If designed with health equity in mind, digital non-pharmacological interventions (NPIs) represent a cost-effective, scalable means of reducing health disparities associated with age-related mental health disorders in older adults in the USA. However, disparities in technological access, literacy and effectiveness can limit the impact of these interventions in older adults from disadvantaged groups. We present a health-equity-promoting framework for the development of digital NPIs for age-related mental health disorders and provide an example from the literature that highlights how interventions can be targeted at specific groups to increase technological access, literacy and effectiveness to ensure that these interventions can meet their potential of reducing health disparities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs temperatures defy heat records, it is difficult to ignore the implications of climate change for public health, including impacts on population health more specifically. In short, climate change is happening now and presents an immediate hazard to human health on a global scale. Age-related health effects are an inalienable truth; physiology is relatively universal, and so are the ways in which our bodies respond to different types and levels of exposures to environmental stressors at different lifestages.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGrowing wildfire smoke represents a substantial threat to air quality and human health. However, the impact of wildfire smoke on human health remains imprecisely understood due to uncertainties in both the measurement of exposure of population to wildfire smoke and dose-response functions linking exposure to health. Here, we compare daily wildfire smoke-related surface fine particulate matter (PM) concentrations estimated using three approaches, including two chemical transport models (CTMs): GEOS-Chem and the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) and one machine learning (ML) model over the contiguous US in 2020, a historically active fire year.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Aging rural veterans have limited access to geriatric mental health services. The establishment of Veterans Health Administration (VHA) regional telehealth hubs, or Clinical Resource Hubs (CRHs), has the potential to improve access to specialist care via telehealth delivered across healthcare systems within each VHA region. We used the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Older veterans with anxiety disorders encounter multiple barriers to receiving mental health services, including transportation difficulties, physical limitations, and limited access to providers trained to work with older persons. To address both accessibility and the shortage of available providers, evidence-based treatments that can be delivered via guided self-management modalities are a potential solution.
Objective: This study aims to determine the feasibility and acceptability of a randomized controlled trial of 2 guided self-management interventions.
Abstract: Commercial fishing is a dangerous profession with known hazards for musculoskeletal injuries, yet minimal examination of microbiological or attendant psychosocial hazards from water- and food-borne pathogens like Vibrio vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus exists. Improving knowledge of Vibrio -related hazards addresses Total Worker Health® concerns for commercial fisheries workers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Neonatal Intensive Care Units utilize incubators to sustain core temperatures associated with transepidermal water loss. High relative humidity in incubators provides an environment for fungi to grow. In August 2022, mold was identified growing in 11 (85%) Neonatal Intensive Care Unit incubators.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrim Care Companion CNS Disord
October 2024
MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep
September 2024
Beginning in late 2023, Oropouche virus was identified as the cause of large outbreaks in Amazon regions with known endemic transmission and in new areas in South America and the Caribbean. The virus is spread to humans by infected biting midges and some mosquito species. Although infection typically causes a self-limited febrile illness, reports of two deaths in patients with Oropouche virus infection and vertical transmission associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes have raised concerns about the threat of this virus to human health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudy Objective: To investigate the association between race and route of hysterectomy among patients undergoing hysterectomy for abnormal uterine bleeding (AUB) in the absence of uterine myoma disease and excluding malignancy.
Design: A cross-sectional cohort study utilizing the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Nationwide Inpatient Sample and National Ambulatory Surgical databases to compare abdominal to minimally invasive routes of hysterectomy.
Setting: Hospitals and hospital-affiliated ambulatory surgical centers participating in the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project in 2019.
Background: In the United States (U.S.), Powassan virus is primarily transmitted to humans by the black-legged tick Rarely, infections can present as severe neuroinvasive disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCirculating tumor DNA (ctDNA) holds promise as a biomarker for predicting clinical responses to therapy in solid tumors, and multiple ctDNA assays are in development. However, the heterogeneity in ctDNA levels prior to treatment (baseline) across different cancer types and stages and across ctDNA assays has not been widely studied. Friends of Cancer Research formed a collaboration across multiple commercial ctDNA assay developers to assess baseline ctDNA levels across five cancer types in early- and late-stage disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlcohols represent a functional group class with unparalleled abundance and structural diversity. In an era of chemical synthesis that prioritizes reducing time to target and maximizing exploration of chemical space, harnessing these building blocks for carbon-carbon bond-forming reactions is a key goal in organic chemistry. In particular, leveraging a single activation mode to form a new C(sp)-C(sp) bond from two alcohol subunits would enable access to an extraordinary level of structural diversity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Health Perspect
March 2024
Background: The association between prenatal household air pollution (HAP) exposure and childhood blood pressure (BP) is unknown.
Objective: Within the Ghana Randomized Air Pollution and Health Study (GRAPHS) we examined time-varying associations between ) maternal prenatal and ) first-year-of-life HAP exposure with BP at 4 years of age and, separately, whether a stove intervention delivered prenatally and continued through the first year of life could improve BP at 4 years of age.
Methods: GRAPHS was a cluster-randomized cookstove intervention trial wherein pregnant women were randomized to one of two stove interventions: ) a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) stove or improved biomass stove, or ) control (open fire cooking).
External quality assessment programs (EQAP) for molecular haematology generally only assess the analytical phase of laboratory testing or provide limited evaluation of post-analytical components. We incorporated comprehensive post-analytical evaluation into an existing national inter-laboratory sample exchange program for molecular haematology due to the increasing complexity of diagnostic molecular testing and interpretation. We report key findings from four years of longitudinal data using this approach.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDepression is a chronic and debilitating mental disorder. Despite the existence of several evidence-based treatments, many individuals suffering from depression face myriad structural barriers to accessing timely care which may be alleviated by digital mental health interventions (DMHI). Accordingly, this randomized clinical trial (ClinicalTrials.
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