Client and service factors associated with changes in health-related quality of life following community rehabilitation.

Purpose: To identify client and service factors associated with changes in health-related quality of life following community rehabilitation.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective observational cohort study within a community rehabilitation program. Health-related quality of life was measured using the EuroQol five Dimensions, five response level version (EQ-5D-5L).

The Ethiopia healthcare quality initiative: design and initial lessons learned.

Objective: To describe the development, implementation and initial outcomes of a national quality improvement (QI) intervention in Ethiopia.

Design: Retrospective descriptive study of initial prototype phase implementation outcomes.

Setting: All public facilities in one selected prototype district in each of four agrarian regions.

Social relationships and allostatic load in the MIDUS study.

Objective: This study examines how the social environment is related to allostatic load (AL), a multisystem index of biological risk.

Method: A national sample of adults (N = 949) aged 34-84 rated their relationships with spouse, family, and friends at 2 time points 10 years apart. At the second time point, participants completed a biological protocol in which indices of autonomic, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, cardiovascular, inflammatory, and metabolic function were obtained and used to create an AL summary score.

Attachment, skin deep? Relationships between adult attachment and skin barrier recovery.

This study examined the relationship between individual differences in adult attachment and skin barrier recovery. Dating couples (N = 34) completed a self-report measure of attachment anxiety and avoidance, and during two separate laboratory visits, normal skin barrier function was disrupted using a tape-stripping procedure, followed by a 20 min discussion of personal concerns in one visit and relationship problems in the other, counterbalanced randomly across visits. Skin barrier recovery was assessed by measuring transepidermal water loss up to 2 h after skin disruption.

Emotional experience improves with age: evidence based on over 10 years of experience sampling.

Recent evidence suggests that emotional well-being improves from early adulthood to old age. This study used experience-sampling to examine the developmental course of emotional experience in a representative sample of adults spanning early to very late adulthood. Participants (N = 184, Wave 1; N = 191, Wave 2; N = 178, Wave 3) reported their emotional states at five randomly selected times each day for a one week period.

Trait positive affect buffers the effects of acute stress on skin barrier recovery.

Objective: This study examines the role of self-reported trait positive affect (PA) on skin barrier recovery after skin disruption, and whether the role of trait PA in wound healing is consistent with the direct effects model or the stress-buffering model of PA and health.

Design: Sixty healthy participants (mean age 22.7 +/- 3.

Recent depressive and anxious symptoms predict cortisol responses to stress in men.

Individuals with major depressive disorder show blunted cortisol responses to psychosocial stressors, but the extent to which this pattern of dampened responding characterizes individuals experiencing sub-clinical levels of depressive symptoms is unknown. This study investigated whether self-reports of depressive and anxious symptoms over the previous two weeks were associated with cortisol responses to a laboratory social stress task. In addition, we tested whether these associations were mediated by baseline cortisol, subjective responses to the task, or health behaviors.