Publications by authors named "Lauren Russell"

Importance: Telehealth can expand access to care, but digital needs present barriers for some patients.

Objective: To investigate sociodemographic and clinical associations of digital needs among veterans.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This quality improvement study used data collected between July 2021 and September 2023 from Assessing Circumstances and Offering Resources for Needs (ACORN), a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) initiative to systematically screen for, comprehensively assess, and address social risks and social needs.

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Background: Health care organizations, including the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), are increasingly adopting programs to address social determinants of health. As part of a comprehensive social risk screening and referral model, tailored resource guides can support efforts to address unmet social needs. However, limited guidance is available on best practices for the development of resource guides in health care settings.

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Context can influence cancer-related outcomes. For example, health-care organization characteristics, including ownership, leadership, and culture, can affect care access, communication, and patient outcomes. Health-care organization characteristics and other contextual factors can also influence whether and how clinical discoveries reduce cancer incidence, morbidity, and mortality.

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Background: The term "developmental disability" (DD) is inconsistently defined and applied depending on purpose and across sources, including in legislation.

Objective: This project aimed to identify existing definitions of disability and DD and to determine the extent to which each definition could be operationalized to produce prevalence estimates using data from U.S.

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Article Synopsis
  • The Joint Commission has prioritized the reduction of health care disparities and improvement of health equity, prompting the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to enhance existing initiatives and tools aimed at addressing these issues.
  • VHA utilizes various data and resource tools, alongside a comprehensive care delivery approach, to integrate and improve the quality of care for veterans while also acknowledging limitations and planning for future enhancements.
  • The VHA's responses to new equity standards have resulted in stronger partnerships, better dissemination of resources, and actionable strategies that could serve as a model for other health care systems aiming to improve health equity.
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Objective: To determine whether a 6- or 12-month look-back period affected rates of reported social risks in a social risk survey for use in the Veterans Health Administration and to assess associations of social risks with overall health and mental health.

Study Design: Cross-sectional survey of respondents randomized to 6- or 12-month look-back period.

Data Sources And Study Setting: Online survey with a convenience sample of Veterans in June and July 2021.

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Objective: The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) is a widely implemented 12-month behavioural weight loss programme for individuals with prediabetes. The DPP covers nutrition but does not explicitly incorporate cooking skills education. The objective of the current study is to describe food and cooking skills (FACS) and strategies of recent DPP participants.

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Background: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare system routinely screens Veterans for food insecurity, housing instability, and intimate partner violence, but does not systematically screen for other health-related social needs (HRSNs).

Objectives: To (1) develop a process for systematically identifying and addressing Veterans' HRSNs, (2) determine reported prevalence of HRSNs, and (3) assess the acceptability of HRSN screening among Veterans.

Design: "Assessing Circumstances and Offering Resources for Needs" (ACORN) is a Veteran-tailored HRSN screening and referral quality improvement initiative.

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Objective: Evaluate self-reported electronic screening () in a VA Transition Care Management Program (TCM) to improve the accuracy and completeness of administrative ethnicity and race data.

Materials And Methods: We compared missing, declined, and complete (neither missing nor declined) rates between (1) (ethnicity and race entered into electronic tablet directly by patient using eScreening), (2) (Veteran-completed paper form plus interview, data entered by staff), and (3) (multiple processes, data entered by staff). The TCM-eScreening ( = 7113) and TCM-EHR groups ( = 7113) included post-9/11 Veterans.

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Identifying and addressing social risks and social needs in healthcare settings is an important step towards achieving health equity. Assessing Circumstances and Offering Resources for Needs (ACORN) is a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) social risk screening and referral model that aims to systematically identify and address social needs. Since initial piloting in 2018, our team has collaborated with clinical and operations partners to implement ACORN across multiple VA clinical settings while adapting and tailoring the initiative to meet the needs of different populations, specialties, and individuals administering screening.

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Background And Aims: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a leading cause of cancer-related death. The NF-κB transcription factor family subunit c-Rel is typically protumorigenic; however, it has recently been reported as a tumor suppressor. Here, we investigated the role of c-Rel in HCC.

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Injectable intramyocardial biomaterials have promise to limit adverse ventricular remodeling through mechanical and biologic mechanisms. While some success has been observed by injecting materials to regenerate new tissue, optimal biomaterial stiffness to thicken and stiffen infarcted myocardium to limit adverse remodeling has not been determined. In this work, we present an in-vivo study of the impact of biomaterial stiffness over a wide range of stiffness moduli on ventricular mechanics.

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The product encoded by the X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis (XIAP) gene is a multi-functional protein which not only controls caspase-dependent cell death, but also participates in inflammatory signalling, copper homeostasis, response to hypoxia and control of cell migration. Deregulation of XIAP, either by elevated expression or inherited genetic deletion, is associated with several human disease states. Reconciling XIAP-dependent signalling pathways with its role in disease progression is essential to understand how XIAP promotes the progression of human pathologies.

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Synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists (SCRAs) are a large group of abused psychoactive compounds that elicit numerous toxic effects not observed with cannabis, including death. Abuse of third-generation SCRA 5F-MDMB-PINACA (also known as 5F-ADB) has been associated with over 40 fatalities. This SCRA is metabolized to several active phase I metabolites, including excessively high post-mortem serum concentrations of an ester hydrolysis metabolite, 5F-MDMB-PINACA-M7 (M7).

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Adults with Down Syndrome (DS) are at higher risk for severe outcomes of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) than the general population, but evidence is required to understand the risks for children with DS, which is necessary to inform COVID-19 shielding advice and vaccination priorities. We aimed to determine the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of COVID-19 in children with DS. Using data from an international survey obtained from a range of countries and control data from the United States, we compared the prevalence of symptoms and medical complications and risk factors for severe outcomes between DS and non-DS paediatric populations with COVID-19.

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Farmyard manure and slurry (FYM&S) and anaerobic digestate are potentially valuable soil conditioners providing important nutrients for plant development and growth. However, these organic fertilisers may pose a microbial health risk to humans. A quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) model was developed to investigate the potential human exposure to pathogens following the application of FYM&S and digestate to agricultural land.

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Farmyard manure and slurry (FYM&S) is a valuable feedstock for anaerobic digestion (AD) plants. However, FYM&S may contain high concentrations of pathogens, and complete inactivation through the AD process is unlikely. Thus, following land application of digestate, pathogens may contaminate a range of environmental media posing a potential threat to public health.

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Drug developers worldwide assess compound safety and efficacy using measures that include mouse core temperature and locomotor activity. Subtle differences in animal housing conditions between institutions can alter these values, impacting scientific rigor and reproducibility. In these studies, adult male NIH Swiss mice were surgically implanted with radiotelemetry probes that simultaneously monitored core temperature and locomotor activity across various housing conditions.

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Background: Health conditions, immune dysfunction, and premature aging associated with trisomy 21 (Down syndrome, DS) may impact the clinical course of COVID-19.

Methods: The T21RS COVID-19 Initiative launched an international survey for clinicians or caregivers on patients with COVID-19 and DS. Data collected between April and October 2020 (N=1046) were analysed and compared with the UK ISARIC4C survey of hospitalized COVID-19 patients with and without DS.

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Background: Health conditions and immune dysfunction associated with trisomy 21 (Down syndrome, DS) may impact the clinical course of COVID-19 once infected by SARS-CoV-2.

Methods: The T21RS COVID-19 Initiative launched an international survey for clinicians or caregivers/family members on patients with COVID-19 and DS (N=1046). De-identified survey data collected between April and October 2020 were analysed and compared with the UK ISARIC4C survey of hospitalized COVID-19 patients with and without DS.

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Background: Injection of the centrodistal (CD) joint in the horse is a commonly performed procedure for both diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. This procedure can be technically challenging, and while radiographic guidance has been previously used, ultrasound localised injection of the CD joint has not been described.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to explore the feasibility of using ultrasound localisation to increase the accuracy of CD joint injection.

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If pathogens are present in feedstock materials and survive in anaerobic digestion (AD) formulations at 37 °C, they may also survive the AD process to be disseminated in digestate spread on farmland as a fertilizer. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of spp., O157, , and spp.

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Parkinson's disease (PD), which involves basal ganglia degeneration, affects language as well as motor function. However, which aspects of language are impaired in PD and under what circumstances remains unclear. We examined whether lexical and grammatical aspects of language are differentially affected in PD, and whether this dissociation is moderated by sex as well as the degree of basal ganglia degeneration.

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