The emerging concept of ‘food justice’ describes a social movement and a set of principles. It align with the goals of social justice, demanding recognition of human rights, equal opportunity, fair treatment and is participatory and community specific. The aim of this study was to investigate the conceptualisation of food justice and to explore how community participation is positioned in food justice scholarship.

A scoping review of peer-reviewed literature was conducted using the term ‘food justice’. This study used a five-step scoping review protocol. The databases included Scopus, Web of Science and Medline (OVID). Data were extracted on country of origin, research discipline, study type and conceptualisations of food justice. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to identify the themes.

The search identified 546 abstracts of which ninety peer-reviewed studies met the inclusion criteria. Thematic analysis identified five themes of food justice across these ninety studies: (1) social equity, (2) food security, (3) food systems transformation, (4) community participation and agency and (5) environmental sustainability.

Current conceptualisations of food justice are evolving. Together, these five themes, using the term food justice, embrace a more holistic and structural view of the food system. They emphasise healthy, sustainable and equitable food as a human right and acknowledge the need to address structural barriers to that right. Community participation and agency in food justice decision-making is critical for transformative change towards a healthy, sustainable, and more just food system.

Children with heart disease may require inpatient care for many reasons, but ultimately have a final reason for hospitalisation prior to discharge. Factors influencing length of stay in paediatric cardiac acute care units have been described but the last reason for hospitalisation has not been studied. Our aim was to describe Final Hospital Need as a novel measure, determine Final Hospital Need in our patients, and describe factors associated with this Need.

Single-centre survey design. Discharging providers selected a Final Hospital Need from the following categories: cardiovascular, respiratory, feeding/fluid, haematology/ID, pain/sedation, systems issues, and other/wound issues. Univariable and multivariable analyses were performed separately for outcomes “cardiovascular” and “feeding/fluid.”

Survey response rate was 99% (624 encounters). The most frequent Final Hospital Needs were cardiovascular (36%), feeding/fluid (24%) and systems issues (13%). Probability of Final Hospital Need “cardiovascular” decreased as length of stay increased. Multivariate analysis showed Final Hospital Need “cardiovascular” was negatively associated with aortic arch repair, Norwood procedure, and Final ICU Need “respiratory” and “other.” Final Hospital Need "feeding/fluid” was negatively associated with left-sided valve procedure, but positively associated with final ICU need “respiratory,” and tube feeding at discharge.

Final Hospital Need is a novel measure that can be predicted by clinical factors including age, Final ICU Need, and type of surgery. Final Hospital Need may be utilised to track changes in clinical care over time and as a target for improvement work.

To evaluate the construct validity of the NIH Toolbox Cognitive Battery (NIH TB-CB) in the healthy oldest-old (85+ years old).

Our sample from the McKnight Brain Aging Registry consists of 179 individuals, 85 to 99 years of age, screened for memory, neurological, and psychiatric disorders. Using previous research methods on a sample of 85 + y/o adults, we conducted confirmatory factor analyses on models of NIH TB-CB and same domain standard neuropsychological measures. We hypothesized the five-factor model (Reading, Vocabulary, Memory, Working Memory, and Executive/Speed) would have the best fit, consistent with younger populations. We assessed confirmatory and discriminant validity. We also evaluated demographic and computer use predictors of NIH TB-CB composite scores.

Findings suggest the six-factor model (Vocabulary, Reading, Memory, Working Memory, Executive, and Speed) had a better fit than alternative models. NIH TB-CB tests had good convergent and discriminant validity, though tests in the executive functioning domain had high inter-correlations with other cognitive domains. Computer use was strongly associated with higher NIH TB-CB overall and fluid cognition composite scores.

The NIH TB-CB is a valid assessment for the oldest-old samples, with relatively weak validity in the domain of executive functioning. Computer use’s impact on composite scores could be due to the executive demands of learning to use a tablet. Strong relationships of executive function with other cognitive domains could be due to cognitive dedifferentiation. Overall, the NIH TB-CB could be useful for testing cognition in the oldest-old and the impact of aging on cognition in older populations.

