Background: Public health nurses (PHNs) are often a first point of contact for postpartum individuals seeking mental health support, but report limited training related to mental health.
Purpose: To determine whether a two-day cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-based training program focused on postpartum maternal mental health can improve PHN perceptions of their ability to deliver CBT techniques, their confidence working with distressed clients, and with managing client resistance to treatment recommendations.
Methods: A convenience sample of 45 PHNs working in the Family Health Division of Niagara Region Public Health in Ontario, Canada were assessed before and after they received a two-day CBT-based training program.
Patients with B-cell lymphomas have altered cellular components of vaccine responses due to malignancy and therapy, and the optimal timing of vaccination relative to therapy remains unknown. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 vaccines created an opportunity for new insights in vaccine timing because patients were challenged with a novel antigen across multiple phases of treatment. We studied serologic messenger RNA vaccine response in retrospective and prospective cohorts with lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia, paired with clinical and research immune parameters.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe translational research community, in general, and the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) community, in particular, share the vision of repurposing EHRs for research that will improve the quality of clinical practice. Many members of these communities are also aware that electronic health records (EHRs) suffer limitations of data becoming poorly structured, biased, and unusable out of original context. This creates obstacles to the continuity of care, utility, quality improvement, and translational research.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRates of postpartum depression (PPD) increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, further highlighting the need for effective, accessible treatments for PPD. While public health nurses (PHNs) can be trained to help treat PPD, it is not known if they can effectively deliver evidence-based psychotherapies online to those with PPD. Mothers (n = 159) living in Ontario, Canada, with an Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) score ≥ 10 and an infant < 12 months of age were randomized to receive a 9-week group cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) intervention delivered by PHNs over Zoom, between October 2020 and November 2021.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChanges in infant night waking during the first year of life are associated with individual (e.g., prematurity) and family (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe examined antibody and memory B cell responses longitudinally for ∼9-10 months after primary 2-dose SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination and 3 months after a 3rd dose. Antibody decay stabilized between 6 and 9 months, and antibody quality continued to improve for at least 9 months after 2-dose vaccination. Spike- and RBD-specific memory B cells remained durable over time, and 40%-50% of RBD-specific memory B cells simultaneously bound the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines have shown remarkable efficacy, especially in preventing severe illness and hospitalization. However, the emergence of several variants of concern and reports of declining antibody levels have raised uncertainty about the durability of immune memory following vaccination. In this study, we longitudinally profiled both antibody and cellular immune responses in SARS-CoV-2 naïve and recovered individuals from pre-vaccine baseline to 6 months post-mRNA vaccination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines have shown remarkable clinical efficacy, but questions remain about the nature and kinetics of T cell priming. We performed longitudinal antigen-specific T cell analyses on healthy SARS-CoV-2-naive and recovered individuals prior to and following mRNA prime and boost vaccination. Vaccination induced rapid antigen-specific CD4 T cell responses in naive subjects after the first dose, whereas CD8 T cell responses developed gradually and were variable in magnitude.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNovel mRNA vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 have been authorized for emergency use. Despite their efficacy in clinical trials, data on mRNA vaccine-induced immune responses are mostly limited to serological analyses. Here, we interrogated antibody and antigen-specific memory B cells over time in 33 SARS-CoV-2 naïve and 11 SARS-CoV-2 recovered subjects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNovel mRNA vaccines for SARS-CoV2 have been authorized for emergency use and are currently being administered to millions of individuals worldwide. Despite their efficacy in clinical trials, there is limited data on vaccine-induced immune responses in individuals with a prior SARS-CoV2 infection compared to SARS-CoV2 naïve subjects. Moreover, how mRNA vaccines impact the development of antibodies as well as memory B cells in COVID-19 experienced versus COVID-19 naïve subjects remains poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Med Inform Decis Mak
October 2020
Background: The symbiotic interactions that occur between humans and organisms in our environment have a tremendous impact on our health. Recently, there has been a surge in interest in understanding the complex relationships between the microbiome and human health and host immunity against microbial pathogens, among other things. To collect and manage data about these interactions and their complexity, scientists will need ontologies that represent symbiotic interactions as they occur in reality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The pediatric primary care office is an ideal setting to address children's socioemotional-behavioral health. However, research is limited regarding parents' experiences and satisfaction in sharing mental-health concerns about their children during well-child visits.
Method: One thousand seven hundred sixty-three parents and caregivers with children aged 3-17 years completed an online survey that addressed mental-health-related communication.
Background: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) cancer patients experience substantial health disparities, including poorer overall health and lower satisfaction with their cancer care than their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts, which may be due in part to a lack of culturally competent providers. To address these disparities, a web-based LGBT cultural competency training tailored to oncologists was developed by an interdisciplinary team of scientists, LGBT cancer survivors, cultural competency experts, oncologists, a web designer, and an instructional designer.
Methods: Oncologists (n = 44) were recruited from 3 academic cancer centers in Florida.
Objective: Despite substantial LGBT cancer health disparities, there are no LGBT cultural competency trainings tailored for oncologists. Here we describe the systematic development of a web-based, oncology-focused LGBT cultural competency training.
Methods: A literature review regarding LGBT cancer outcomes and competency training was conducted to identify potential training content.
Proceedings (IEEE Int Conf Bioinformatics Biomed)
November 2017
Obesity has been linked to several types of cancer. Access to adequate health information activates people's participation in managing their own health, which ultimately improves their health outcomes. Nevertheless, the existing online information about the relationship between obesity and cancer is heterogeneous and poorly organized.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProceedings (IEEE Int Conf Bioinformatics Biomed)
December 2016
Obesity is associated with increased risks of various types of cancer, as well as a wide range of other chronic diseases. On the other hand, access to health information activates patient participation, and improve their health outcomes. However, existing online information on obesity and its relationship to cancer is heterogeneous ranging from pre-clinical models and case studies to mere hypothesis-based scientific arguments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The Drug Ontology (DrOn) is an OWL2-based representation of drug products and their ingredients, mechanisms of action, strengths, and dose forms. We originally created DrOn for use cases in comparative effectiveness research, primarily to identify historically complete sets of United States National Drug Codes (NDCs) that represent packaged drug products, by the ingredient(s), mechanism(s) of action, and so on contained in those products. Although we had designed DrOn from the outset to carefully distinguish those entities that have a therapeutic indication from those entities that have a molecular mechanism of action, we had not previously represented in DrOn any particular therapeutic indication.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOrganizational structures of healthcare organizations has increasingly become a focus of medical research. In the CAFÉ project we aim to provide a web-service enabling ontology-driven comparison of the organizational characteristics of trauma centers and trauma systems. Trauma remains one of the biggest challenges to healthcare systems worldwide.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn 2009, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) established the Pediatric Terminology Harmonization Initiative to establish a core library of terms to facilitate the acquisition and sharing of knowledge between pediatric clinical research, practice, and safety reporting. A coalition of partners established a Pediatric Terminology Adverse Event Working Group in 2013 to develop a specific terminology relevant to international pediatric adverse event (AE) reporting. Pediatric specialists with backgrounds in clinical care, research, safety reporting, or informatics, supported by biomedical terminology experts from the National Cancer Institute's Enterprise Vocabulary Services participated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The Ontology of Medically Related Social Entities (OMRSE) was initially developed in 2011 to provide a framework for modeling demographic data in Resource Description Framework/Web Ontology Language. It is built upon the Basic Formal Ontology and conforms to Open Biomedical Ontologies Foundry's best practices.
Description: We report recent development of OMRSE which includes representations of organizations, roles, facilities, demographic data, enrollment in insurance plans, and data about socio-economic indicators.