What Obstructs Health Policy Implementation? A Multi-Method Qualitative Case Study of the Delayed Deployment of Community Pharmacies in Ireland's National COVID-19 Vaccination Programme.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there were months of delay in deploying community pharmacies for the National COVID-19 Vaccination Programme in Ireland. We aimed to explore what may have accounted for this delay between 15th December 2020 (publication of policies) and 14th June 2021 (commencement of community pharmacy-based vaccination). We carried out a multi-method qualitative case study that involved engaging with 11 stakeholders, reviewing 246 documents, and conducting semi-structured interviews with 11 policy elites.

Drugs in Development to Manage Acute Pain.

Acute pain, defined as short-term pain arising from injury or other noxious stimuli, affects patient outcomes, quality of life, and healthcare costs. Safe, effective treatment of acute pain is essential in preventing increased morbidity, mortality, and the transition to chronic pain. In this review, we explore some of the latest therapeutic agents, formulations, combinations, and administration routes of drugs emerging in clinical practice in the USA for the treatment of acute pain.

PCP and Septins govern the polarized organization of the actin cytoskeleton during convergent extension.

Convergent extension (CE) requires the coordinated action of the planar cell polarity (PCP) proteins and the actin cytoskeleton, but this relationship remains incompletely understood. For example, PCP signaling orients actomyosin contractions, yet actomyosin is also required for the polarized localization of PCP proteins. Moreover, the actin-regulating Septins play key roles in actin organization and are implicated in PCP and CE in frogs, mice, and fish but execute only a subset of PCP-dependent cell behaviors.

New tools reveal PCP-dependent polarized mechanics in the cortex and cytoplasm of single cells during convergent extension.

Unlabelled: Understanding biomechanics of biological systems is crucial for unraveling complex processes like tissue morphogenesis. However, current methods for studying cellular mechanics are limited by the need for specialized equipment and often provide limited spatiotemporal resolution. Here we introduce two new techniques, Tension by Transverse Fluctuation (TFlux) and microrheology, that overcome these limitations.