Improving Colorectal Cancer Screening via Mailed Fecal Immunochemical Testing in a Veterans Affairs Health System.

Background: Colorectal cancer screening rates at the Veterans Affairs Connecticut Healthcare System (VACHS) decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fecal immunochemical testing is recognized as a tier 1 preferred screening method by the US Multi-Society Task Force on Colorectal Cancer. The VACHS implemented a program that mailed fecal immunochemical testing kits to patients to improve colorectal cancer screening rates.

Increasing buprenorphine access for patients with chronic pain: a quality improvement initiative.

Objective: Buprenorphine is effective for chronic pain and safer than full-agonist opioids; however, limited education about and support for buprenorphine can result in under-prescribing in primary care and reduced access in specialty pain clinics. The purpose of this quality improvement initiative was to optimize and evaluate procedures for transferring patients stable on buprenorphine for chronic pain from a specialty pain clinic back to primary care.

Setting: Eight primary care clinics within a Veterans Health Administration health care system.

Feasibility of Using the Global Tales Protocol to Elicit Personal Narratives in 10-year-Old Children in Ireland.

Introduction: This small-scale study explored the feasibility of the Global TALES protocol in eliciting personal narratives in typically developing monolingual Irish children, using the online Zoom platform. We investigated children's performance on measures of productivity (total number of utterances; total number of words) and syntactic complexity (MLU in words). We also documented the topics children talked about in response to the six emotion-based prompts contained in the Global TALES protocol.

Racial, Ethnic, and Rural Disparities in US Veteran COVID-19 Vaccine Rates.

Background: Race, ethnicity, and rurality-related disparities in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine uptake have been documented in the United States (US).

Objective: We determined whether these disparities existed among patients at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the largest healthcare system in the US.

Design Settings Participants Measurements: Using VA Corporate Data Warehouse data, we included 5,871,438 patients (9.

Sexual Health Assessment Is Vital to Whole Health Models of Care.

Sexual health is the state of well-being regarding sexuality. Sexual health is highly valued and associated with overall health. Overall health and well-being are more than the absence of disease or dysfunction.