Community Oral Health Initiative: Driving value-based transformation in North Carolina.

CareQuest Institute for Oral Health's mission is to improve the oral health of all. One way to achieve this is through programmatic initiatives, which train dental clinics to provide equitable, integrated and accessible care for their communities. The Community Oral Health Transformation (COrHT) Initiative, allowed CareQuest Institute to collaborate with the North Carolina Oral Health Collaboration (NCOHC) and Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of North Carolina Foundation to implement and support the initiative in North Carolina.

Benefits of the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) Pathway With Quadratus Lumborum Blocks for Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery Patients: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

Study Objective: This study aimed to determine the effect of the implementation of the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocol among patients receiving minimally invasive gynecologic surgery.

Design And Setting: This retrospective cohort study was performed in a tertiary care hospital.

Patients: A total of 328 females who underwent minimally invasive gynecologic surgeries requiring at least one overnight stay at Keck Hospital of University of Southern California (USC), California, USA, from 2016 to 2020 were included in this study.

Side-to-end reanastomosis after low-anterior resection (STELAR): Outcomes, feasibility, and description of procedure performed by a gynecologic oncology service.

Background And Objectives: Low anterior rectosigmoid resection for a gynecologic disease is usually performed in concert with other procedures and can result in significant morbidity should anastomotic complication occur. This study examined surgical outcomes of side-to-end reanastomosis after low anterior resection (STELAR) performed by gynecologic oncology service.

Methods: This is a case series examining consecutive patients who underwent STELAR for gynecologic indications by a single gynecologic oncology group from 2009 to 2018.

Countervailing powers in the labor room: The doula-doctor relationship in the United States.

How do health professionals with fundamentally different philosophies toward health, and different status levels, manage power in their work relationships? This paper argues that taking a negotiated order interactionist approach, which contends that the social order shapes behavior but is continuously negotiated through social interactions, and synthesizing it with a countervailing powers perspective can yield insight into the power dynamics between health professionals. It focuses on the birth field, with attention to the relationship between two very different types of birth professionals: obstetricians and doulas. Unlike doctors, who maintain a dominant place in health care and subscribe to a biomedical perspective of birth, doulas hold a low-status position and take a holistic approach toward birth, which may cause conflict in the labor room.

Pregnancy and birth in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic: The views of doulas.

Background: Much of the emerging research on the effects of SARS-CoV-2 disease (COVID-19) on pregnant people and their infants has been clinical, devoting little attention to how the pandemic has affected families navigating pregnancy and birth. This study examined the perspectives of doulas, or nonclinical labor support professionals, on how pregnancy and birth experiences and maternal health care delivery systems changed in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews using open-ended questions were conducted over the phone with 15 birth doulas.

Inhibition of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase induces synthetic lethality in BRIP1 deficient ovarian epithelial cells.

Objective: Pathogenic variations in the homologous recombination (HR) gene, BRCA1 interacting protein C-terminal helicase 1 (BRIP1) increase the risk for ovarian cancer. PARP inhibitors (PARPi) exert a synthetic lethal effect in BRCA-mutated ovarian cancers. Effective HR requires cooperation between BRCA1 and BRIP1; therefore, BRIP1-incompetancy may predict vulnerability to synthetic lethality.

The rapid adoption of opportunistic salpingectomy at the time of hysterectomy for benign gynecologic disease in the United States.

Background: Mounting evidence for the role of distal fallopian tubes in the pathogenesis of epithelial ovarian cancer has led to opportunistic salpingectomy being increasingly performed at the time of benign gynecologic surgery. Opportunistic salpingectomy has now been recommended as best practice in the United States to reduce future risk of ovarian cancer even in low-risk women. Preliminary analyses have suggested that performance of opportunistic salpingectomy is increasing.

Toward an institutional perspective on social capital health interventions: lay community health workers as social capital builders.

This article argues that social capital health research should move beyond a mere focus on social cohesion and network perspectives to integrate an institutional approach into the development of social capital health interventions. An institutional perspective, which is unique in its emphasis on linking social capital in addition to the bonding and bridging forms, contextualises social capital, allowing researchers to confront the complexity of social relationships. This perspective allows for the construction of interventions that draw on the resources of diverse actors, particularly the state.

Identification of a novel diagnostic gene expression signature to discriminate uterine leiomyoma from leiomyosarcoma.

