Harm Reduction Policy Support among Students at Two U.S. Universities.

The U.S. is undergoing an opioid overdose crisis.

Social Contagion and General Diffusion Models of Adolescent Religious Transitions: A Tutorial, and EMOSA Applications.

Epidemic Models of the Onset of Social Activities (EMOSA) describe behaviors that spread through social networks. Two social influence methods are represented, social contagion (one-to-one spread) and general diffusion (spread through cultural channels). Past models explain problem behaviors-smoking, drinking, sexuality, and delinquency.

A comparison of 2020 health policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

This paper compares health policy responses to COVID-19 in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom and United States of America (US) from January to November 2020, with the aim of facilitating cross-country learning. Evidence is taken from the COVID-19 Health System Response Monitor, a joint initiative of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, the WHO Regional Office for Europe, and the European Commission, which has documented country responses to COVID-19 using a structured template completed by country experts. We show all countries faced common challenges during the pandemic, including difficulties in scaling-up testing capacity, implementing timely and appropriate containment measures amid much uncertainty and overcoming shortages of health and social care workers, personal protective equipment and other medical technologies.

United States response to the COVID-19 pandemic, January-November 2020.

As of November 2020, the United States leads the world in confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases and deaths. Over the past 10 months, the United States has experienced three peaks in new cases, with the most recent spike in November setting new records. Inaction and the lack of a scientifically informed, unified response have contributed to the sustained spread of COVID-19 in the United States.

Thinking Together, Working Apart: Leveraging a Community of Practice to Facilitate Productive and Meaningful Remote Collaboration.

Considering the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, scholars were encouraged to cease collocated meetings. Many researchers have turned to remote collaboration to continue group-based projects. This paper focuses on the structure, processes, and outcomes that a group of physically distanced, embedded researchers used to collaborate across Canada to produce research outputs prior to the pandemic.

Making Contributions and Defining Success: An eDelphi Study of the Inaugural Cohort of CIHR Health System Impact Fellows, Host Supervisors and Academic Supervisors.

Context: The Health System Impact (HSI) Fellowship, an innovative training program developed by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research's Institute of Health Services and Policy Research, provides PhD-trained health researchers with an embedded, experiential learning opportunity within a health system organization.

Methods/design: An electronic Delphi (eDelphi) study was conducted to: (1) identify the criteria used to define success in the program and (2) elucidate the main contributions fellows made to their organizations. Through an iterative, two-round eDelphi process, perspectives were elicited from three stakeholder groups in the inaugural cohort of the HSI Fellowship: HSI fellows, host supervisors and academic supervisors.

Visual Analytic Tools and Techniques in Population Health and Health Services Research: Protocol for a Scoping Review.

Background: Visual analytics (VA) promotes the understanding of data using visual, interactive techniques and using analytic and visual engines. The analytic engine includes machine learning and other automated techniques, whereas common visual outputs include flow maps and spatiotemporal hotspots for studying service gaps and disease distribution. The principal objective of this scoping review is to examine the state of science on VA and the various tools, strategies, and frameworks used in population health and health services research (HSR).

A Coordinated Multi-study Analysis of the Longitudinal Association Between Handgrip Strength and Cognitive Function in Older Adults.

Objective: Handgrip strength, an indicator of overall muscle strength, has been found to be associated with slower rate of cognitive decline and decreased risk for cognitive impairment and dementia. However, evaluating the replicability of associations between aging-related changes in physical and cognitive functioning is challenging due to differences in study designs and analytical models. A multiple-study coordinated analysis approach was used to generate new longitudinal results based on comparable construct-level measurements and identical statistical models and to facilitate replication and research synthesis.

A Multi-study Coordinated Meta-analysis of Pulmonary Function and Cognition in Aging.

Background: Substantial research is dedicated to understanding the aging-related dynamics among individual differences in level, change, and variation across physical and cognitive abilities. Evaluating replicability and synthesizing these findings has been limited by differences in measurements and samples, and by study design and statistical analyses confounding between-person differences with within-person changes. In this article, we conducted a coordinated analysis and summary meta-analysis of new results on the aging-related dynamics linking pulmonary function and cognitive performance.

"Real-World" De-Identification of High-Dimensional Transactional Health Datasets.

This paper presents a framework for addressing data access challenges associated with secondary use of high-dimensional transactional datasets that have been extracted from electronic health/medical records (EHRs). These datasets are subject to the data de-identification "curse of dimensionality" [1] which manifests as substantial challenges to preserving analytical integrity of data contents when high-dimensional datasets must be de-identified and deemed free of Personal Information (PI) prior to disclosure. A large array of methods can achieve this objective - for low dimensional datasets.

Transitions across cognitive states and death among older adults in relation to education: A multistate survival model using data from six longitudinal studies.

Introduction: This study examines the role of educational attainment, an indicator of cognitive reserve, on transitions in later life between cognitive states (normal Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), mild MMSE impairment, and severe MMSE impairment) and death.

Methods: Analysis of six international longitudinal studies was performed using a coordinated approach. Multistate survival models were used to estimate the transition patterns via different cognitive states.