Dental Health Utilization in Palau: Feasibility of an Oral Cancer Screening Program.

Background: Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the Western Pacific region. The prevalent tradition of chewing betel nut in Palau, an island nation in this region, is a risk factor in the development of oral cancer. Oral cancer is the fifth most common cancer in Palau, and the prognosis can be improved with early detection facilitated by visual inspection of the oral cavity by dentists.

Biomarkers of Development of Immunity and Allergic Diseases in Farming and Non-farming Lifestyle Infants: Design, Methods and 1 Year Outcomes in the "Zooming in to Old Order Mennonites" Birth Cohort Study.

Traditional farming lifestyle has been shown to be protective against asthma and allergic diseases. The individual factors that appear to be associated with this "farm-life effect" include consumption of unpasteurized farm milk and exposure to farm animals and stables. However, the biomarkers of the protective immunity and those associated with early development of allergic diseases in infancy remain unclear.

Traditional Farming Lifestyle in Old Older Mennonites Modulates Human Milk Composition.

Background: In addition to farming exposures in childhood, maternal farming exposures provide strong protection against allergic disease in their children; however, the effect of farming lifestyle on human milk (HM) composition is unknown.

Objective: This study aims to characterize the maternal immune effects of Old Order Mennonite (OOM) traditional farming lifestyle when compared with Rochester (ROC) families at higher risk for asthma and allergic diseases using HM as a proxy.

Methods: HM samples collected at median 2 months of lactation from 52 OOM and 29 ROC mothers were assayed for IgA and IgA antibodies, cytokines, endotoxin, HM oligosaccharides (HMOs), and targeted fatty acid (FA) metabolites.

The DIAMOND portal: An innovative platform for sharing translational research workforce training and assessment resources.

Although several initiatives have produced core competency domains for training the translational science workforce, training resources to help clinical research professionals advance these skills reside primarily within local departments or institutions. The Development, Implementation, and AssessMent of Novel Training in Domain (DIAMOND) project was designed to make this training more readily and publicly available. DIAMOND includes a digital portal to catalog publicly available educational resources and an ePortfolio to document professional development.

Infant gut microbiome is enriched with Bifidobacterium longum ssp. infantis in Old Order Mennonites with traditional farming lifestyle.

Background: Growing up on traditional, single-family farms is associated with protection against asthma in school age, but the mechanisms against early manifestations of atopic disease are largely unknown. We sought determine the gut microbiome and metabolome composition in rural Old Order Mennonite (OOM) infants at low risk and Rochester, NY urban/suburban infants at high risk for atopic diseases.

Methods: In a cohort of 65 OOM and 39 Rochester mother-infant pairs, 101 infant stool and 61 human milk samples were assessed by 16S rRNA gene sequencing for microbiome composition and qPCR to quantify Bifidobacterium spp.

Guidelines for Evaluating Clinical Research Training using Competency Assessments.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Effective training programs in clinical and translational research (CTR) are critical to the development of the research workforce.

A review of mentoring deaf and hard-of-hearing scholars.

Diversification of the scientific workforce usually focuses on recruitment and retention of women and underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities but often overlooks deaf and hard-of hearing (D/HH) persons. Usually classified as a disability group, such persons are often members of their own sociocultural linguistic minority and deserve unique support. For them, access to technical and social information is often hindered by communication- and/or language-centered barriers, but securing and using communication access services is just a start.

Mentoring Interventions for Underrepresented Scholars in Biomedical and Behavioral Sciences: Effects on Quality of Mentoring Interactions and Discussions.

Mentors rarely receive education about the unique needs of underrepresented scholars in the biomedical and behavioral sciences. We hypothesized that mentor-training and peer-mentoring interventions for these scholars would enrich the perceived quality and breadth of discussions between mentor-protégé dyads (i.e.

A Randomized Controlled Trial of Mentoring Interventions for Underrepresented Minorities.

Purpose: To conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effects of different mentoring interventions on the basic psychological need satisfaction of underrepresented minorities and women in academia.

