Publications by authors named "Kerr E"
Issue Addressed: Nutrition and physical activity practices in Australian family day care are suboptimal. A web-based tool was co-developed with family day care service providers and educators, health promotion staff and the New South Wales Ministry of Health to promote healthier nutrition and physical activity practices through an existing quality improvement process.
Methods: Formative evaluation was conducted in January-February 2023.
Rationale & Objective: Chronic kidney disease affects millions of people in the United States, yet effective interventions to address gaps in patient knowledge and engagement are not well established. We sought to develop and pilot a brief educational decision aid for patients with CKD cared for in primary care settings.
Study Design: A pilot QI study of a decision aid intervention.
Article Synopsis
- - This study explored how attending early childhood education and care (ECEC) impacts outdoor play, screen time, and sleep in children aged 2 and 3 years using data from Australian trials conducted between 2017 and 2020.
- - Results showed that children who attended ECEC engaged in significantly more outdoor play and less screen time compared to those who didn't, although ECEC attendance didn't affect sleep duration.
- - The study highlighted that children from higher socio-economic backgrounds were more likely to attend ECEC, indicating a need for future health programs to address those from lower socio-demographic backgrounds who may not access these services.
Background: Sheep breeds native to the United Kingdom exhibit a striking diversity of different traits. Some of these traits are highly sustainable, such as seasonal wool shedding in the Wiltshire Horn, and are likely to become more important as pressures on sheep production increase in coming decades. Despite their clear importance to the future of sheep farming, the genetic diversity of native UK sheep breeds is poorly characterised.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding the reasons why people consume alcohol is a critical health issue. Alcohol produces a variety of effects, including a reduction in stress or negative emotional states termed an anxiolytic effect. The anxiolytic effect of alcohol is an often-reported reason for why people begin consuming the drug.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIssue Addressed: Munch & Move is a New South Wales (NSW) Ministry of Health program offering family day care (FDC) educators training to support children's healthy behaviours. This study examined educators' nutrition, physical activity and screen time practices and relationships between Munch & Move training and professional development (PD) on these practices.
Methods: NSW FDC educators (n = 186) completed an online survey from July 2020-June 2021.
Article Synopsis
- Insular epilepsy is increasingly recognized as a significant issue in patients with epilepsy, warranting more research into its cognitive and psychological impacts to enhance clinical care and identify surgery candidates.
- A scoping review was conducted, analyzing 39 studies that assessed cognitive and behavioral outcomes in individuals with insular epilepsy, focusing on standardized psychological measures.
- Findings show that both children and adults with insular epilepsy often experience lower cognitive functioning and behavioral challenges, but their outcomes tend to remain stable after surgical interventions involving the insula, helping neuropsychologists better understand patient needs before and after surgery.
Background: Point-of-care testing (POCT) is increasingly being used in healthcare, including hospitals, and POCT-style tests are also used within some laboratories. The principles of biosafety, including risk assessment and containment of biohazardous agents, can be utilized as a foundation to establish policies and procedures guiding safe performance of POCT. However, specific biosafety guidelines for POCT are generally lacking, particularly for those performed outside laboratories by healthcare workers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTandem mass spectrometry coupled with liquid chromatography (LC-MS/MS) has proven a versatile tool for the identification and quantification of proteins and their post-translational modifications (PTMs). Protein glycosylation is a critical PTM for the stability and biological function of many proteins, but full characterization of site-specific glycosylation of proteins remains analytically challenging. Collision-induced dissociation (CID) is the most common fragmentation method used in LC-MS/MS workflows, but the loss of labile modifications renders CID inappropriate for detailed characterization of site-specific glycosylation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Studies reveal that most physicians report symptoms of burnout. Less is known about burnout in mid-career medical faculty specifically.
Objective: To characterize burnout and its risk factors, particularly differences by gender, among mid-career medical faculty.
Purpose: This study aimed to elucidate the experiences and perceptions of mid-career to senior clinician-scientists in academic medicine regarding pursuing, attaining, or rejecting leadership roles as well as their conceptualization of the influence of leadership in their broader career trajectories.
Method: The authors conducted a qualitative analysis of in-depth, semistructured interviews conducted in 2022 with a diverse sample of clinician-scientists who received new National Institutes of Health K08 or K23 Career Development Awards between 2006 and 2009. A total of 859 of the 915 survey respondents (94%) were eligible to be recruited for the qualitative study.
Article Synopsis
- Outcomes from vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) improve over time in children with drug-resistant epilepsy, but the benefits of deep brain stimulation (DBS) versus continued VNS optimization were unclear.
- A study involving 18 children aged 8-17 showed that adding DBS after a year of ineffective VNS led to significantly greater seizure reduction (51.9% vs. 12.3%).
- While DBS resulted in fewer bothersome seizures, it did not improve the overall quality of life, suggesting that earlier consideration of DBS could be beneficial for children not responding to VNS.
Background: Health care is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, leading to climate change and public health harms. Changes are needed to improve the environmental sustainability of health-care practices, but such changes should not sacrifice patient outcomes or financial sustainability. Alternative dosing strategies that reduce the frequency with which specialty drugs are administered, without sacrificing patient outcomes, are an attractive possibility for improving environmental sustainability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContext: The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impacted non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic patients. However, little is known about the quality of serious illness communication in these communities during this time.
Objective: We aimed to determine whether racial and ethnic disparities manifested in serious illness conversations during the pandemic.
Background And Objectives: Gelastic seizures due to hypothalamic hamartomas (HH) are challenging to treat, in part due to an incomplete understanding of seizure propagation pathways. Although magnetic resonance imaging-guided laser interstitial thermal therapy (MRgLITT) is a promising intervention to disconnect HH from ictal propagation networks, the optimal site of ablation to achieve seizure freedom is not known. In this study, we investigated intraoperative post-ablation changes in resting-state functional connectivity to identify large-scale networks associated with successful disconnection of HH.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Hippocampal sclerosis (HS) is a common surgical substrate in adult epilepsy surgery cohorts but variably reported in various pediatric cohorts.
Objective: We aimed to study the epilepsy phenotype, radiological and pathological variability, seizure and neurocognitive outcomes in children with drug-resistant epilepsy and hippocampal sclerosis (HS) with or without additional subtle signal changes in anterior temporal lobe who underwent surgery.
Methods: This retrospective study enrolled children with drug-resistant focal epilepsy and hippocampal sclerosis with or without additional subtle T2-Fluid Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAR)/Proton Density (PD) signal changes in anterior temporal lobe who underwent anterior temporal lobectomy with amygdalohippocampectomy.
Article Synopsis
- Bacterial ABC toxin complexes consist of three main proteins: TcA, TcB, and TcC, which work together to deliver a toxic "cargo" to target cells; TcA binds and penetrates the cell membrane, while TcB and TcC form a shell around the cargo.
- A new TcC protein structure from Yersinia entomophaga was identified, revealing that inside the TcB-TcC shell, the toxin adopts a disordered state but has areas of local order thanks to the shell's surface.
- When outside the shell, the toxin has a structure similar to the SpvB toxin from Salmonella, suggesting it modifies actin to inhibit its normal function in cell processes.
Article Synopsis
- The epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU) can experience unnoticed changes in cognitive and behavioral health due to medical and environmental factors.
- The psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) was tested on seven children in the EMU, linking their performance to seizure counts, medication levels, and sleep quality.
- Findings showed that performance on the PVT was negatively affected by increased antiseizure medications and epileptiform activity, suggesting this task could help monitor patient responses and guide clinical choices.