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CHD predisposes children to neurodevelopmental delays. Frequent, prolonged hospitalisations during infancy prevent children with heart disease from participating in recommended language and cognitive development programmes, such as outpatient early childhood literacy programmes, and contribute to caregiver stress, a risk factor for adverse developmental outcomes. This study aims to describe the implementation of a single-centre inpatient early childhood literacy programme for hospitalised infants with heart disease and assess its impact on reading practices and patient–family hospital experience.
Methods:
Admitted infants ≤1 year old receive books, a calendar to track reading frequency, and reading guidance at regular intervals. Voluntary feedback is solicited from caregivers using an anonymous, QR-code survey on books. A prospective survey also assessed programme impact on hospital experience.
Results:
From February 2021 to November 2023, the Books@Heart programme provided 1,293 books to families of 840 infants, of whom 110 voluntarily submitted feedback. Caregivers reported a significant improvement in access to books (p < 0.001) and increased reading frequency after learning about Books@Heart (p = 0.003), with the proportion reading to their child daily increasing from 27% to 62%. Among 40 prospective survey responses, caregivers reported feeling a sense of personal fulfillment (60%), self-confidence (30%), connection (98%), and personal well-being (40%) while reading to their child.
Conclusion:
An inpatient early childhood literacy programme is a well-received intervention for infants with heart disease that promotes development, improves book access, increases reading exposure, and engages families. Further studies are needed to assess its impact on sustained reading practices and neurodevelopmental outcomes.
Glowacki offers many new directions for understanding and even eliminating the problem of war, especially creating positive interdependencies with out-group members. We develop Glowacki's intriguing proposition that in-group dynamics provide a route to peace by describing a prosocial motivational system, the caregiving system, that aligns individual interests and eliminates the need to use coercion to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.
In recent months, pharmaceutical manufacturers have brought legal challenges to a provision of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) empowering the federal government to negotiate the prices Medicare pays for certain prescription medications. One key argument made in these filings is that price negotiation is a “taking” of property and violates the Takings Clause of the US Constitution. Through original case law and health policy analysis, we show that government price negotiation and even price regulation of goods and services, including patented goods, are constitutional under the Takings Clause. Finding that the IRA violates the Takings Clause would radically upend settled constitutional law and jeopardize the US’s most important state and federal health care programs.
This study documents the credit outcomes of older adults immediately before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. On average, older adults experienced larger reductions in total household debt relative to younger adults. However, there is significant heterogeneity, where older adults with higher incomes experienced the largest declines, and lower-income older adults experienced an increase in total debt. Overall, these data highlight important trends in the credit experiences of older adults that may affect their future financial security.
Background: Healthcare facilities have experienced many challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, including limited personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies. Healthcare personnel (HCP) rely on PPE, vaccines, and other infection control measures to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infections. We describe PPE concerns reported by HCP who had close contact with COVID-19 patients in the workplace and tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Method: The CDC collaborated with Emerging Infections Program (EIP) sites in 10 states to conduct surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 infections in HCP. EIP staff interviewed HCP with positive SARS-CoV-2 viral tests (ie, cases) to collect data on demographics, healthcare roles, exposures, PPE use, and concerns about their PPE use during COVID-19 patient care in the 14 days before the HCP’s SARS-CoV-2 positive test. PPE concerns were qualitatively coded as being related to supply (eg, low quality, shortages); use (eg, extended use, reuse, lack of fit test); or facility policy (eg, lack of guidance). We calculated and compared the percentages of cases reporting each concern type during the initial phase of the pandemic (April–May 2020), during the first US peak of daily COVID-19 cases (June–August 2020), and during the second US peak (September 2020–January 2021). We compared percentages using mid-P or Fisher exact tests (α = 0.05). Results: Among 1,998 HCP cases occurring during April 2020–January 2021 who had close contact with COVID-19 patients, 613 (30.7%) reported ≥1 PPE concern (Table 1). The percentage of cases reporting supply or use concerns was higher during the first peak period than the second peak period (supply concerns: 12.5% vs 7.5%; use concerns: 25.5% vs 18.2%; p Conclusions: Although lower percentages of HCP cases overall reported PPE concerns after the first US peak, our results highlight the importance of developing capacity to produce and distribute PPE during times of increased demand. The difference we observed among selected groups of cases may indicate that PPE access and use were more challenging for some, such as nonphysicians and nursing home HCP. These findings underscore the need to ensure that PPE is accessible and used correctly by HCP for whom use is recommended.
