Effectively teaching cultural competence in a pre-professional healthcare curriculum.

Background: There has been research documenting the rising numbers of racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States. With this rise, there is increasing concern over the health disparities that often affect these populations. Attention has turned to how clinicians can improve health outcomes and how the need exists to educate healthcare professionals on the practice of cultural competence.

Appealing to Americans' altruism is not enough to nudge them to accept novel vaccines.

Background: The role of altruism in the acceptance of novel preventive healthcare technologies like vaccines has not been thoroughly elucidated.

Methods: We 1:1 randomized n = 2004 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) participants residing in the USA into a control or treatment arm with vaccination decisions framed altruistically, to elicit their preferences for COVID-19 vaccination using web-based discrete choice experiments. We used conditional and mixed logit models to estimate the impact of framing decisions in terms of altruism on vaccination acceptance.

Antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory infections during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic: Patterns in a nationwide telehealth service provider.

We examined 3,046,538 acute respiratory infection (ARI) encounters with 6,103 national telehealth physicians from January 2019 to October 2021. The antibiotic prescribing rates were 44% for all ARIs; 46% were antibiotic appropriate; 65% were potentially appropriate; 19% resulted from inappropriate diagnoses; and 10% were related to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) diagnosis.

A randomized trial looking at planning prompts to reduce opioid prescribing.

Prior work has demonstrated that personalized letters are effective at reducing opioid and benzodiazepine prescribing, but it is unclear whether If/when-then planning prompts would enhance this effect. We conducted a decedent-clustered trial which randomized 541 clinicians in Los Angeles County to receive a standard (n = 284), or comparator (n = 257) version of a letter with If/when-then prompts. We found a significant 12.

A Case Report of Non-secretory Multiple Myeloma.

Non-secretory multiple myeloma (NSMM) is a hematological malignancy that presents as a unique clinical form of multiple myeloma with proliferation of plasmacytic cells that cannot secrete or synthesize immunoglobulins. Its prevalence as a hematologic malignancy in adults is low. Our article describes a case of a 68-year-old lady presenting with diffuse scattered lytic lesions throughout the axial and visualized appendicular skeleton without lymph node involvement.

Mathematical modeling to understand the role of bivalent thrombin-fibrin binding during polymerization.

Thrombin is an enzyme produced during blood coagulation that is crucial to the formation of a stable clot. Thrombin cleaves soluble fibrinogen into fibrin, which polymerizes and forms an insoluble, stabilizing gel around the growing clot. A small fraction of circulating fibrinogen is the variant γA/γ', which has been associated with high-affinity thrombin binding and implicated as a risk factor for myocardial infarctions, deep vein thrombosis, and coronary artery disease.

The Alien Limb Phenomenon in Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease: A Systematic Review of Case Reports.

Alien limb phenomenon (ALP) is a clinical finding seen in numerous neurological disorders, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). We aimed to conduct a systematic review to update advances in understanding the classification and pathophysiology of ALP in CJD. We used PubMed advanced-strategy searches and only included full-text observational studies and case reports conducted on humans and written in English.

A Cost-Utility Analysis of Remote Pulse-Oximetry Monitoring of Patients With COVID-19.

Objectives: Since 2020, COVID-19 has infected tens of millions and caused hundreds of thousands of fatalities in the United States. Infection waves lead to increased emergency department utilization and critical care admission for patients with respiratory distress. Although many individuals develop symptoms necessitating a ventilator, some patients with COVID-19 can remain at home to mitigate hospital overcrowding.

Dismantling Inequities in Adolescent and Young Adult Health through a Sexual and Reproductive Health Justice Approach.

This article provides an overview of the social determinants of adolescents and young adults' (AYAs') sexual and reproductive health (SRH), from a global health perspective. The status of AYAs' SRH constitutes leading health indicators across nations and globally, and reveals the well-being of this population. Throughout the article, AYAs' SRH is approached from a health equity perspective, which includes SRH health rights and reproductive justice.

