Publications by authors named "Bloomfield K"

Introduction Polypharmacy increases the risk of medicines-related harm, including falls, in older adults. Falls have a significant impact on quality of life and health system resources. Little is known about medicine use in retirement village (RV) residents in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Nonstructural carbohydrates (NSC) in leaves relate to photosynthesis and respiration, influencing plant strategies.
  • A study involving 114 species showed that total NSC concentrations varied widely but generally didn't correlate with leaf gas exchange or economic traits.
  • However, species with higher photosynthesis had shorter NSC residence times, indicating that daily carbon gain is mainly exported rather than stored.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

An approach to improving radiation use efficiency (RUE) in wheat is to screen for variability in rates of leaf respiration in darkness (Rdark). We used a high-throughput system to quantify variation in Rdark among a diverse range of spring wheat genotypes (301 lines) grown in two countries (Mexico and Australia) and two seasons (2017 and 2018), and in doing so quantify the relative importance of genotype (G) and environment (E) in influencing variations in leaf Rdark. Through careful design, residual (unexplained) variation represented less than 10% of the total observed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The aim of this study was to investigate: (1) whether self-reported acute alcohol-related consequences among adolescents in the Nordic countries have declined in concert with the decline in alcohol consumption; (2) whether the relationship between alcohol consumption and alcohol-related consequences has strengthened; and (3) whether the decline in alcohol-related consequences can be attributed to the decline in alcohol consumption. Data are from the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) cross-sectional surveys in 2007, 2011 and 2015. Participants were students aged 15-16 years in 2007 (n = 16,035), 2011 (n = 14,765) and 2015 (n = 13,517).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Housing quality has significant impact on the wider determinants of health and quality of life (QoL). Retirement villages are considered age-friendly accommodation for community-dwelling older people, offering a variable range of services and supports. We wished to explore the relationship among frailty, QoL, and resilience in older people residing in retirement villages.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Prior research has shown that using lifetime abstainers as the reference group to examine the association between alcohol use and health-related consequences has several disadvantages. The aim of the present study was to examine the consistency of self-reported lifetime abstention and never-binge drinking, respectively, using national, longitudinal data collected in 2019 and 2020. Additionally, the prevalence of alcohol-related morbidity among lifetime abstainers was examined by linking survey data to alcohol-related morbidity data in a national patient register.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aims And Objectives: To identify the reasons and/or risk factors for hospital admission and/or emergency department attendance for older (≥60 years) residents of long-term care facilities.

Background: Older adults' use of acute services is associated with significant financial and social costs. A global understanding of the reasons for the use of acute services may allow for early identification and intervention, avoid clinical deterioration, reduce the demand for health services and improve quality of life.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Alcohol use among adolescents in Nordic countries has decreased significantly, with the exception of Denmark, while cannabis use remains low and stable overall.
  • Data analyzed from a survey of 15- to 16-year-olds from 2003 to 2019 indicates a decline in total substance use occasions among adolescents.
  • The study suggests that cannabis use is increasingly substituting or co-occurring with alcohol use, supporting the 'substitution' and 'hardening' hypotheses, but not the idea that both substances are declining in parallel.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: An increasing proportion of older people live in Retirement Villages ('villages'). This population cites support for health-care issues as one reason for relocation to villages. Here, we examine whether relocation to villages is associated with a decline in hospitalisations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Effective violence prevention interventions are largely inaccessible to trans women and trans femmes, despite clear evidence that disproportionate exposure to experiences of victimization is a social determinant of health disparity. Community-engaged implementation science paradigms hold promise for guiding research psychologists in the delivery of evidence-based programming to address drivers of health disparities impacting trans women and trans femmes. Unfortunately, guidance on how to engage in a process of real-time self-reflection to note where implementation is failing in its goals to establish reciprocal and sustainable (i.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction Physical activity (PA) in older people is associated with improved morbidity and mortality outcomes. Increasing numbers of older people are choosing to live in retirement villages, many of which promote themselves as providing opportunities for activity. Aim To explore the characteristics of PA village residents were undertaking and the associated individual and village factors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Adjusting for demographics and standard drinking measures, High Intensity Drinking (HID), indexed by the maximum quantity consumed in a single day in the past 12 months, may be valuable in predicting alcohol dependence other harms across high and low income societies. The data consisted of 17 surveys of adult (15,460 current drinkers; 71% of total surveyed) in Europe (3), the Americas (8), Africa (2), and Asia/Australia (4). Gender-disaggregated country analyses used Poison regression to investigate whether HID (8-11, 12-23, 24+ drinks) was incrementally influential, beyond log drinking volume and HED (Heavy Episodic Drinking, or 5+ days), in predicting drinking problems, adjusting for age and marital status.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Leaf dry mass per unit area (LMA), carboxylation capacity, and leaf nitrogen are crucial traits for understanding plant ecology and ecosystem models, but there’s no clear agreement on how to regulate or model them.* -
  • This study confirmed that leaf nitrogen can be accurately predicted from LMA and carboxylation capacity at 25°C, with global variations in these traits linked to climate factors, as proposed by leaf-level optimality theory.* -
  • The research found that LMA is the strongest predictor of leaf nitrogen, explaining significant portions of global variation, while soil type affected predictions, suggesting that leaf nitrogen should be viewed as a result of environmental optimization rather than a cause.*
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unlabelled: Proliferation of COVID-19 research underscored the need for improved awareness among investigators, research staff and bedside clinicians of the operational details of clinical studies. The objective was to describe the genesis, goals, participation, procedures, and outcomes of two research operations committees in an academic ICU during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Design: Two-phase, single-center multistudy cohort.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Gross primary production (GPP) by terrestrial ecosystems is a key quantity in the global carbon cycle. The instantaneous controls of leaf-level photosynthesis are well established, but there is still no consensus on the mechanisms by which canopy-level GPP depends on spatial and temporal variation in the environment. The standard model of photosynthesis provides a robust mechanistic representation for C species; however, additional assumptions are required to "scale up" from leaf to canopy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

