William Dempsey, M.D., serves as chief population health value-based care officer for The Wright Center. He provides comprehensive whole-person primary health services as a board-certified family medicine physician and serves as medical director at The Wright Center for Community Health Clarks Summit.

It’s great that we’re now fully into the holiday season. Not so great – ‘tis also the season for highly contagious respiratory illnesses.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I can’t implore you enough to go out and get up to speed on your flu vaccination. It’s safe, it works, and it will keep you and your loved ones from getting sick.

As it happens, this week is National Influenza Vaccination Week (Dec. 2-6). Coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the annual observance serves as a helpful reminder to people that there’s still time to get your flu shot this season.

Flu season usually begins around late September or early October, which is actually the ideal time to get vaccinated. From there, it increasingly accelerates until it peaks between December and February. In some years, infections can even occur as late as May.

Flu symptoms typically surface within a couple of days, and the virus shares many of the same effects as COVID, including fever, chills, dry cough, body aches, headaches, stuffy/runny nose, shortness of breath, and fatigue.

The best thing you can do to protect yourself from the flu – and minimize its symptoms if you do contract it – is to get the annual flu shot, which allows protective antibodies to develop in your body within two weeks or so of vaccination.

The flu vaccine is available to anyone ages 6 months and older, and CDC studies have shown that vaccination reduces the risk of contracting the illness by about 40% to 60% among the general public. For the 2024-2025 flu season, all vaccines in the United States are “trivalent” vaccines, meaning they protect against three different influenza viruses: an influenza A(H1N1) virus, an influenza A(H3N2) virus, and an influenza B/Victoria virus.

For certain vulnerable populations, vaccination is especially critical given the risk of severe illness, hospitalization, and even death. Among those people are pregnant women, young children, adults ages 65 and older, and those with serious health conditions like cancer, heart disease, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, asthma, and kidney disease. Every year, thousands of children are hospitalized with severe flu, according to the CDC.

We at The Wright Center for Community Health take flu vaccinations very seriously. We’re now providing flu shots at all of our locations throughout Northeast Pennsylvania. To schedule an office visit that includes vaccination, call 570-230-0019 or go online to use the express scheduling system at TheWrightCenter.org.

I should also mention that many local pharmacies offer free flu shots to insured customers, and numerous local employers provide flu vaccinations as a free service to their workers.

The holidays are a wonderful time, and you certainly don’t want a case of the flu to upend your fun plans.  So, get your flu shot – it’s safe, effective, readily available, and one of the best gifts you can give yourself and others this season.

Two of The Wright Center for Community Health’s primary and preventive care community health centers again received national commendations from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) for delivering high-quality, patient-centered care.

The Wright Center for Community Health Scranton, 501 S. Washington Ave., and The Wright Center for Community Health Wilkes-Barre, at 169 N. Pennsylvania Ave., have successfully maintained their NCQA’s Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) recognition, a prestigious certification that affirms the two community health centers’ ability to provide the right care at the right time through innovative tools, systems, and resources.

Both community health centers initially earned the NCQA voluntary accreditation in 2021 and undergo a formal review to ensure they comply with the Washington, D.C.-based organization’s high standards. For patients, this accreditation serves as a trusted mark of quality, signifying The Wright Center’s dedication to continuous improvement and prioritizing the needs of patients under the PCMH model of care, which fosters stronger patient-provider relationships, enhances the management of chronic conditions, and elevates the overall patient experience. The PCMH model has also increased staff satisfaction and reduced health care costs.

“This recognition is a testament to the exceptional dedication and expertise of our care teams, who harness technology, foster interdisciplinary collaboration, and prioritize delivering the highest standard of care,” said Dr. Jignesh Y. Sheth, senior vice president and chief medical and information officer at The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education. “The National Committee for Quality Assurance Patient-Centered Medical Home seal underscores the unwavering commitment at The Wright Center to our patients’ well-being, ensuring accessible, coordinated, and patient-centered care that always puts their needs first.”

The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement, a nonprofit subsidiary of The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education, has been awarded a $15,000 grant from the Central Atlantic Chapter of the Dunkin’ Joy in Childhood Foundation to support essential initiatives aimed at addressing food insecurity among children and families throughout Northeast Pennsylvania.

The grant will enable The Wright Center to provide free lunches, take-home snacks, and backpacks filled with educational materials about nutrition during the summer months. It will also fund grocery gift cards for families to purchase healthy foods and connect them with nutrition assistance programs.

