberberg

Professor in Family Medicine and Community Health
Family Medicine and Community Health, Community Health
Duke Box 104652, Durham, NC 27710
200 Morris Street, Suite 3100, Durham, NC 27701

Selected Publications


Routine Hearing Screening for Older Adults in Primary Care: Insights of Patients and Clinic Personnel.

Journal Article Gerontologist · October 1, 2024 BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Hearing loss frequently goes undiagnosed and untreated, with serious sequelae. Hearing screening facilitates diagnosis and treatment but is not routinely conducted in primary care. This study addresses the attitudes and insights ... Full text Link to item Cite

Using Medicaid to Fund and Shape Tenancy Support Services: Key Considerations From Research in North Carolina and Louisiana

Journal Article Housing Policy Debate · January 1, 2024 Medicaid is expanding funding for tenancy support services (TSS) that help people who have experienced homelessness or lived in institutional settings obtain and maintain housing. To identify critical considerations for Medicaid TSS regulations, we compare ... Full text Cite

Promising practices for providing effective tenancy support services: a qualitative case study situated in the southeastern United States

Journal Article Housing Studies · January 1, 2024 Tenancy support services (TSS) allow homeless or institutionalized people with disabilities to obtain and maintain housing in community settings. In the United States, Medicaid is expanding to include coverage for these services. We conducted a comparison ... Full text Cite

A Pragmatic Clinical Trial of Hearing Screening in Primary Care Clinics: Effect of Setting and Provider Encouragement.

Journal Article Ear Hear · January 2024 OBJECTIVES: The prevalence of hearing loss increases with age. Untreated hearing loss is associated with poorer communication abilities and negative health consequences, such as increased risk of dementia, increased odds of falling, and depression. Nonethe ... Full text Link to item Cite

SEED: A novel web-based data visualization platform to visualize, communicate, and explore social, environmental, and equity drivers of health.

Journal Article Journal of clinical and translational science · January 2024 Multisector stakeholders, including, community-based organizations, health systems, researchers, policymakers, and commerce, increasingly seek to address health inequities that persist due to structural racism. They require accessible tools to visualize an ... Full text Cite

Organizational trust, usability, and inclusivity are key implementation facilitators for a proposed assets-based mobile health intervention.

Journal Article Transl Behav Med · July 1, 2023 Assets-based interventions can address child health disparities by connecting families to existing community resources. Community collaboration when designing interventions may identify barriers and facilitators to implementation. The objective of this stu ... Full text Link to item Cite

Research translation: A pathway for health inequity.

Journal Article Clin Transl Sci · February 2023 In a context of social inequity, research translation naturally furthers health inequity. As Fundamental Cause Theory (FCT) explains-and an associated empirical literature illustrates-those with more resources benefit earlier and more from scientific innov ... Full text Link to item Cite

A Community-engaged Approach to Research Translation: The CIPHERS Project.

Journal Article Prog Community Health Partnersh · 2023 PROBLEM: Translating research to support practice is becoming a more prominent goal in the scientific community. However, further innovation and research is needed on effective approaches to this endeavor. PURPOSE: This case study describes an approach tha ... Full text Link to item Cite

A pragmatic clinical trial of hearing screening in primary care clinics: cost-effectiveness of hearing screening.

Journal Article Cost Eff Resour Alloc · June 25, 2022 BACKGROUND: Hearing loss is a high prevalence condition among older adults, is associated with higher-than-average risk for poor health outcomes and quality of life, and is a public health concern to individuals, families, communities, professionals, gover ... Full text Link to item Cite

Perceived Benefits of Training Clinicians in Community Engagement for a Leadership Development Program.

Journal Article Fam Med · February 2022 BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Community engagement (CE), including community-engaged research, is a critical tool for improving the health of patients and communities, but is not taught in most medical curricula, and is even rarer in leadership training for p ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

LATIN-19: A Grassroots Coalition to Mitigate the Effect of COVID-19 on the Latinx Community in North Carolina.

