The experience of youth on the waitlist for gender-affirming care in Manitoba.

Objectives: Waitlist times for adolescents to be seen for initial assessment for gender-affirming hormone therapy in Manitoba, Canada are often 2 years. The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of waitlisted youth and to assess the impact of social work contact for accessing relevant resources.

Methods: A qualitative, semi-structured interview study was conducted.

State of the Service: Pediatric Palliative and Hospice Community-Based Service Coverage in the United States.

The pediatric literature describes reliance on community-based organizations for home-based palliative and hospice care for children. To quantify and describe the inclusion of children in services, staffing, and care scope offered by community-based hospice organizations in the United States. This study utilized an online survey distributed to organizational members of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) in the United States.

Changing Pediatric Hospice and Palliative Care Through Medicaid Partnerships.

Since its inception in 2010, the Concurrent Care for Children Provision of the Affordable Care Act has enabled seriously ill pediatric patients and their families to access comprehensive, supportive hospice services while simultaneously receiving ongoing treatment-directed therapies. Although this groundbreaking federal legislation has resulted in improvements in care for vulnerable pediatric patients, the implementation of the law has varied from state to state through Medicaid programming. The pediatric professional community is called to consider how Medicaid services can more effectively be delivered by leveraging legislative mandates and collaborative relationships between clinicians, Medicaid administrators, and policy makers.

Challenges and Opportunities of Providing Pediatric Funeral Services: A National Survey of Funeral Professionals.

Background: Funeral professionals offer a unique opportunity to support, educate, and advocate for grieving families after the death of a child. From the initial point of contact to the burial, funeral professionals shape the final moments and memories of a family and a community. And yet, little is known about the needs of funeral professionals to provide high quality services when a child dies.

MR method for measuring microscopic histologic soft tissue textures.

Purpose: Provide a direct, non-invasive diagnostic measure of microscopic tissue texture in the size scale between tens of microns and the much larger scale measurable by clinical imaging. This paper presents a method and data demonstrating the ability to measure these microscopic pathologic tissue textures (histology) in the presence of subject motion in an MR scanner. This size range is vital to diagnosing a wide range of diseases.

Novel magnetic resonance technique for characterizing mesoscale structure of trabecular bone.

Osteoporosis, characterized by increased fracture risk and bone fragility, impacts millions of adults worldwide, but effective, non-invasive and easily accessible diagnostic tests of the disease remain elusive. We present a magnetic resonance (MR) technique that overcomes the motion limitations of traditional MR imaging to acquire high-resolution frequency-domain data to characterize the texture of biological tissues. This technique does not involve obtaining full two-dimensional or three-dimensional images, but can probe scales down to the order of 40 μm and in particular uncover structural information in trabecular bone.

Bereavement photography for children: program development and health care professionals' response.

Reports of in-hospital bereavement photography focus largely on stillborns and neonates. Empiric data regarding the implementation of bereavement photography in pediatrics beyond the neonatal period and the impact of such programs on healthcare professionals (HCPs) is lacking. The authors describe the implementation of a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) bereavement photography program and use questionnaire data from HCPs to describe HCPs' reflections on the program and to identify program barriers.

Refinement of a radioreceptor binding assay for nicotinic acid adenine dinucleotide phosphate.

The measurement of changes in nicotinic acid adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NAADP) levels in cells has been, and remains, key to the investigation of the functions of NAADP as a Ca2+ -releasing second messenger. Here we provide details of how to isolate NAADP from cells by extraction with perchloric acid and then measure the NAADP using a radioreceptor assay. We demonstrate that NAADP is neither generated nor broken down during sample processing conditions and that radioreceptor assay is highly selective for the detection of NAADP under cell extract conditions.