“This impactful and deeply appreciated grant from the Central Atlantic Chapter of the Dunkin’ Joy in Childhood Foundation will make a meaningful difference in the lives of children and their families in our region who are experiencing food insecurity,” said Dr. Linda Thomas-Hemak, president and CEO of The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education and co-chair of The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement Board of Directors. “The continued investment by Dunkin’ in The Wright Center helps meet critical health and socioeconomic needs and fosters a sense of unity, hope, generosity, and resilience within our communities.”

The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement advances The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education’s mission — to improve the health and welfare of our communities through inclusive and responsive health services and the sustainable renewal of an inspired, competent workforce that is privileged to serve — by involving patients and communities in transforming primary health services, fostering workforce development, and addressing public health challenges.

Focused on education, advocacy, and tackling socioeconomic barriers, the nonprofit organization assists the region’s most vulnerable populations, including those experiencing poverty, homelessness, food and housing insecurity, limited access to education and job opportunities, lack of transportation, social isolation, and other challenges. Guided by a board of patients and local professionals, it organizes community initiatives, such as health fairs, food drives, and school supply giveaways, while its annual Dr. William Waters Golf Tournament generates essential funding to ensure equitable access to high-quality, whole-person primary health services for everyone, regardless of age, ethnicity, insurance status, ZIP code, or ability to pay.

The Dunkin’ Joy in Childhood Foundation, as well as the regional Dunkin’ franchisee group, Lufrankton, LLC, which operates 34 Dunkin’ stores in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including six in Scranton, have awarded numerous grants to The Wright Center over the years to help address food insecurity and other community outreach initiatives. Since 2006, the Dunkin’ Joy in Childhood Foundation has granted over $40 million to national and local nonprofits, supporting programs that combat child hunger — such as backpack and mobile and school pantry initiatives — and creating joyful experiences for pediatric patients and their families through specialized camps, sensory rooms, and art and music therapy.

A chief fellow of The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education’s Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship Program and his program director will have their work published in an upcoming edition of the peer-reviewed journal Catheterization Cardiovascular Intervention.

L: Nischay Shah, R: Samir Pancholy

The project began when Dr. Nischay Shah, one of the chief fellows of The Wright Center’s Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship Program, treated a patient with monomorphic ventricular tachycardia (MMVT). In this condition, the heart’s bottom chambers beat too fast. This abnormal rhythm can lead to severe issues, such as heart attacks.

The patient was referred for cardiac catheterization, and Dr. Shah consulted with Dr. Samir Pancholy, the fellowship’s program director and an internationally renowned cardiologist based in Northeast Pennsylvania.

“Going through the evidence-based decision-making process, we found a significant gap in the literature about whether procedures that improve blood flow to the heart by treating narrowed arteries or other common interventions would lead to reduced mortality or lower rates of ventricular tachycardia recurrence,” Dr. Shah said. “This prompted us to investigate further, ultimately leading to a comprehensive pooled analysis of existing studies.”

Under the guidance of Dr. Pancholy and in collaboration with peers at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jefferson University’s Sidney Kimmel Medical College, an analysis of data from PubMed, Google Scholar, the Cochrane Library, and other medical databases found that patients who had undergone additional tests for blocked arteries – such as stress tests – or had blockages treated with stents, did not show any significant improvement in survival rates or the recurrence of MMVT.

“These further tests or treatments didn’t appear to make a difference in preventing death or the return of the abnormal heart rhythm in the select group of patients studied,” Dr. Shah explained.

In November, Dr. Shah and Dr. Pancholy learned their manuscript detailing their methods and findings was accepted for publication by Catheterization Cardiovascular Intervention, an international cardiology journal. A publication date has not been announced.

Dr. Shah expressed his gratitude for Dr. Pancholy’s guidance throughout the project, explaining that his mentorship made the achievement possible.

Dr. Pancholy, who also serves as the cardiac catheterization lab director at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania,  holds 73 U.S. and international patents, has co-authored three textbooks, has published several practice-changing randomized controlled trials, and has developed multiple procedural techniques to increase the safety and efficacy of the procedure of cardiac catheterization and catheter-based intervention. In 2023, The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI), the only professional medical society in the U.S. dedicated solely to interventional cardiology, named Dr. Pancholy a Master Interventionalist – an honor that fewer than 100 interventional cardiologists worldwide can claim.

The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education’s residency and fellowship programs are accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. For more information, go to TheWrightCenter.org or call 570-866-3017.