Publications by authors named "Heather MacGillivray"

The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the imperative for meaningful family involvement in long-term care, aligning with policy and safety standards while enhancing outcomes for caregivers, residents, and staff. The objectives of this article are as follows: (1) a case study report on implementing a family involvement intervention designed to facilitate the formal and safe engagement of family caregivers in resident care and (2) the pilot evaluation of the intervention. We used Knapp's six-step implementation science model to guide and describe intervention development to provide insight for others planning family involvement projects.

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A central tenet of ecoimmunology is that an organism's environment shapes its optimal investment in immunity. For example, the benefits of acquired (relatively pathogen specific) versus innate (nonspecific) immune defenses are thought to vary with the risk of encountering familiar versus unfamiliar pathogens. Because pathogen communities vary geographically, individuals that travel farther during seasonal migration or natal dispersal are predicted to have higher exposure to novel pathogens, and lower exposure to familiar pathogens, potentially favoring investment in innate immunity.

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Plasticity in behavior is mirrored by corresponding plasticity in the brain in many songbird species. In some species, song system nuclei (Phillmore et al. [2006]: J Neurobiol 66:1002-1010) are larger in birds in breeding condition than birds in nonbreeding condition, possibly due to increased vocal output in spring.

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