Exercise has been found to be important in maintaining neurocognitive health. However, the effect of exercise intensity level remains relatively underexplored. Thus, to test the hypothesis that self-paced high-intensity exercise and cardiorespiratory fitness (peak aerobic capacity; VO2peak) increase grey matter (GM) volume, we examined the effect of a 6-month exercise intervention on frontal lobe GM regions that support the executive functions in older adults.
Methods:
Ninety-eight cognitively normal participants (age = 69.06 ± 5.2 years; n = 54 female) were randomised into either a self-paced high- or moderate-intensity cycle-based exercise intervention group, or a no-intervention control group. Participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging and fitness assessment pre-intervention, immediately post-intervention, and 12-months post-intervention.
Results:
The intervention was found to increase fitness in the exercise groups, as compared with the control group (F = 9.88, p = <0.001). Changes in pre-to-post-intervention fitness were associated with increased volume in the right frontal lobe (β = 0.29, p = 0.036, r = 0.27), right supplementary motor area (β = 0.30, p = 0.031, r = 0.29), and both right (β = 0.32, p = 0.034, r = 0.30) and left gyrus rectus (β = 0.30, p = 0.037, r = 0.29) for intervention, but not control participants. No differences in volume were observed across groups.
Conclusions:
At an aggregate level, six months of self-paced high- or moderate-intensity exercise did not increase frontal GM volume. However, experimentally-induced changes in individual cardiorespiratory fitness was positively associated with frontal GM volume in our sample of older adults. These results provide evidence of individual variability in exercise-induced fitness on brain structure.
Language can shape and reinforce attitudes and stereotypes about living with dementia. This can happen through use of metaphors. However, common metaphors may not capture the complexity of experience of dementia from the perspective of the individual person or a family carer. This paper presents an alternative metaphor – that of a theatre production – based on the strategies used by carers to support people with dementia to live well in the community. We conducted face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 12 family members caring for someone with dementia in the community in Queensland, Australia. Our aim was to explore the strategies these carers used to provide support. Interview recordings were fully transcribed and thematically analysed. We identified positive care-giving strategies that described multiple roles that carers fulfilled as they felt increasingly responsible for day-to-day decision making. Family carers explained how they supported the person with dementia to remain a central character in their life and continued to support the person to be themselves. To achieve this, family carers embodied roles that we identified as similar to roles in a theatre production: director, stage manager, supporting cast, scriptwriter, and costume designer and wardrobe manager. Our metaphor of a theatre production offers a fresh perspective to explore the experience of informal care-giving in the context of dementia.
Background: Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE) are a major public health concern because they typically display multidrug resistance and they cause hard-to-treat infections. Organisms harboring metallo-β-lactamases (MBLs) pose a critical challenge in clinical practice because they confer resistance to nearly all β-lactams, including recently approved β-lactam combination agents. A promising new β-lactam-β-lactamase inhibitor combination for treating infections caused by MBL-producing CPE is aztreonam–avibactam. Although clinical trials using aztreonam–avibactam are ongoing, clinicians can administer this combination using 2 US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved drugs: aztreonam and ceftazidime–avibactam. In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initiated a pilot program in the Antibiotic Resistance Laboratory Network (AR Lab Network) to address the lack of commercially available antimicrobial susceptibility tests (ASTs) for aztreonam-avibactam by performing broth microdilution (BMD) for this drug combination. We describe the isolates submitted for aztreonam-avibactam AST during the AR Lab Network pilot in 2019. Methods: The AR Lab Network regional laboratories adopted the HP D300e Digital Dispenser to create customized BMD panels for aztreonam–avibactam ASTs. To qualify for aztreonam–avibactam AST, isolates had to be an Enterobacteriaceae displaying nonsusceptibility to all tested β-lactams (including either ceftazidime-avibactam or meropenem-vaborbactam) or confirmed to harbor at least 1 MBL gene (blaVIM, blaNDM, or blaIMP). Regional laboratories confirmed carbapenemase gene(s) using a molecular