Category Archives: About the Library

Register Now for “A Seat for All: Communicating Health Equity and Research in a Digital World”

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Join us and learn about Health Affairs’ Health Equity initiative aimed at increasing diversity among authors, identifying new voices, and addressing biases within their publishing process. Strategies for promoting research and the impact social media plays on disseminating health equity content will also be discussed. 

In addition, there will be time for attendees to pose questions and contribute to an interactive conversation.

Date: Thursday, September 15, 2022
Time: 12:00 PM to 1:15 PM, EST
Location – Zoom Webinar – Register Now

Speakers

Dr. Vabren Watts, Director of Health Equity, Health Affairs
Dr. Vabren Watts is the Director of Equity at Health Affairs. He is an expert in health equity and a science and health journalist who has authored more than 300 articles about the latest advancements in medicine for news media outlets including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Psychiatric News, and WebMD.

Before joining Health Affairs, Dr. Watts served as advocate for health equity for marginalized and minority populations, having served as a spokesperson for the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association, and the Deputy Director in the Division of Diversity and Health Equity at the American Psychiatric Association.

Dr. Watts received his Doctor of Philosophy in pharmacology from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, TN and completed his postdoctoral training in the Division of Cardiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Patti Sweet, Director of Digital Strategy, Health Affairs
Patti Sweet is the Direct of Digital Strategy at Health Affairs. She focuses on digital strategy and the ways in which Health Affairs can promote itself and its content in digital spaces and to diverse audiences.

She built her career working in digital marketing agencies and volunteering with service organizations and nonprofits, with half of her work based in London and the other half in the US. Patti received her bachelor’s degree in International Studies and Spanish from Michigan State University, and she holds a master’s degree from the Hult International Business School in London.

The 2021 Synapse Publications Report is Now Available!

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Are you curious about research conducted at Memorial Sloan Kettering in 2021?  Well, we have the resource to answer this question! Check out the 2021 Synapse Publications Report and explore the content.

For 2021, 5,301 works were ingested, and we created 578 new Synapse author profiles. Breaking down the 5,301 works, we noted that 269 works were COVID-related, and the majority of the works fell under four different publication formats: Journal Articles (2,508), Meeting Abstracts (1,445), Reviews (581) and Editorials (350).  This report also contains visuals that showcase our authors’ research collaborations within the United States and Internationally.

Synapse is a public-facing resource and the authoritative bibliographic database of MSK publications, maintained by a dedicated team of information professionals. While this report reflects the year in review, the Synapse database provides a record of the intellectual output written by our authors.

Feel free to send me an email and let me know what you think about this year’s report.

Donna Gibson
Director, Library Services

Three Questions: Christina G., Special Project Librarian

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For our next Three Questions interview, we spoke with Christina G., Special Project Librarian.

What areas can you help MSK users with?

Image of Christina in a shop in NYC.

Christina enjoying an NYC souvenir shop.

I work directly with Synapse, the Library’s authoritative database of MSK authors and their publications.  Synapse houses publications produced by MSK’s researchers, clinicians, nurses, and healthcare professionals and arranges them by author profiles. I can provide assistance to users who are interested in learning how to use and navigate Synapse, as well as help MSK authors update their profiles.

What projects have you been working on recently?

The Synapse team tracks and adds new publications by MSK authors into the database on a monthly basis, importing bibliographic records from Scopus, Web of Science, BIOSIS Citation Index, CINAHL, and PsycINFO. However, this requires the Synapse team to cross-reference these records with original PDFs to ensure the data were adequately imported and missing data, such as PMIDs and PMCIDs, are included. We also use information from MSK’s Human Resources to ensure we associate each publication with the correct MSK author’s profile. The process is vigorous, therefore I spend most of my time working on this!

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?

I unfortunately haven’t traveled as much as I would like to so I would be happy to go literally anywhere in the world. The only requirement I ask is that it is somewhere with a beach since I love swimming and the ocean.