Antimicrob Steward Healthc Epidemiol
March 2024
Inappropriate antibiotic use may lead to increased adverse drug events (ADEs). This study assessed whether an antimicrobial stewardship recommendation to discontinue antibiotics in patients with low likelihood for bacterial infection reduced antibiotic duration and antibiotic-associated ADEs. At a 4-hospital system, hospitalized adult patients receiving empiric antibiotics for suspected infection were identified between May 2, 2016 and June 30, 2018.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: This study tested whether a mindfulness-based intervention for obesity that included components aimed at emotion regulation and mindful eating improved psychological outcomes including stress, anxiety, positive emotion, and depression, during the intervention period and at longer-term follow-up.
Methods: Adults with obesity (=194) were randomized to a 5.5-month diet-exercise weight loss intervention with or without mindfulness training focused on emotion regulation and mindful eating.
Shared decision making is a collaborative process intended to develop a treatment plan that considers both the patient's preferences and the health provider's medical recommendations. It is one approach to reducing healthcare disparities by improving patient-provider communication and subsequent health outcomes. This study examines shared decision making about HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with Black transgender women in Chicago, Illinois, USA, given high prevalence of HIV and disparities in PrEP use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBroadband spectrograms from surface ships are employed in convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to predict the seabed type, ship speed, and closest point of approach (CPA) range. Three CNN architectures of differing size and depth are trained on different representations of the spectrograms. Multitask learning is employed; the seabed type prediction comes from classification, and the ship speed and CPA range are estimated via regression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile source localization and seabed classification are often approached separately, the convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in this paper simultaneously predict seabed type, source depth and speed, and the closest point of approach. Different CNN architectures are applied to mid-frequency tonal levels from a moving source recorded on a 16-channel vertical line array (VLA). After training each CNN on synthetic data, a statistical representation of predictions on test cases is presented.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: People of color and lower socioeconomic groups have higher obesity prevalence, lose less weight compared with Whites and higher socioeconomic groups, and are underrepresented in randomized controlled trials of mindfulness-based interventions. We examined whether mindfulness approaches reduce disparities in weight loss interventions.
Methods: We analyzed data from a randomized controlled trial of 194 participants with obesity (41% participants of color, 36% without college degree) comparing a 5.
Objective: This study aimed to adapt the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) questionnaire for younger respondents.
Method: The language of the MAIA was revised and children aged 7-10 years (n = 212) and adolescents aged 11-17 years (n = 217) completed the questionnaire.
Results: The original eight-factor model was tested for fit using confirmatory factor analysis.
Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol
September 2021
Background: The weighted incidence syndromic combination antibiogram (WISCA) is an antimicrobial stewardship tool that utilizes electronic medical record data to provide real-time clinical decision support regarding empiric antibiotic prescription in the hospital setting. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of WISCA utilization for empiric antibiotic prescription on hospital length of stay (LOS).
Methods: We performed a crossover randomized controlled trial of the WISCA tool at 4 hospitals.
Objective: Mindfulness-based interventions have been found to reduce psychological and physiological stress reactivity. In obesity, however, stress reactivity is complex, with studies showing both exaggerated and blunted physiological responses to stressors. A nuanced view of stress reactivity is the "challenge and threat" framework, which defines adaptive and maladaptive patterns of psychophysiological stress reactivity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFShared decision-making is a strategy to achieve health equity by strengthening patient-provider relationships and improve health outcomes. There is a paucity of research examining these factors among patients who identify as sexual or gender minorities and racial/ethnic minorities. Through intrapersonal, interpersonal and societal lenses, this project evaluates the relationship between intersectionality and shared decision-making around anal cancer screening in Black gay and bisexual men, given their disproportionate rates of anal cancer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInteroception, the process by which the nervous system senses, interprets, and integrates signals originating from within the body, has become major research topic for mental health and in particular for mind-body interventions. Interoceptive awareness here is defined as the conscious level of interoception with its multiple dimensions potentially accessible to self-report. The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) is an 8-scale state-trait questionnaire with 32 items to measure multiple dimensions of interoception by self-report and was published in November 2012.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci
February 2020
Objectives: To test effects of the Community of Voices choir intervention on the health, well-being, and health care costs of racial/ethnically diverse older adults.
