Association of deployment characteristics and exposures with persistent ill health among 1990-1991 Gulf War veterans in the VA Million Veteran Program.

Background: Veterans of the 1990-1991 Gulf War have experienced excess health problems, most prominently the multisymptom condition Gulf War illness (GWI). The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Cooperative Studies Program #2006 "Genomics of Gulf War Illness in Veterans" project was established to address important questions concerning pathobiological and genetic aspects of GWI. The current study evaluated patterns of chronic ill health/GWI in the VA Million Veteran Program (MVP) Gulf War veteran cohort in relation to wartime exposures and key features of deployment, 27-30 years after Gulf War service.

Racial Disparities in COVID-19 Case Positivity and Social Context: The Role of Housing, Neighborhood, and Health Insurance.

Research on racial-ethnic COVID-19 disparities has yet to employ housing variables measured at the individual level, limiting our understanding of housing's role in determining early exposure to the virus. To address this gap, we linked data from SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests within the Duke University Health System between March 12, 2020, and July 31, 2020 ( = 23,057 individuals), with housing parcel data. We then analyzed how housing, neighborhood, and health insurance explain disparities in case positivity between and within racial-ethnic groups in Durham County, North Carolina.

What do child maltreatment reports to Child Protective Services tell us about the needs families and communities are experiencing?

Intake reports from child protective service (CPS) agencies are the foundation for subsequent decisions and services within the child welfare system. They provide valuable information for understanding children's needs, yet the unstructured way that information is captured makes the information ascertained in these reports difficult to summarize. Utilizing CPS intake reports from a mid-sized urban county in the southeastern United States (N = 2,724), our study had three aims: (1) develop a coding system to abstract information from narrative CPS intake reports, (2) examine the prevalence of maltreatment subtypes, and (3) compare prevalence of maltreatment subtypes by screen-in/screen-out decisions.