Community engagement through social media: A promising low-cost strategy for rural recruitment?

Purpose: For the same reasons that rural telehealth has shown promise for enhancing the provision of care in underserved environments, social media recruitment may facilitate more inclusive research engagement in rural areas. However, little research has examined social media recruitment in the rural context, and few studies have evaluated the feasibility of using a free social media page to build a network of rural community members who may be interested in a research study. Here, we describe the rationale, process, and protocols of developing and implementing a social media approach to recruit rural residents to participate in an mHealth intervention.

Human Rabies - Virginia, 2017.

On May 9, 2017, the Virginia Department of Health was notified regarding a patient with suspected rabies. The patient had sustained a dog bite 6 weeks before symptom onset while traveling in India. On May 11, CDC confirmed that the patient was infected with a rabies virus that circulates in dogs in India.

Streamlining cardiovascular clinical trials to improve efficiency and generalisability.

Controlled trials provide the most valid determination of the efficacy and safety of an intervention, but large cardiovascular clinical trials have become extremely costly and complex, making it difficult to study many important clinical questions. A critical question, and the main objective of this review, is how trials might be simplified while maintaining randomisation to preserve scientific integrity and unbiased efficacy assessments. Experience with alternative approaches is accumulating, specifically with registry-based randomised controlled trials that make use of data already collected.

Effects of TZD Use and Discontinuation on Fracture Rates in ACCORD Bone Study.

Context: In trials, thiazolidinediones (TZDs) increase fracture risk in women, but the effects of discontinuation are unknown.

Objective: The objective was to investigate the effects of TZD use and discontinuation on fractures in women and men.

Design: This was a longitudinal observational cohort study using data from the Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD) trial bone ancillary study.

Long-term outcomes of bariatric surgery: a National Institutes of Health symposium.

Importance: The clinical evidence base demonstrating bariatric surgery's health benefits is much larger than it was when the National Institutes of Health last held a consensus panel in 1991. Still, it remains unclear whether ongoing studies will address critical questions about long-term complication rates and the sustainability of weight loss and comorbidity control.

Objective: To summarize findings from a multidisciplinary workshop convened in May 2013 by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.