Leiomyosarcomas are rare, aggressive tumors, which exhibit a poor prognosis regardless of stage. Pre-operative diagnosis can be difficult as leiomyosarcoma can mimic features of the more common, benign uterine leiomyoma. The goal of this study was to identify specific molecular markers to discriminate between uterine leiomyosarcomas and leiomyomas to facilitate timely, accurate diagnosis and treatment.

Performance and outcome of pelvic exenteration for gynecologic malignancies: A population-based study.

Objective: To examine changes in performance and outcomes of pelvic exenteration for gynecologic malignancies.

Methods: This is a population-based retrospective study examining the Nationwide Inpatient Sample between 2001 and 2015. Women with cervical, uterine, vaginal, and vulvar malignancies who underwent pelvic exenteration were examined.

Healthworlds, Cultural Health Toolkits, and Choice: How Acculturation Affects Patients' Views of Prescription Drugs and Prescription Drug Advertising.

How do minorities differ from Whites in their interactions with the broader consumeristic health culture in the United States? We explore this question by investigating the role that acculturation plays in minority and White patients' views of prescription drugs and the direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs. Drawing on data from six race-based focus groups, we find that patients' views of prescription drugs affect their responses to DTCA. While both minorities and Whites value the information they receive from DTCA, level of acculturation predicts how minorities use the information they receive from DTCA.

Beyond unequal access: Acculturation, race, and resistance to pharmaceuticalization in the United States.

Trends toward pharmaceuticalization in Western countries have led to increased research and theorizing about the roles macro-level institutions, structures, and collective actors play in contributing to patients' reliance on prescription drugs. Relatively less work has focused on the degree to which patients resist pharmaceuticalization pressures, and even less research has explored the factors contributing to patients' resistance to pharmaceuticalization. Drawing on focus groups with patients who had been recently prescribed a prescription drug, this paper investigates how marginalization in the mainstream US society, as measured by acculturation and race, contributes to differences in patients' subjective experiences and responses to prescription drugs.

Effectiveness of Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography as a Guide for Palliative Radiation Therapy for Spinal Metastases.

Objective: As back pain is the presenting symptom in 95% of patients with epidural spinal metastases, appropriately identifying and treating the most symptomatic levels can provide significant palliation. The purpose of this study was to analyze the ability of combined positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) to identify spinal metastases with high metabolic activity and guide radiotherapy. We sought to correlate improvement in back pain with reduction in standard uptake value (SUV) after treatment.

Intrauterine Manipulator Use During Minimally Invasive Hysterectomy and Risk of Lymphovascular Space Invasion in Endometrial Cancer.

Objective: This study aimed to examine an association between intrauterine manipulator (IUM) use and frequency of lymphovascular space invasion (LVSI) in women with endometrial cancer undergoing minimally invasive hysterectomy.

Methods: A retrospective case-control study was conducted among stage I-IV endometrial cancer patients who underwent hysterectomy between 2008 and 2015. Medical records were reviewed for patient demographics, surgical details, and tumor characteristics.

Significance of lymph node metastasis on survival of women with uterine adenosarcoma.

Objective: Uterine adenosarcoma (UAS) is a rare gynecologic malignancy and the significance of lymph node metastasis on survival has not been well studied.

Methods: A retrospective study was performed utilizing the Surveillance, Epidemiology, End Results Program to examine UAS (n=994), endometrial stromal sarcoma (ESS, n=2910), and uterine leiomyosarcoma (LMS, n=5506) diagnosed between 1973 and 2013. The impact of lymph node metastasis on cause-specific survival (CSS) was cross-compared by multivariable analysis.

Fair Balance and Adequate Provision in Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Online Banner Advertisements: A Content Analysis.

Background: The current direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) guidelines were developed with print, television, and radio media in mind, and there are no specific guidelines for online banner advertisements.

Objective: This study evaluates how well Internet banner ads comply with existing Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines for DTCA in other media.

Methods: A content analysis was performed of 68 banner advertisements.

Disentangling the exposure experience: the roles of community context and report-back of environmental exposure data.

This article examines participants' responses to receiving their results in a study of household exposure to endocrine disrupting compounds and other pollutants. The authors study how the "exposure experience"-the embodied, personal experience and understanding of chronic exposure to environmental pollutants-is shaped by community context and the report-back process itself. In addition, the authors investigate an activist, collective form of exposure experience.