method. If an MBL gene was confirmed, aztreonam-–avibactam minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) were reported back to submitters within 3 working days of receipt. Findings were reported to CDC using a REDCap database. Results: From March through August 2019, aztreonam–avibactam AST was requested for 32 clinical isolates across 16 states. These isolates included 15 Escherichia coli, 12 Klebsiella pneumoniae, 4 Enterobacter cloacae complex, and 1 Proteus mirabilis. Molecular detection identified 27 blaNDM-positive isolates, 2 blaOXA-48-like-positive isolates, and 3 blaOXA-48/blaNDM-positive isolates. Aztreonam-avibactam results were reported for 30 isolates; 5 displayed elevated aztreonam-avibactam MICs of 8/4 µg/mL (n = 4) or 16/4 µg/mL (n = 1). Results for 2 isolates were not reported because the isolates were MBL negative. Aztreonam-avibactam MICs ranged from 0.06/4 µg/mL to 16/4 µg/mL. The MIC50/MIC90 were 0.5/4 µg/mL and 8/4 µg/mL. Conclusions: In the absence of effective FDA-approved treatments and lack of available AST for novel antibiotic combinations, CDC’s provision of AST for aztreonam-avibactam among MBL-producing CPE, offered through the AR Lab Network, helps fill a critical gap to inform patient treatment decisions. To date, our in vitro data suggest that aztreonam–avibactam could be a promising drug combination for use against infections caused by MBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae.
Academic medical centers (AMCs) face challenges in conducting research among traditionally marginalized communities due to long-standing community mistrust. Evidence suggests that some AMC faculty and staff lack an understanding of the history of distrust and social determinants of health (SDH) affecting their communities. Wake Forest Clinical and Translational Science Institute Program in Community Engagement (PCE) aims to build bridges between communities and Wake Forest Baptist Health by equipping faculty, clinicians, administrators, and staff (FCAS) with a better understanding of SDH. The PCE collaborated with community partners to develop and implement community tours to improve cross-community AMC understanding and communication, enhance knowledge of SDH, and build awareness of community needs, priorities, and assets. Nine day-long tours have been conducted with 92 FCAS. Tours included routes through under-resourced neighborhoods and visits to community assets. Participant evaluations assessed program quality; 89% reported enhanced understanding of access-to-care barriers and how SDH affect health; 86% acknowledged the experience would improve future interactions with participants and patients; and 96% agreed they would recommend the tour to colleagues. This work supports the use of community tours as a strategy to improve cross-community AMC communication, build trust, and raise awareness of community needs, priorities, and assets.
Self-harm in young people is associated with later problems in social and emotional development. However, it is unknown whether self-harm in young women continues to be a marker of vulnerability on becoming a parent. This study prospectively describes the associations between pre-conception self-harm, maternal depressive symptoms and mother–infant bonding problems.
Methods
The Victorian Intergenerational Health Cohort Study (VIHCS) is a follow-up to the Victorian Adolescent Health Cohort Study (VAHCS) in Australia. Socio-demographic and health variables were assessed at 10 time-points (waves) from ages 14 to 35, including self-reported self-harm at waves 3–9. VIHCS enrolment began in 2006 (when participants were aged 28–29 years), by contacting VAHCS women every 6 months to identify pregnancies over a 7-year period. Perinatal depressive symptoms were assessed with the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale during the third trimester, and 2 and 12 months postpartum. Mother–infant bonding problems were assessed with the Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire at 2 and 12 months postpartum.
Results
Five hundred sixty-four pregnancies from 384 women were included. One in 10 women (9.7%) reported pre-conception self-harm. Women who reported self-harming in young adulthood (ages 20–29) reported higher levels of perinatal depressive symptoms and mother–infant bonding problems at all perinatal time points [perinatal depressive symptoms adjusted β = 5.40, 95% confidence interval (CI) 3.42–7.39; mother–infant bonding problems adjusted β = 7.51, 95% CI 3.09–11.92]. There was no evidence that self-harm in adolescence (ages 15–17) was associated with either perinatal outcome.
Conclusions
Self-harm during young adulthood may be an indicator of future vulnerability to perinatal mental health and mother–infant bonding problems.
This study investigated the characteristics of subjective memory complaints (SMCs) and their association with current and future cognitive functions.
