About the Authors

Minal S. Kale

minal.kale@mountsinai.org

Affiliation Division of General Internal Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America

Alex D. Federman

Affiliation Division of General Internal Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America

Katherine Krauskopf

Affiliation Division of General Internal Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America

Michael Wolf

Affiliation Division of General Internal Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Rachel O’Conor

Affiliation Division of General Internal Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Melissa Martynenko

Affiliation Division of General Internal Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America

Howard Leventhal

Affiliation Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States of America

Juan P. Wisnivesky

Affiliations Division of General Internal Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America, Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America

Competing Interests

No conflicts of interest exist for the following authors: Katherine Krauskopf, Rachel O’Conor, Melissa Martynenko, Michael S. Wolf, Alex D. Federman, or Howard Leventhal. Juan P. Wisnivesky is a member of the research board of EHE International, has received consulting fees from Merck, UBS and IMS Health, and was awarded a research grant from GlaxoSmithKline to conduct a COPD study. Minal S. Kale has received a consulting honorarium from the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: MSK ADF KK MW RO MM HL JPW. Analyzed the data: MSK JPW. Wrote the paper: MSK ADF KK MW RO MM HL JPW.