"Least-cost theory" posits that C plants should balance rates of photosynthetic water loss and carboxylation in relation to the relative acquisition and maintenance costs of resources required for these activities. Here we investigated the dependency of photosynthetic traits on climate and soil properties using a new Australia-wide trait dataset spanning 528 species from 67 sites. We tested the hypotheses that plants on relatively cold or dry sites, or on relatively more fertile sites, would typically operate at greater CO drawdown (lower ratio of leaf internal to ambient CO , C :C ) during light-saturated photosynthesis, and at higher leaf N per area (N ) and higher carboxylation capacity (V ) for a given rate of stomatal conductance to water vapour, g .

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aims: Frailty within the older adult rehabilitation population is relatively under-explored. We aimed to derive a frailty index (FI) from electronic routinely collected data to determine frailty prevalence, and to assess its ability to predict adverse outcomes in the rehabilitation setting.

Methods: A FI was derived and retrospectively applied to electronically recorded health information of older adults admitted for inpatient rehabilitation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Tropical forests take up more carbon (C) from the atmosphere per annum by photosynthesis than any other type of vegetation. Phosphorus (P) limitations to C uptake are paramount for tropical and subtropical forests around the globe. Yet the generality of photosynthesis-P relationships underlying these limitations are in question, and hence are not represented well in terrestrial biosphere models.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Aims: Most studies validating the alcohol use disorders identification test (AUDIT) have either assessed its factor structure and/or test-retest reliability or used diagnostic interviews as validators of current alcohol use disorders. The aim of the present study was to determine whether AUDIT and AUDIT-Consumption (AUDIT-C) scores are associated with subsequent risk of hospital admission for alcohol-related disorders and diseases (ARDDs).

Design: We used a historical cohort study.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The retirement village (RV) population is a growing one, with many residents having unmet healthcare needs. Despite this, there is a relative paucity of research in the RV community. We previously performed a randomised controlled trial (RCT) of a multidisciplinary (MD) nurse-led community intervention versus usual care within 33 RVs in Auckland, New Zealand.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: The year 2020 was marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Policy responses to COVID-19 affected social and economic life and the availability of alcohol. Previous research has shown an overall small decrease in alcohol use in Denmark in the first months of the pandemic.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chronic pain is common in older people. However, little is known about how pain is experienced in residents of retirement villages ('villages'), and how pain intensity and associations are experienced in relation to characteristics of residents and village living. We thus aimed to examine pain levels, prevalence and associated factors in village residents.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: As people age, they are more likely to require support to maintain activities of daily living. Referral for formal assessment of need (assessed using the 'international Resident Assessment Instrument' [interRAI]) is the first step to access publicly funded services in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). It is unclear whether ethnic access inequities present in other areas of the NZ health system occur in this referral process.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF