Decision-Making Engagement Preferences among Older Adults with CKD.

Key Points: Clinicians’ uncertainty about the degree to which older patients prefer to engage in decision making remains a key barrier to shared decision making. Most older adults with advanced CKD preferred a collaborative or active role in decision making.

Background: Older adults with kidney failure face preference-sensitive decisions regarding dialysis initiation.

"You don't know what you don't know": A qualitative study of informational needs of patients, family members, and living donors to inform transplant system metrics.

Introduction: Informational needs and potential use of transplant metrics, especially among patients, remain understudied and a critical component of the transplant community's commitment to patient-centered care. We sought to understand the perspectives and needs of patients, family members/caregivers, living donors, and deceased donor family members.

Methods: We examined decision-making experiences and perspectives on the needs of these stakeholder groups for data about the national transplant system among 58 participants of 14 focus groups and 6 interviews.

US clinicians' perspectives on advance care planning for persons with dementia: A qualitative study.

Background: Although advance care planning (ACP) for persons with dementia (PWD) can promote patient-centered care by aligning future healthcare with patient values, few PWD have documented ACPs for reasons incompletely understood. The objective of this paper is to characterize the perceived value of, barriers to, and successful strategies for completing ACP for PWD as reported by frontline clinicians.

Methods: Qualitative study using semi-structured interviews (August 2018-December 2019) with clinicians (physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, social workers) at 11 US health systems.

Treatment Decision Making for Older Kidney Patients during COVID-19.

Background And Objectives: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) disrupted medical care across health care settings for older patients with advanced CKD. Understanding how shared decision making for kidney treatment decisions was influenced by the uncertainty of an evolving pandemic can provide insights for supporting shared decision making through the current and future public health crises.

Design, Setting, Participants, & Measurements: We performed thematic and narrative analyses of semistructured interviews with patients (CKD stages 4 and 5, age 70+), care partners, and clinicians from Boston, Portland (Maine), San Diego, and Chicago from August to December 2020.

Is This ACP? A Focus Group Study of Patient Experiences of Advance Care Planning.

Background: To date, most research on patients' experiences with advance care planning (ACP) focuses on motivations to engage in discussions and how patients prepare. Gaps remain in understanding how non-critically ill Medicare patients perceive ACP encounters, including how they characterize positive and negative experiences with ACP.

Objectives: Understanding these patients' perceptions is imperative as Medicare has sought to incentivize provision of ACP services via two billing codes in 2016.

Perceptions of Telehealth vs In-Person Visits Among Older Adults With Advanced Kidney Disease, Care Partners, and Clinicians.

Importance: Telehealth has been posited as a cost-effective means for improving access to care for persons with chronic conditions, including kidney disease. Perceptions of telehealth among older patients with chronic illness, their care partners, and clinicians are largely unknown but are critical to successful telehealth use and expansion efforts.

Objective: To identify patient, care partner, and nephrologists' perceptions of the patient-centeredness, benefits, drawbacks of telehealth compared to in-person visits.

Toward Implementation of Mosquito Sterile Insect Technique: The Effect of Storage Conditions on Survival of Male Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) During Transport.

Sterile insect technique (SIT) is a promising, environmentally friendly alternative to the use of pesticides for insect pest control. However, implementing SIT with Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus) mosquitoes presents unique challenges. For example, during transport from the rearing facility to the release site and during the actual release in the field, damage to male mosquitoes should be minimized to preserve their reproductive competitiveness.

The Effect of SkitoSnack, an Artificial Blood Meal Replacement, on Aedes aegypti Life History Traits and Gut Microbiota.

Public health research and vector control frequently require the rearing of large numbers of vector mosquitoes. All target vector mosquito species are anautogenous, meaning that females require vertebrate blood for egg production. Vertebrate blood, however, is costly, with a short shelf life.

An online survey of personal mosquito-repellent strategies.

Background: Mosquito repellents can be an effective method for personal protection against mosquito bites that are a nuisance and carry the risk of transmission of mosquito-borne pathogens like , dengue virus, chikungunya virus, and Zika virus. A multitude of commercially available products are currently on the market, some of them highly effective while others have low or no efficacy. Many home remedies of unknown efficacy are also widely used.

Efficacy of Some Wearable Devices Compared with Spray-On Insect Repellents for the Yellow Fever Mosquito, Aedes aegypti (L.) (Diptera: Culicidae).

The current Zika health crisis in the Americas has created an intense interest in mosquito control methods and products. Mosquito vectors of Zika are of the genus Aedes, mainly the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti. L.

Artificial Diets for Mosquitoes.

Mosquito-borne diseases are responsible for more than a million human deaths every year. Modern mosquito control strategies such as sterile insect technique (SIT), release of insects carrying a dominant lethal (RIDL), population replacement strategies (PR), and -based strategies require the rearing of large numbers of mosquitoes in culture for continuous release over an extended period of time. Anautogenous mosquitoes require essential nutrients for egg production, which they obtain through the acquisition and digestion of a protein-rich blood meal.

Blood serum and BSA, but neither red blood cells nor hemoglobin can support vitellogenesis and egg production in the dengue vector Aedes aegypti.

Aedes aegypti is the major vector of dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya viruses that put millions of people in endemic countries at risk. Mass rearing of this mosquito is crucial for strategies that use modified insects to reduce vector populations and transmission of pathogens, such as sterile insect technique or population replacement. A major problem for vector mosquito mass rearing is the requirement of vertebrate blood for egg production since it poses significant costs as well as potential health hazards.