Publications by authors named "Emily Little"

Climate change is an urgent threat to perinatal and infant health, with the greatest effects of climate change exposures being felt disproportionately by global majority communities who have been most harmed by systems of oppression. Human milk feeding is one recognized solution to bolster climate resilience. Yet, policies and practices to support human milk as a climate solution are inconsistent and under-prioritized, which is unsurprising given the lack of alignment between human history and current cultural context with regard to lactation and human milk access.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

There is a critical need to increase Latino participation in research on Alzheimer's disease and related disorders (ADRD). Applying principles of community-based participatory research, we convened a community advisory board (CAB) to identify barriers and recommend strategies to increase participation of older Latinos in a longitudinal observational research study of ADRD at the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Six major barriers were identified and programmatic changes to overcome them were implemented.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

All epidemiological studies on pregnancy fall risk to date have relied on postpartum recall. This study investigated the accuracy of postpartum recall of falls that were reported during pregnancy, including assessment of fall efficacy as a possible reason for recall inaccuracy. Twenty participants reported fall experiences weekly during pregnancy, but one participant was excluded as an outlier.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To evaluate the role of weekly neurofibromatosis (NF) multi-disciplinary conferences (MDC) on the diagnostic and therapeutic plan for patients with NF type 1 (NF1) and schwannomatosis (SWN).

Materials And Methods: This retrospective study reviewed patients with confirmed or suspected NF1 and SWN discussed in weekly MDC from March to July 2021. Demographic data collected included patient age, sex, pre-conference and post-conference diagnosis, radiological studies reviewed, and provider specialties in attendance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: There is a need for effective interventions to reduce symptomatology of postpartum depression. The objective of this study was to test whether providing an ergonomic infant carrier would reduce postpartum depression symptomatology.

Methods: A randomized two-arm, parallel-group trial with 100 participants was conducted between February 2018 and June 2019 in a low-income community.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Community health worker (CHW) programs are essential for expanding health services to many areas of the world and improving uptake of recommended behaviors. One of these programs, called Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA), was initiated by the government of India in 2005 and now has a workforce of about 1 million. ASHAs primarily focus on improving maternal and child health but also support other health initiatives.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Remote screening for cognitive impairment related to Alzheimer's disease (AD) is increasingly important due to an aging population and new treatments.
  • Two tests, the Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (TICS) and the telephone adaptation of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (T-MoCA), were validated for their effectiveness in remote cognitive evaluation among participants with varying degrees of cognitive health.
  • Both TICS and T-MoCA showed strong correlations with each other and effectively detected cognitive impairment, while also correlating negatively with specific AD biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Literature on infant emotion is dominated by research conducted in Western, industrialized societies where early socialization is characterized by face-to-face, vocal communication with caregivers. There is a dearth of knowledge of infant emotion in the context of social interaction outside of the visual and vocal modalities. In a three-population cross-cultural comparison, we used the still-face task to measure variation in behavior among infants from proximal care (practicing high levels of physical contact) communities in Bolivia and distal care (emphasizing vocal and visual interaction) communities in the U.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Maternal malnutrition is a major source of regional health inequity and contributes to maternal and infant morbidity and mortality. Bihar, a state in eastern India adjacent to Jharkhand and West Bengal, has relatively high neonatal mortality rates because a large portion of infants are born to young mothers. Bihar has the second-highest proportion of underweight children under 3 in India, with infant mortality rates of 48 per 1000 live births.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The belief that breastfeeding promotes maternal bonding is widely held by both the public and professional health organizations. Yet to our knowledge, all research examining the link between breastfeeding and maternal behavior in humans has been correlational, limiting our ability to draw causal conclusions. In many mammals, the hormone prolactin, which is central to milk production, rises in response to each breastfeeding session and promotes maternal sensitivity, yet there is a dearth of research in human mothers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Parent-infant skin-to-skin contact immediately after birth increases initiation and duration of bodyfeeding. We hypothesized that providing ergonomic carriers to parents during pregnancy would increase the likelihood of breastfeeding and expressed human milk feeding through the first 6 months of life.