Journal Article Prog Community Health Partnersh · 2022 BACKGROUND: Social inequity is a primary driver of health disparities, creating multiple barriers to good health. These inequities were exacerbated during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, with Latinx communities suffering more than others. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Eviction as a Disruptive Factor in Health Care Utilization: Impact on Hospital Readmissions and No-show Rates.

Journal Article J Health Care Poor Underserved · 2021 BACKGROUND: Residential eviction is a component of housing instability that negatively affects physical and mental health, but the effect of eviction on health care utilization, specifically hospital readmissions and outpatient no-show rates, is not known. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Comparative implementation-effectiveness of three strategies to perform hearing screening among older adults in primary care clinics: study design and protocol.

Journal Article BMC Geriatr · May 11, 2020 BACKGROUND: The burden of hearing loss among older adults could be mitigated with appropriate care. This study compares implementation of three hearing screening strategies in primary care, and examines the reliability and validity of patient self-assessme ... Full text Link to item Cite

Integrating Registered Dietitian Nutritionists Into Primary Care Practices to Work With Children With Overweight

Journal Article American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine · March 1, 2020 Despite increased reimbursement for registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs), few studies have assessed the potential of integrating them into primary care clinics to support pediatric weight management. To assess the feasibility and effectiveness of this ... Full text Cite

What Is Population Health?

Journal Article Prim Care · December 2019 This article defines population health as the health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group. Population health includes health outcomes, patterns of health determinants, and policies and interventio ... Full text Link to item Cite

Community and Stakeholder Engagement.

Journal Article Prim Care · December 2019 Improving population health in a sustainable way requires collaboration within the medical community and also working through partnerships among multiple community and societal stakeholders. One example of stakeholder engagement is engagement of the commun ... Full text Link to item Cite

Joining Forces: The Benefits and Challenges of Conducting Regulatory Research With a Policy Advocate

Journal Article Housing Policy Debate · May 4, 2019 Community-engaged research (CEnR) is experiencing a resurgence as a way of informing community-level change and policymaking. Yet the rules and regulations that are crucial to policy implementation and success are relatively understudied through CEnR. This ... Full text Cite

Increasing Stroke Knowledge and Decreasing Stroke Risk in a Latino Immigrant Population.

Journal Article J Immigr Minor Health · December 2018 Stroke knowledge is poor and stroke risk is growing for the U.S. Latino immigrant population. We present results of an evaluation of a tailored, community-based intervention in Durham, North Carolina. The intervention included integration of stroke knowled ... Full text Link to item Cite

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Community and Hospital Medical Record Integration on Management of Behavioral Health in the Emergency Department.

Journal Article J Behav Health Serv Res · October 2018 This study evaluated the correlation of an emergency department embedded care coordinator with access to community and medical records in decreasing hospital and emergency department use in patients with behavioral health issues. This retrospective cohort ... Full text Link to item Cite

Changing CHANGE: adaptations of an evidence-based telehealth cardiovascular disease risk reduction intervention.

Journal Article Transl Behav Med · March 1, 2018 Relatively few successful medication adherence interventions are translated into real-world clinical settings. The Prevention of Cardiovascular Outcomes in African Americans with Diabetes (CHANGE) intervention was originally conceived as a randomized contr ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Use of the 5 As for Teen Alcohol Use.

Journal Article Clin Pediatr (Phila) · May 2017 Clinical guidelines recommend addressing adolescent alcohol use in primary care; the 5 As (Ask, Advise, Assess, Assist, Arrange) may be a useful model for intervention. We audio-recorded 540 visits with 49 physicians and adolescents, compared alcohol discl ... Full text Link to item Cite

Place-Based Initiatives to Improve Health in Disadvantaged Communities: Cross-Sector Characteristics and Networks of Local Actors in North Carolina.

Journal Article Am J Public Health · September 2016 OBJECTIVES: To examine the leadership attributes and collaborative connections of local actors from the health sector and those outside the health sector in a major place-based health initiative. METHODS: We used survey data from 340 individuals in 4 Healt ... Full text Link to item Cite

The Relationship of Socioeconomic and Behavioral Risk Factors With Trends of Overweight in Korea.