A combination of olanzapine and the opioid receptor antagonist samidorphan (OLZ/SAM) has been approved in the United States for the treatment of adults with schizophrenia or adults with bipolar I disorder. In a phase 3 study in adults with schizophrenia (ENLIGHTEN-2), OLZ/SAM treatment was associated with significantly less weight gain compared with olanzapine. Prespecified subgroup analyses explored the consistency of the weight mitigation effect of OLZ/SAM vs olanzapine across demographic subgroups in ENLIGHTEN-2.

The multicenter, randomized, double-blind ENLIGHTEN-2 study (NCT02694328) included outpatients aged 18–55 years with a diagnosis of schizophrenia based on DSM-5 criteria, a body mass index (BMI) of 18 to 30 kg/m2, and stable body weight (self-reported change ≤5% for ≥3 months before study entry). Patients were randomized 1:1 to receive OLZ/SAM or olanzapine for 24 weeks. Co-primary endpoints (previously reported) were percent change in body weight and proportion of patients with at least 10% weight gain from baseline at week 24. Prespecified exploratory subgroup analyses by sex, age, self-reported race, and baseline BMI were conducted.

At week 24, treatment with OLZ/SAM resulted in numerically less percent weight gain than with olanzapine across all subgroups evaluated. The proportion of patients with at least 10% weight gain was smaller in each subgroup treated with OLZ/SAM vs olanzapine.

In these exploratory subgroup analyses from the ENLIGHTEN-2 study, weight-mitigating effects of OLZ/SAM vs olanzapine were observed consistently across patient subgroups and were in line with results from the overall study population.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) was previously associated with negative affective biases. Evidence from larger population-based studies, however, is lacking, including whether biases normalise with remission. We investigated associations between affective bias measures and depressive symptom severity across a large community-based sample, followed by examining differences between remitted individuals and controls.

Participants from Generation Scotland (N = 1109) completed the: (i) Bristol Emotion Recognition Task (BERT), (ii) Face Affective Go/No-go (FAGN), and (iii) Cambridge Gambling Task (CGT). Individuals were classified as MDD-current (n = 43), MDD-remitted (n = 282), or controls (n = 784). Analyses included using affective bias summary measures (primary analyses), followed by detailed emotion/condition analyses of BERT and FAGN (secondary analyses).

For summary measures, the only significant finding was an association between greater symptoms and lower risk adjustment for CGT across the sample (individuals with greater symptoms were less likely to bet more, despite increasingly favourable conditions). This was no longer significant when controlling for non-affective cognition. No differences were found for remitted-MDD v. controls. Detailed analysis of BERT and FAGN indicated subtle negative biases across multiple measures of affective cognition with increasing symptom severity, that were independent of non-effective cognition [e.g. greater tendency to rate faces as angry (BERT), and lower accuracy for happy/neutral conditions (FAGN)]. Results for remitted-MDD were inconsistent.

This suggests the presence of subtle negative affective biases at the level of emotion/condition in association with depressive symptoms across the sample, over and above those accounted for by non-affective cognition, with no evidence for affective biases in remitted individuals.

Smartphones have the potential for capturing subtle changes in cognition that characterize preclinical Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in older adults. The Ambulatory Research in Cognition (ARC) smartphone application is based on principles from ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and administers brief tests of associative memory, processing speed, and working memory up to 4 times per day over 7 consecutive days. ARC was designed to be administered unsupervised using participants’ personal devices in their everyday environments.

We evaluated the reliability and validity of ARC in a sample of 268 cognitively normal older adults (ages 65–97 years) and 22 individuals with very mild dementia (ages 61–88 years). Participants completed at least one 7-day cycle of ARC testing and conventional cognitive assessments; most also completed cerebrospinal fluid, amyloid and tau positron emission tomography, and structural magnetic resonance imaging studies.

First, ARC tasks were reliable as between-person reliability across the 7-day cycle and test-retest reliabilities at 6-month and 1-year follow-ups all exceeded 0.85. Second, ARC demonstrated construct validity as evidenced by correlations with conventional cognitive measures (r = 0.53 between composite scores). Third, ARC measures correlated with AD biomarker burden at baseline to a similar degree as conventional cognitive measures. Finally, the intensive 7-day cycle indicated that ARC was feasible (86.50% approached chose to enroll), well tolerated (80.42% adherence, 4.83% dropout), and was rated favorably by older adult participants.

Overall, the results suggest that ARC is reliable and valid and represents a feasible tool for assessing cognitive changes associated with the earliest stages of AD.