Methods:
A cohort of 209 community-dwelling individuals without dementia aged 47–90 years old was recruited for this 3-year study. Participants underwent neuropsychological and clinical assessments annually. Participants were divided into SMCs and non-memory complainers (NMCs) using a single question at baseline and a memory complaints questionnaire following baseline, to evaluate differential patterns of complaints. In addition, comprehensive assessment of memory complaints was undertaken to evaluate whether severity and consistency of complaints differentially predicted cognitive function.
Results:
SMC and NMC individuals were significantly different on various features of SMCs. Greater overall severity (but not consistency) of complaints was significantly associated with current and future cognitive functioning.
Conclusions:
SMC individuals present distinctive features of memory complaints as compared to NMCs. Further, the severity of complaints was a significant predictor of future cognition. However, SMC did not significantly predict change over time in this sample. These findings warrant further research into the specific features of SMCs that may portend subsequent neuropathological and cognitive changes when screening individuals at increased future risk of dementia.
Miner et al.’s (2018) interpretation of gender inequity in STEM fields as a social-structural problem shifts the onus from “her” as the root of the problem to “us” as a society. However, despite noting the “even bleaker” outlook for women of color early on, the focal article lacks an intersectional focus, ignoring the differential experiences that exist between white women and women of color. Crenshaw's (1991) original work on intersectionality highlighted the fact that the experiences of women of color (WOC) often differ drastically from those of their White counterparts, and the subsequent body of intersectionality literature in a variety of fields reminds us that failing to include an intersectional perspective is an oversight we can no longer afford to make. With this in mind, we highlight the ways in which those at the intersection of both gender and racial minority status face a “double bind” (Malcom & Malcom, 2011), such that they are additionally disadvantaged by society's perceptions and expectations of the behavior of WOC.
Neither the range of potential results from genomic research that might be returned to participants nor future uses of stored data and biospecimens can be fully predicted at the outset of a study. Informed consent procedures require clear explanations about how and by whom decisions are made and what principles and criteria apply. To ensure trustworthy research governance, there is also a need for empirical studies incorporating public input to evaluate and strengthen these processes.
Introduction: The level of smoking cessation support across UK prisons is variable, with most offering pharmacological support, such as nicotine replacement therapy. However, with a complete smoking ban in prisons in England now imminent, additional standardised behavioural support is necessary to help offenders go smoke-free.
Aims: This study used the Behaviour Change Wheel to aim to develop the content of an online smoking cessation intervention for offenders, with consideration of their capability, motivation and opportunity for behaviour change.
Methods: This was an intervention development study. The Behaviour Change Wheel was used to map cognitive, behavioural, physiological and social targets for the intervention, onto appropriate intervention techniques for inclusion in the smoking cessation programme for offenders.
Results: Psychological capability, social opportunity and reflective and automatic motivation were identified through deductive thematic analysis as areas of change required to achieve smoking cessation. A total of 27 behavioural change techniques were chosen for this smoking cessation intervention and were mapped onto the Lifestyle Balance Model which provided the theoretical basis on which the components of the programme are conceptualised. This included strategies around increasing motivation to quit, anticipating smoking triggers, modifying smoking-related thoughts, regulating emotions, managing cravings, replacing smoking and rewarding nicotine abstinence and adopting a healthier lifestyle.
Conclusions: Through the utilisation of the Behaviour Change Wheel, the development process of this digital smoking cessation intervention was achieved. Further research is planned to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of this intervention and to explore how the programme is implemented in practice within prison settings.
We examined prospective associations between men's common mental disorders in the decades prior to offspring conception and subsequent paternal antenatal mental health problems. Data came from a prospective intergenerational cohort study which assessed common mental disorder nine times from age 14 to 29 years, and in the third trimester of subsequent pregnancies to age 35 years (N = 295 pregnancies to 214 men). Men with histories of adolescent and young adult common mental disorders were over four times more likely to experience antenatal mental health problems. Future research identifying modifiable perinatal factors that counteract preconception risk would provide further targets for intervention.