Journal Article J Prev Med Public Health · November 2015 OBJECTIVES: Previous studies have shown that overweight (including obesity) has increased significantly in Korea in recent decades. However, it remains unclear whether this change has been uniform among all Koreans and to what extent socioeconomic and beha ... Full text Link to item Cite

Education, glucose control, and mortality risks among U.S. older adults with diabetes.

Journal Article Diabetes Res Clin Pract · March 2015 AIMS: Studies have shown that diabetes mellitus disproportionately afflicts persons of low socioeconomic status and that the burden of disease is greatest among the disadvantaged. However, our understanding of educational differences in the control of diab ... Full text Link to item Cite

Population health initiatives for primary care at Duke University School of Medicine.

Journal Article N C Med J · 2014 To help shape the future of health care in North Carolina, Duke University School of Medicine has implemented several new initiatives aimed at providing primary care providers with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to improve population health ... Full text Link to item Cite

Rethinking obesity counseling: having the French Fry Discussion.

Journal Article J Obes · 2014 UNLABELLED: Childhood obesity is a complex problem that warrants early intervention. General recommendations for obesity prevention and nutrition counseling exist. However, these are notably imprecise with regard to early and targeted interventions to prev ... Full text Link to item Cite

The application of comorbidity indices to predict early postoperative outcomes after laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass: a nationwide comparative analysis of over 70,000 cases.

Journal Article Obes Surg · May 2013 BACKGROUND: Patients undergoing laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (LRYGB) often have substantial comorbidities, which must be taken into account to appropriately assess expected postoperative outcomes. The Charlson/Deyo and Elixhauser indices are widel ... Full text Link to item Cite

Teaching population health: a competency map approach to education.

Journal Article Acad Med · May 2013 A 2012 Institute of Medicine report is the latest in the growing number of calls to incorporate a population health approach in health professionals' training. Over the last decade, Duke University, particularly its Department of Community and Family Medic ... Full text Link to item Cite

Neighborhood clinics: An academic medical center-community health center partnership

Chapter · 2013 The number of uninsured and underinsured in the United States is growing,1 and the challenges of their care are complex. The providers and services available to the un/underinsured are limited, and financial barriers are compounded by such obstacles as lac ... Cite

Neighborhood clinics: An academic medical center-community health center partnership

Chapter · January 1, 2013 The number of uninsured and underinsured in the United States is growing,1 and the challenges of their care are complex. The providers and services available to the un/underinsured are limited, and financial barriers are compounded by such obstacles as lac ... Cite

Improving hypertension control in a population of low-income frail older adults: An evaluation of the just for us model

Journal Article Journal of Applied Gerontology · August 1, 2012 We evaluated hypertension management among enrollees in Just for Us (JFU)-an approach to providing coordinated, in-home care to medically fragile, low-income older or disabled adults living independently. The sample was 264 JFU patients who enrolled betwee ... Full text Cite

Treating pediatric obesity in the primary care setting to prevent chronic disease: perceptions and knowledge of providers and staff.

Journal Article N C Med J · 2012 BACKGROUND: The national and international epidemic of chronic disease, including among children, is largely fueled by increasing obesity. It is recommended that primary care play a key role in the treatment of pediatric obesity. METHODS: A written survey ... Link to item Cite

Principles of Community Engagement

Book · 2011 CTSA Community Engagement Key Function Committee Task Force on the Principles of Community Engagement ( Second Edition ) Donna Jo McCloskey , RN , PhD , National Center for Research Resources , NIH ( Chair ) Sergio Aguilar  ... ... Cite

Principles of Community Engagement

Book · 2011 CTSA Community Engagement Key Function Committee Task Force on the Principles of Community Engagement ( Second Edition ) Donna Jo McCloskey , RN , PhD , National Center for Research Resources , NIH ( Chair ) Sergio Aguilar  ... ... Cite

Perceived discrimination and use of health care services in a North Carolina population of Latino immigrants

Journal Article Hispanic Health Care International · March 19, 2010 Relationships were investigated between perceived discrimination at the usual health care source and health care services use among Latinos. Three perceived discrimination variables were explored-based on race/ethnicity, based on insurance status, or based ... Full text Cite

Stroke-related knowledge among uninsured Latino immigrants in Durham County, North Carolina.

