Margot Lazow wins alumni resident award
Margot Lazow, MD, is only in her third year of residency at Cincinnati Children’s, but she’s steadily accumulating honors that foreshadow a promising career. Lazow was recently selected to receive the Alumni Association’s Resident Award. The award recognizes those who have exhibited clinical and educational excellence and who have participated in scholarly activities that impact the health of children in the community.
Lazow has been working with mentors Melissa Klein, MD, MEd, and Joe Real, MD, MEd, on a 360o virtual tour of Avondale to help physicians better understand and effectively communicate with their patients and families. Brad Cruse and Dave Davis from Learning and Development and Nicholas Ollberding, PhD, Biostatistics and Epidemiology, also contributed. The project helped Lazow land an APA Resident Investigator Award and win the Ohio AAP’s Shark Tank competition.
Training in social determinants of health, which includes neighborhood tours, has been part of residents’ advocacy rotation for some time now. Until last summer, the tours were conducted live and in-person, but they depended on the availability of community partners and faculty and were resource-intensive.
In July 2017, Lazow and her team launched the virtual version of the neighborhood tour. It consists of 360o videos organized into a phone/tablet application that offer a more standardized yet still immersive experience. Users can visit eight neighborhood sites and learn community members’ perspectives on access to food, transportation, safe play and housing.
“We first piloted the virtual tour with 17 community members from Avondale, who felt it was an accurate representation of their neighborhood,” says Lazow. “We also piloted it with upper-level residents who had previously participated in the in-person tour. They shared positive feedback, especially about having increased access to perspectives of parents and community members from Avondale.”
The virtual tour is also more convenient for busy clinicians to fit into their schedule, as it can be viewed independently from their phone, tablet or computer.
“The virtual tour offers an overview of the impact of neighborhood on child health,” says Lazow. “We do a debrief session afterward, and many residents have shared that they were shocked to hear first-hand about the barriers to healthy lifestyles that these families face, such as the absence of a grocery store in their neighborhood or unsafe housing conditions.”
The virtual tour also focuses on accessible community resources and other positive neighborhood attributes. Lazow and her team hope to spread this virtual tour app to providers at all levels of training and to different pediatric subspecialties.
“I’ll be starting a fellowship in pediatric hematology/oncology here in July,” she says. “I hope to be able to build upon the skills and mentorship I’ve gained through this project and combine that with my interest in oncology to pursue educational research.”
As for her latest award, which was presented to her at the Medical Staff and Alumni Dinner on April 20, Lazow is thrilled to receive it. “I’m really honored,” she says. “It’s cool to see this type of educational research, focused on social determinants of health, get recognition. I’m extremely grateful for Melissa’s and Joe’s mentorship, as well as our entire team. This award is a reflection of their support. I feel very lucky.”