The protocol of the Application of Economics & Social psychology to improve Opioid Prescribing Safety trial 2 (AESOPS-2): Availability of opioid harm.

Background: High levels of opioid prescribing in the United States has resulted in an alarming trend in opioid-related harms. The objective of Trial 2 of the Application of Economics & Social psychology to improve Opioid Prescribing Safety (AESOPS-2) is to dampen the intensity and frequency of opioid prescribing in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation to "go low and slow". We aim to accomplish this by notifying clinicians of harmful patient outcomes, which we expect to increase the mental availability of risks associated with opioid use.

Opioid-related deaths before and after COVID-19 stay-at-home orders in Los Angeles County.

Background: Opioid-related morbidity and mortality has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet specific information about the communities most affected remains unknown. Our objective is to evaluate decedent-level associations with an opioid-related death following the implementation of stay-at-home orders in Los Angeles County.

Methods: This retrospective cohort study used data from the L.

Intraepidermal Nerve Fiber Density as Measured by Skin Punch Biopsy as a Marker for Small Fiber Neuropathy: Application in Patients with Fibromyalgia.

Small fiber neuropathy (SFN) is a type of peripheral neuropathy that occurs from damage to the small A-delta and C nerve fibers that results in the clinical condition known as SFN. This pathology may be the result of metabolic, toxic, immune-mediated, and/or genetic factors. Small fiber symptoms can be variable and inconsistent and therefore require an objective biomarker confirmation.

The protocol of the Application of Economics & Social psychology to improve Opioid Prescribing Safety Trial 1 (AESOPS-1): Electronic health record nudges.

Background: There is a lack of evidence that long-term opioid use offers benefit for noncancer pain and an abundance of evidence of harm. Despite clinical guidelines and education, prescribing continues at a higher rate than before the opioids crisis. The objective of trial 1 of the Application of Economics & Social psychology to improve Opioid Prescribing Safety (AESOPS-1) is to discourage unnecessary opioid prescribing in primary care by applying "behavioral insights"-empirically-tested social and psychological interventions that affect choice.

Volunteerism and Cardiovascular Health: The HCHS/SOL Sociocultural Ancillary Study.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to examine the association between volunteerism and favorable cardiovascular health (CVH) among Hispanics/Latinos living in the US.

Methods: Data from the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (2008-2011) Sociocultural Ancillary Study were used (N = 4,926; ages 18-74 years). Favorable CVH was defined as positive profiles of all major CVD risk factors: low total serum cholesterol, blood pressure, and body mass index; not having diabetes; and not smoking.

Do people have differing motivations for participating in a stated-preference study? Results from a latent-class analysis.

Background: Researchers and policy makers have long suspected that people have differing, and potentially nefarious, motivations for participating in stated-preference studies such as discrete-choice experiments (DCE). While anecdotes and theories exist on why people participate in surveys, there is a paucity of evidence exploring variation in preferences for participating in stated-preference studies.

Methods: We used a DCE to estimate preferences for participating in preference research among an online survey panel sample.

A Machine Learning Strategy for Drug Discovery Identifies Anti-Schistosomal Small Molecules.

Schistosomiasis is a chronic and painful disease of poverty caused by the flatworm parasite . Drug discovery for antischistosomal compounds predominantly employs whole organism (phenotypic) screens against two developmental stages of , post-infective larvae (somules) and adults. We generated two rule books and associated scoring systems to normalize 3898 phenotypic data points to enable machine learning.

Association of small-fiber polyneuropathy with three previously unassociated rare missense SCN9A variants.

Background: Small fiber polyneuropathy (SFN) involves ectopic firing and degeneration of small-diameter, somatic/autonomic peripheral axons. Causes include diabetes, inflammation and rare pathogenic mutations, including in genes that encode small fiber sodium channels.

Aims: The aim of this study is to associate a new phenotype-immunotherapy-responsive SFN-with rare amino acid-substituting variants and present potential explanations.