Journal Article J Stroke Cerebrovasc Dis · 2009 Featured Publication BACKGROUND: Knowledge of stroke risk factors and symptoms is a necessary prerequisite for improving prevention and reducing treatment delays. Little is known about stroke-related knowledge among the US immigrant Latino population. METHODS: A previously pub ... Full text Link to item Cite

Making the case for school-based health: where do we stand?

Journal Article J Health Polit Policy Law · February 2008 Featured Publication School-based health centers (SBHCs) have proliferated rapidly nation-wide and remain politically popular. This article explores the disconnect between the evidence and the discourse on SBHCs, drawing upon the authors' evaluation of SBHCs in Newark, New Jer ... Full text Link to item Cite

Health needs and barriers to healthcare of women who have experienced intimate partner violence.

Journal Article J Womens Health (Larchmt) · December 2007 BACKGROUND: This study assessed the health needs and barriers to healthcare among women with a history of intimate partner violence (IPV) as told by women themselves. METHODS: Qualitative interviews were conducted with 25 women clients and 10 staff members ... Full text Link to item Cite

Neighborhood clinics: an academic medical center-community health center partnership.

Journal Article J Health Care Poor Underserved · August 2007 Featured Publication This report describes a clinic run by a federally-qualified health center and an academic medical center. The clinic expands the community's primary care capacity, combining advantages of big and small settings, and of its dual affiliation. Survey data sug ... Full text Link to item Cite

Determinants of remaining in the community after discharge: results from New Jersey's Nursing Home Transition Program.

Journal Article Gerontologist · August 2007 Featured Publication PURPOSE: To inform states with nursing home transition programs, we determine what risk factors are associated with participants' long-term readmission to nursing homes within 1 year after discharge. DESIGN AND METHODS: We obtained administrative data for ... Full text Link to item Cite

Just for Us: an academic medical center-community partnership to maintain the health of a frail low-income senior population.

Journal Article Gerontologist · April 2006 PURPOSE: To promote health and maintain independence, Just for Us provides financially sustainable, in-home, integrated care to medically fragile, low-income seniors and disabled adults living in subsidized housing. DESIGN AND METHODS: The program provides ... Full text Link to item Cite

Dynamics of patient targeting for care management in Medicaid: a case study of the Durham Community Health Network.

Journal Article Care Manag J · 2006 Featured Publication Targeting appropriate patients for care management is crucial to maximizing quality of care and cost-effectiveness in Medicaid care management programs. This study examined patient characteristics predicting selection for care management pre- and postmanag ... Full text Link to item Cite

Making a home in the community for the academic medical center.

Journal Article Acad Med · January 2005 Academic medical centers (AMCs) have traditionally provided primary care for low-income and other underserved populations. However, they have had difficulty developing lasting partnerships with other organizations serving the same populations. This article ... Full text Link to item Cite

Balancing Autonomy and Dependence for Community and Nongovernmental Organizations

Journal Article Social Service Review · January 1, 1998 Prior studies have emphasized the dangers of dependence when community organizations seek nongovernmental organization (NGO) support. This article emphasizes that community group autonomy can undermine the effectiveness of assistance. Furthermore, and cont ... Full text Cite

The Evolution of Assistance to Grassroots Organizations: The Impact of Linkage

Journal Article Public Productivity & Management Review · June 1997 Full text Cite

Political perspectives on uncertified home care agencies.

Journal Article Health Care Financ Rev · 1994 Featured Publication This article examines the political agendas of public sector and organized private sector interests concerned with policies affecting uncertified home care agencies in three metropolitan areas. Using a telephone survey, the study found substantial differen ... Link to item Cite