Diabetes Basic Training Program: Empowering Veterans for Wellness.

Background: Diabetes impacts 1 in 4 patients in the Veterans Health Administration and is associated with serious negative health consequences in addition to high health care system utilization and cost. The Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Medical Center developed Diabetes Basic Training, a 9-week intervention that blends medical consultation with group support and training in self-management strategies for enhancing patient motivation and empowerment.

Observations: Diabetes Basic Training combined 3 monthly shared medical appointments and 6 Diabetes Self-Management Program sessions led in part by trained peers with diabetes.

Population monitoring of trisomy 21: problems and approaches.

Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) is the most common autosomal aneuploidy among newborns. About 90% result from meiotic nondisjunction during oogenesis, which occurs around conception, when also the most profound epigenetic modifications take place. Thus, maternal meiosis is an error prone process with an extreme sensitivity to endogenous factors, as exemplified by maternal age.

COVID-19 and vaccination induced changes in hospital activity in Malta, Q1 2020 to Q1 2021: a population-based study.

Background: COVID-19 has severely impacted global healthcare services. Malta has only one acute state hospital, Mater Dei Hospital (MDH), and at the time of writing is the most vaccinated country in Europe. Malta thus provides an ideal setting to assess the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare services at population level, including the impact of vaccination on hospital admissions.

No Local Birth Sex Ratio Changes following the August 2019 Shootings in Montgomery County, Ohio, and in El Paso County, Texas.

Objective: In humans, males are born slightly in excess of females. Many factors have been shown to affect this ratio, including stressful events such as terrorist attacks. Two shootings occurred in early August 2019 in the Oregon District in Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio, and in El Paso County, Texas, in the USA.