At-home hemoglobin A1c testing during COVID-19 improved glycemic control.

Objectives: COVID-19 has exacerbated barriers to routine testing for chronic disease management. This study investigates whether a home hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) test kit intervention increases frequency of HbA1c testing and leads to changes in HbA1c 6 months post testing and whether self-reinforcement education improves maintenance of HbA1c testing.

Study Design: Retrospective analysis of a randomized, controlled quality improvement intervention among members with type 2 diabetes (T2D) in a large commercial health plan.

Assessment of Remote Vital Sign Monitoring and Alarms in a Real-World Healthcare at Home Dataset.

The importance of vital sign monitoring to detect deterioration increases during healthcare at home. Continuous monitoring with wearables increases assessment frequency but may create information overload for clinicians. The goal of this work was to demonstrate the impact of vital sign observation frequency and alarm settings on alarms in a real-world dataset.

Abortion attempts without clinical supervision among transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive people in the United States.

Background: Transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive (TGE) people face barriers to abortion care and may consider abortion without clinical supervision.

Methods: In 2019, we recruited participants for an online survey about sexual and reproductive health. Eligible participants were TGE people assigned female or intersex at birth, 18 years and older, from across the United States, and recruited through The PRIDE Study or via online and in-person postings.

Development of an affirming and customizable electronic survey of sexual and reproductive health experiences for transgender and gender nonbinary people.

To address pervasive measurement biases in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) research, our interdisciplinary team created an affirming, customizable electronic survey to measure experiences with contraceptive use, pregnancy, and abortion for transgender and gender nonbinary people assigned female or intersex at birth and cisgender sexual minority women. Between May 2018 and April 2019, we developed a questionnaire with 328 items across 10 domains including gender identity; language used for sexual and reproductive anatomy and events; gender affirmation process history; sexual orientation and sexual activity; contraceptive use and preferences; pregnancy history and desires; abortion history and preferences; priorities for sexual and reproductive health care; family building experiences; and sociodemographic characteristics. Recognizing that the words people use for their sexual and reproductive anatomy can vary, we programmed the survey to allow participants to input the words they use to describe their bodies, and then used those customized words to replace traditional medical terms throughout the survey.

The Imperative for Transgender and Gender Nonbinary Inclusion: Beyond Women's Health.

We aim to make evident that solely referencing cisgender women in the context of sexual and reproductive health-particularly pregnancy planning and care-excludes a diverse group of transgender and gender nonbinary people who have sexual and reproductive health needs and experiences that can be similar to but also unique from those of cisgender women. We call on clinicians and researchers to ensure that all points of sexual and reproductive health access, research, sources of information, and care delivery comprehensively include and are accessible to people of all genders. We describe barriers to sexual and reproductive health care and research participation unique to people of marginalized gender identities, provide examples of harm resulting from these barriers, and offer concrete suggestions for creating inclusive, accurate, and respectful care and research environments-which will lead to higher quality health care and science for people of all genders.

What Factors Determine the Retention Behavior of Engineered Nanomaterials in Saturated Porous Media?

A fundamental problem associated with the vertical transport of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) in saturated porous media is the occurrence of nonexponential, for example, nonmonotonic or linearly increasing, retention profiles. To investigate this problem, we compiled an extensive database of ENMs transport experiments in saturated porous media. Using this database we trained a decision tree that shows the order of importance, and range of influence, of the physicochemical factors that control the retention profile shape.

Critical assessment of models for transport of engineered nanoparticles in saturated porous media.

To reliably assess the fate of engineered nanoparticles (ENP) in soil, it is important to understand the performance of models employed to predict vertical ENP transport. We assess the ability of seven routinely employed particle transport models (PTMs) to simulate hyperexponential (HE), nonmonotonic (NM), linearly decreasing (LD), and monotonically increasing (MI) retention profiles (RPs) and the corresponding breakthrough curves (BTCs) from soil column experiments with ENPs. Several important observations are noted.

Navigation for people with mild dementia.

Community dwelling is a problem for people with dementia. Can GPS route navigation support on a mobile device provide a solution? In a small scale exploratory research with this target group we studied the effects of two different types of audio instructions and assessed the pedestrian safety while operating the device. Methodological issues that limited the size and scope of data collection notwithstanding, evidence of unsafe behaviour was not found.