Method: Twelve Administration-on-Aging-supported senior centers were cluster randomized into two groups: the intervention group started the choir immediately and a wait-list control group began the choir 6 months later. The choir program was designed for community-dwelling adults aged 60 years and older.
Objective: The aim of the study was to determine, within a weight loss clinical trial for obesity, the impact of intervention arm, weight change, and weight loss maintenance on telomere length (TL).
Methods: Adults (N = 194) with a body mass index between 30 and 45 were randomized to a 5.5-month weight loss program with (n = 100) or without (n = 94) mindfulness training and identical diet-exercise guidelines.
Objective: Evidence links depression and stress to more rapid progression of HIV-1 disease. We conducted a randomized controlled trial to test whether an intervention aimed at improving stress management and emotion regulation, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), would improve immunological (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To describe the recruitment and baseline results of the Community of Voices study that aims to examine the effect of a community choir intervention on the health and well-being of older adults from diverse racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Method: Using community-based participatory research methods, we recruited adults age 60 and over from 12 Administration on Aging-supported senior centers in San Francisco into a 2-arm cluster-randomized controlled trial of the community choir intervention. Multiple outreach methods were used.
While negative emotions are associated with risk behaviors and risk avoidance among people with HIV, emerging evidence indicates that negative self-conscious emotions, those evoked by self-reflection or self-evaluation (e.g., shame, guilt, and embarrassment), may differentially influence health-risk behaviors by producing avoidance or, conversely, pro-social behaviors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInfect Control Hosp Epidemiol
October 2017
OBJECTIVE To examine trends in Staphylococcus aureus infections in adults and children at a single academic center in 2006-2014. DESIGN Retrospective cohort study. SETTING Inpatient, outpatient, and emergency department settings in a private, tertiary referral center.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRemarkable advances have been made in the treatment of HIV. Despite progress in reducing perinatal HIV transmission, there is a growing number of adolescents and emerging adults with HIV who will require transfer of care from pediatric to adult providers. Adolescents with HIV have poorer retention in care and viral suppression compared to other age groups with HIV.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: We conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine whether IRISS (Intervention for those Recently Informed of their Seropositive Status), a positive affect skills intervention, improved positive emotion, psychological health, physical health, and health behaviors in people newly diagnosed with HIV.
Method: One-hundred and fifty-nine participants who had received an HIV diagnosis in the past 3 months were randomized to a 5-session, in-person, individually delivered positive affect skills intervention or an attention-matched control condition.
Results: For the primary outcome of past-day positive affect, the group difference in change from baseline over time did not reach statistical significance (p = .
Background: The novel group treatment program Training for Awareness, Resilience, and Action (TARA) was developed to target specific mechanisms based on neuroscience findings in adolescent depression and framed within the National Institute of Mental Health Research Domain Criteria. TARA contains training of autonomic and emotional self-regulation, interoceptive awareness, relational skills, and value-based committed action.
Methods: We performed a single-arm trial to test the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of TARA in reducing depression and anxiety levels and assessed whether the specific targeted domains of function reflected the hypothesized symptom change.
Background And Objective: Sleep disturbance is a common problem among adults with obesity. Mindfulness interventions have been shown to improve sleep quality in various populations but have not been investigated in adults with obesity. The aim of this study was to compare the effects of a mindfulness-based weight-loss intervention with an active control on self-reported sleep quality among adults with obesity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Enhancing patient-centered care and shared decision making (SDM) has become a national priority as a means of engaging patients in their care, improving treatment adherence, and enhancing health outcomes. Relatively little is known about the healthcare experiences or shared decision making among racial/ethnic minorities who also identify as being LGBT. The purpose of this paper is to understand how race, sexual orientation and gender identity can simultaneously influence SDM among African-American LGBT persons, and to propose a model of SDM between such patients and their healthcare providers.
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