Method: Participants were 150 mentor/protégé dyads from three academic medical centers and eight other colleges and universities in western and central New York, randomized from 2010 to 2013 into mentor training (using principles of self-determination theory); peer mentoring for protégés; mentor training and peer mentoring for protégés combined; or control/usual practice. Protégé participants were graduate students, fellows, and junior faculty who were from underrepresented groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, or disability.

Images of a Healthy Worksite: A Group-Randomized Trial for Worksite Weight Gain Prevention With Employee Participation in Intervention Design.

Objectives: We assessed the effects of a worksite multiple-component intervention addressing diet and physical activity on employees' mean body mass index (BMI) and the percentage of employees who were overweight or obese.

Methods: This group-randomized trial (n = 3799) was conducted at 10 worksites in the northeastern United States. Worksites were paired and allocated into intervention and control conditions.

A sustainable course in research mentoring.

In this report, we describe a six-year experience (2007-2012) in a single CTSA awardee institution on the development, implementation and evaluation of a hybrid online mentoring curriculum that is applicable to CTSA trainees at various levels (graduate, medical students, and junior faculty) of career training. The curriculum offers convenience, engagement, and financial sustainability. Overall, we found high levels of satisfaction with the curriculum and mentoring experience among both protégés and mentors.

Approaches to preparing young scholars for careers in interdisciplinary team science.

To succeed as a biomedical researcher, the ability to flourish in interdisciplinary teams of scientists is becoming ever more important. Institutions supported by the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs) from the National Institutes of Health have a specific mandate to educate the next generation of clinical and translational researchers. While they strive to advance integrated and interdisciplinary approaches to education and career development in clinical and translational science, general approaches and evaluation strategies may differ, as there is no single, universally accepted or standardized approach.

Identifying emerging research collaborations and networks: method development.

Clinical and translational research is a multidisciplinary, collaborative team process. To evaluate this process, we developed a method to document emerging research networks and collaborations in our medical center to describe their productivity and viability over time. Using an e-mail survey, sent to 1,620 clinical and basic science full- and part-time faculty members, respondents identified their research collaborators.

Clinical and translational scientist career success: metrics for evaluation.

Despite the increased emphasis on formal training in clinical and translational research and the growth in the number and scope of training programs over the past decade, the impact of training on research productivity and career success has yet to be fully evaluated at the institutional level. In this article, the Education Evaluation Working Group of the Clinical and Translational Science Award Consortium introduces selected metrics and methods associated with the assessment of key factors that affect research career success. The goals in providing this information are to encourage more consistent data collection across training sites, to foster more rigorous and systematic exploration of factors associated with career success, and to help address previously identified difficulties in program evaluation.

Lifestyle behaviors associated with exposures to endocrine disruptors.

Identifying and characterizing sources of exposure to phthalates and bisphenol A (BPA) have proved challenging due to the presence of multiple co-exposures resulting from a wide variety of home environments and lifestyles. We hypothesized that the consistent lifestyle of an Old Order Mennonite (OOM) community would provide an ideal setting in which to characterize sources of exposure to BPA and phthalates. We obtained urine samples from ten mid-term pregnant OOM women (ages-21-39) to determine concentrations of 9 phthalate metabolites and BPA and collected a self-reported survey of participants' household environment, product use, and lifestyle within a 48-h period prior to urine collection.

Promotion of self-management in friendship.

This study examines changes in self management abilities among women in a friendship enrichment programme. The study is based on the theory of self management of well-being which identifies relevant self-management skills as self-efficacy, taking initiative, investment behaviour and attaining variety in resources. An intervention group (N  =  60) and a control group (N = 55) were studied at a baseline, three months and nine months later.

Meeting the need to belong: predicting effects of a friendship enrichment program for older women.

Purpose: This study explores the effects of participation in a program designed to enrich friendship and reduce loneliness among women in later life. Several hypotheses based on the need to belong, socioemotional selectivity theory, and the social compensation model were tested.

Design And Methods: Study 1 involved two measurement points, one at the end of the program and the other 1-year later.