Methods: A randomized two-arm, parallel-group trial was conducted between February 2018 and June 2019 in collaboration with a home-visiting program in a low-income community.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Participants from a longitudinal cohort study were surveyed to evaluate the practical feasibility of remote cognitive assessment.

Methods: All active participants/informants at the University of California San Diego Alzheimer's Disease Research Center were invited to complete a nine-question survey assessing technology access/use and willingness to do cognitive testing remotely.

Results: Three hundred sixty-nine of 450 potential participants/informants (82%) completed the survey.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Growing awareness of Alzheimer's disease (AD) has prompted a demand for quick and effective ways to screen for memory loss and cognitive decline in large numbers of individuals in the community. Periodic Memory Screening Day events provide free, brief cognitive screening aimed at those 65 years and older, and can serve as an opportunity to gauge participants' attitudes towards AD research and recruit them into ongoing research projects.

Methods: Over 6 single-day events in 2 years, more than 574 individuals were individually screened using the MoCA and a story recall task (immediate and delayed), given feedback about their performance, and introduced to AD research and opportunities to participate.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The objective of the current study is to examine the cultural ecology of health associated with mitigating perinatal risk in Bihar, India. We describe the occurrences, objectives and explanations of health-related beliefs and behaviours during pregnancy and postpartum using focus group discussions with younger and older mothers. First, we document perceived physical and supernatural threats and the constellation of traditional and biomedical practises including taboos, superstitions and rituals used to mitigate them.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unlabelled: Guatemala has the fourth highest infant mortality rate in Latin America, which makes the support and protection of breastfeeding especially critical. Traditional health-promoting practices like breastfeeding may be protected by increasing knowledge of its benefits. Yet there is a dearth of research documenting breastfeeding knowledge (i.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Ethnographic research suggests mother-infant physical contact predicts high levels of maternal responsiveness to infant cues, yet it is unclear whether this responsiveness is driven by the act of physical contact or by underlying beliefs about responsiveness. We examine beliefs and behavior associated with infant carrying (i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Responsive feeding-initiating feeding in response to early hunger cues-supports the physiology of lactation and the development of infant feeding abilities, yet there is a dearth of research examining what predicts responsive feeding. In non-Western proximal care cultures, there is an association between responsive feeding and mother⁻infant physical contact, but this has not been investigated within Western populations. In two studies, we tested whether mother⁻infant physical contact predicted feeding in response to early hunger cues versus feeding on a schedule or after signs of distress among U.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Research investigating the effect of lighting and viewpoint changes on unfamiliar and newly learnt faces has revealed that such recognition is highly image dependent and that changes in either of these leads to poor recognition accuracy. Three experiments are reported to extend these findings by examining the effect of apparent age on the recognition of newly learnt faces. Experiment 1 investigated the ability to generalize to novel ages of a face after learning a single image.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) can promote patient-centered care, but previous research has documented interpretation challenges among clinicians and patients. We engaged stakeholders to improve formats for presenting individual-level PRO data (for patient monitoring) and group-level PRO data (for reporting comparative clinical studies).

Methods: In an iterative process, investigators partnered with stakeholder workgroups of clinicians and patients to address previously identified interpretation challenges.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Two studies examined the extent to which the type of triadic interaction pervasive in Western populations (i.e., shared visual attention and ostensive pedagogical cues) was representative of infant-caregiver object exploration in a non-Western indigenous community.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) promote patient-centered care by using PRO research results ("group-level data") to inform decision making and by monitoring individual patient's PROs ("individual-level data") to inform care. We investigated the interpretability of current PRO data presentation formats.

Method: This cross-sectional mixed-methods study randomized purposively sampled cancer patients and clinicians to evaluate six group-data or four individual-data formats.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: An evidence-based synthesis of patient preferences for management of hyperglycemia is needed. Our objective was to systematically review patient preferences for noninsulin diabetes medications in adults with type 2 diabetes.

Research Design And Methods: We searched the PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and EconLit databases for articles published on or before 23 January 2013.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: As more studies report on patient preferences, techniques are needed to identify, assess and, eventually, synthesize results from a diverse set of methodologies. Data on patient preferences are valuable to decision makers in a variety of ways. Preferences for outcomes can be used to inform decision and cost-effectiveness models, while preferences for treatments can inform patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) and patient-centered care.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF