Optimal Care for All: The Critical Need for Clinician Retention in Rural North Carolina.

Despite its increasing urbanization, North Carolina still has a large rural population that lacks optimal health care. While multiple programs have been successful in recruiting clinicians to rural communities, improving the retention of those clinicians will require the development and implementation of novel strategies along with the evaluation of their effectiveness.

Academic outcomes of a community-based longitudinal integrated clerkships program.

Background: Longitudinal integrated clerkships (LICs) receive recognition internationally as effective, innovative alternatives to traditional block rotations (TBRs) in undergraduate medical education. No studies of LICs in the USA have assessed how students perform on all the standardized exams.

Aim: To compare performance on standardized tests of students in the first four years of LICs at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine-Asheville (UNC SOM-Asheville) with students from UNC SOM's Chapel Hill main campus in TBRs.

Comparison of a new transport medium with universal transport medium at a tropical field site.

Limited data are available in rural Honduran settings describing the etiology of respiratory infections, partially due to limited specimen transport. A new molecular transport media (MTM) preserves released nucleic acid at ambient temperature for later detection. Prospective surveillance was conducted in a Honduran clinic to identify 233 children less than 5 years of age presenting with respiratory symptoms.

The third-year longitudinal integrated clerkship at the Asheville campus of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

Consumers, health delivery planners, and public officials are calling for patient-centered, primary care-based, cost-effective health care. The Asheville campus of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine has responded to this need by developing a longitudinal integrated clerkship that trains third-year medical students to provide such care.

Etiology and seasonality of viral respiratory infections in rural Honduran children.

Background: Limited data are available in Honduras that describe the etiology and seasonality of respiratory infections, especially in rural outpatient settings. Better data may lead to improved therapeutic and preventive strategies. The goal of our study was to determine the viral etiology and seasonality of acute respiratory infections in a rural Honduran population of children.

Prevalence of depression among mothers of young children in Honduras.

Objective: Maternal depression is a substantial problem that has negative consequences on the health of both mother and child. Little research has been done on the prevalence of maternal depression in the developing world. This study aims to estimate the prevalence of current depression among mothers in Honduras and identify demographic predictors of depression in this sample.

The Feasibility of Using the Spanish PHQ-9 to Screen for Depression in Primary Care in Honduras.

BACKGROUND: The Patient Health Questionnaire depression module (PHQ-9) is a brief (10 items) screening and monitoring measure designed for use in primary care settings that operationalizes most of the DSM-IV and ICD-9 diagnostic criteria for major depression. In the United States, the PHQ-9 has become the recommended depression measure in primary care settings. However, there are no published reports of its use in developing countries and no reports of the feasibility of using the Spanish version of the PHQ-9 to screen for depression.