Publications by authors named "Amanda Hicks"

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.

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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.

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Article Synopsis
  • Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), like neglect, have been linked to increased risks during the COVID-19 pandemic, making it crucial for public health planning to address these issues.
  • The study involved two online surveys among Ontario's public health unit staff to gather and prioritize initiatives for ACEs-informed pandemic recovery, resulting in a final list of 13 actionable options.
  • A strong response rate (76% in the first survey and 79% in the follow-up) demonstrated good engagement, allowing Public Health Ontario to identify key areas under their mandate such as data support, evidence synthesis, and collaboration.
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The 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.

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Rates 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.

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Changes in infant night waking during the first year of life are associated with individual (e.g., prematurity) and family (e.

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We 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.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how mRNA vaccines influence antibody and memory B cell responses over time after the initial two doses and a subsequent third dose.
  • Findings show that antibody levels stabilize around 6-9 months after the second dose, while their quality continues to improve, and memory B cells remain stable and effective against multiple variants.
  • The research indicates that pre-3rd dose memory B cell levels can enhance antibody levels after vaccination, but high existing antibody levels may hinder further immune response enhancements from additional doses.
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  • Scientists studied how long the body remembers the COVID-19 vaccine effects after people got the mRNA shot.
  • They found that while the antibodies (the fighters against the virus) went down over time, most people still had some detectable antibodies after 6 months.
  • The vaccines also helped create strong memory cells that can recognize different virus versions, showing that the body has good defenses against COVID-19 for at least 6 months after getting vaccinated.
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SARS-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.

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SARS-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.

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Novel 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.

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Novel 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.

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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.

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Introduction: 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Background: 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.

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Organizational 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.

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In 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.

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Background: 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.

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