Summary Background It is critical that medical educators actively address the growing mental health burden affecting medical students. The motivation to present a mental health programme to medical students at the University of Tasmania arose in response to a recent tragedy within the student body. This emphasised the necessity of developing an effective skill‐based initiative for our students. We describe a peer‐led programme targeting mental health borne from this event. The aim of this article is to outline the development of this programme and to report on the preliminary feedback. Methods This article presents a peer‐led programme, delivered to medical students in the fourth year of a 5‐year undergraduate degree by peers from within the student cohort. We used a multipronged approach, with the programme consisting of a five‐session workshop and a supplementary resource book. A post‐workshop survey was administered as formative evaluation. A total of 19 out of 20 participants responded to the survey. Results and discussion All respondents agreed that the programme helped to reduce the stigma of mental health disease in medicine and improved both peer support and self‐care practices. All students agreed that they would recommend this programme to peers, and that it provided a welcome opportunity to talk about mental health and normalised mental health concerns. Key to the success of the programme was its peer‐led nature. The programme is an example of an innovative and effective programme design that can help to guide medical educators to further support the next generation of medical practitioners with their mental health skills.

Ida and her husband Jim both worked full-time. Ida's job did not provide health insurance, but Jim paid extra so his insurance policy would cover both of them. Jim developed multiple sclerosis, which progressed rapidly causing Jim to lose his job. Despite their limited financial resources, they were able to continue his insurance through COBRA. Unfortunately, they did not have the resources to continue hers. Ida was faced with managing her hypertension without insurance. She turned to Urban Ministries Open Door Clinic (ODC) in Raleigh for treatment and medication. A routine screening mammogram revealed a lump in Ida's breast. Uninsured and frightened, she turned again to the ODC. ODC coordinated care and, within a month, Ida had a mastectomy and had begun a chemotherapy regimen. One year later, Ida is cancer-free and has found a new job with healthcare benefits, leaving the ODC with an opening for another person in need without other healthcare options. Nancy, a young woman in her late 20's, came to ODC because she didn't feel well. Diagnosis: diabetes mellitus. Her hemoglobin A1c was 15, and other clinical measures were similarly high. Nancy entered ODC's specialized diabetes management program, the Diabetes Care and Risk Reduction Program. By meeting regularly with a certified diabetes educator; making significant changes in her eating and exercise habits; and receiving medications, a glucometer, and test strips at no charge, Nancy has brought her hemoglobin A1c to 5.2 and other clinical measures are in line. She is able to move toward her goal of getting pregnant, something that six months ago was not advisable due to her health status.

Antibodies can have beneficial, neutral, or harmful effects so resolving an antibody repertoire to its target epitopes may explain heterogeneity in susceptibility to infectious disease. However, the three-dimensional nature of antibody-epitope interactions limits discovery of important targets. We describe and experimentally validated a computational method and synthetic biology pipeline for identifying structurally stable and functionally important epitopes from the SARS-CoV-2 proteome. We identify patterns of antibodies associated with immunopathology, including a non-isotype switching IgM response to a membrane protein epitope strongly associated with severe COVID-19 (adjusted OR 72.14, 95% CI: 9.71 - 1300.15). We suggest the mechanism is T independent B cell activation and identify persistence (> 1 year) of this response in individuals with long COVID particularly affected by fatigue and depression. These findings may have implications for the ongoing medical and public health response to the pandemic.