This chapter discusses findings obtained from interviews with 19 foreign-educated social workers who took part in a larger qualitative study aimed at understanding professional adaptation to social work practice in Canada. One of the research questions, explored in the context of the larger-scale project, was to investigate how social work experience and education in one country affects perspectives on social work practice in Canada – specifically, the assessment of client issues, social work intervention processes and interactions within the work environment. Following an iterative process whereby data were collected and then analysed in order to inform subsequent phases of data collection, we developed vignettes drawn from clinical cases. During this stage of data collection, we asked the participants to draw upon their knowledge, skills and values, and to reflect on their interpretations of each case's needs relative to the material and discursive conditions of their practice context, both in their country of origin and in Canada. This chapter analyses these data with a focus on knowledge transfer to internationally educated social workers who now work in Canada.
Transferability of social work
The profession of social work exists in a state of tension at the crux of several compelling forces: the familiar adage that practice is context-specific, referring to the need to understand the lived conditions of the people with whom we work, geopolitically and socioculturally; the substantive area of practice; and the notion of basic human needs that transcend time and space.
The capacity for social workers to transfer knowledge from one context to another is an important aspect of negotiating this tension, and is known to be an important aspect of professional adaptation overall (Remennick, 2003). Capacity to transfer knowledge may be facilitated by the fact that social work has access to ‘Global standards’ for practice (IFSW, 2012) and ‘Global standards for social work education and training’ (IASSW, 2004), which, for countries like Canada, might ensure a certain consistency in education and practice with other countries that adhere to these same principles through their professional associations and regulatory bodies. That said, not all countries adhere to these principles, and when they do so, they might have different standards of accreditation for social work practice and education. With regard to education, differences between countries at the level of standards or programme curricula are highly possible.
Canada prides itself on a reputation for being a welcoming and inclusive country, promoting collective pride in a multicultural mosaic wherein a diversity of ethnicities, cultures and religions coexist. It is a country that often enjoys positive international assessment, with its reported comfortable standard of living, solid social programmes, mix of urban and rural lifestyles, vast and spectacular natural beauty, and people often considered polite and consensus-driven. It is also a country with a growing density divide between urban growth and rural out-migration, an ageing demographic, and regional variability in population growth (Statistics Canada, 2012). This scenic land of opportunity has evident appeal to immigrants leaving their countries of origin for a variety of social, economic and political reasons.
The Canadian government, reciprocally, views the newcomer to Canada as providing an answer to sustaining the country's demographic and economic growth. Under both Liberal and Conservative Party leadership, the Canadian government has sought to liberalise its labour and trade markets through policies including the North America Free Trade Agreement and programmes such as those designated for temporary foreign workers, skilled trade workers and professional immigrants (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2014). These efforts are considered to have been successful. For example, the Migrant Integration Policy Index determined that Canadian immigrant workers and their families benefit from the third-best integration policies in the 31 countries considered, citing specific government efforts towards improving equal access in education and labour (Migrant Integration Policy Index III, 2011). The International Migration Outlook, published in 2013 by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), cites immigration as accounting for two thirds of Canada's population growth of 1.2%, primarily in the age bracket of 20–44 years, which is otherwise in decline. It is this cohort that contributes significantly to the labour force, grows families, buys homes and forms the basis of taxation revenue (OECD, 2013). Canada reached a record high of 281,000 new permanent residents to Canada in 2010, followed by 249,000 new permanent residents to Canada in 2011 (OECD, 2013). Further, employment for foreign-born Canadians in 2012 earned Canada the ranking of third-highest in the OECD (OECD, 2013). This government priority continues.
Curcumin therapy in animals has produced positive cognitive and behavioural outcomes; results of human trials, however, have been inconsistent. In this study, we report the results of a 12-month, randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind study that investigated the ability of a curcumin formulation to prevent cognitive decline in a population of community-dwelling older adults. Individuals (n 96) ingested either placebo or 1500 mg/d BiocurcumaxTM for 12 months. A battery of clinical and cognitive measures was administered at baseline and at the 6-month and 12-month follow-up assessments. A significant time×treatment group interaction was observed for the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (repeated-measures analysis; time×treatment; F=3·85, P<0·05). Subsequent analysis revealed that this association was driven by a decline in function of the placebo group at 6 months that was not observed in the curcumin treatment group. No differences were observed between the groups for all other clinical and cognitive measures. Our findings suggest that further longitudinal assessment is required to investigate changes in cognitive outcome measures, ideally in conjunction with biological markers of neurodegeneration.