Readiness of Soldiers and Adult Family Members Who Receive Behavioral Health Care: Identifying Promising Outcome Metrics.

Behavioral health (BH) conditions-such as posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety-are the second most common medical reasons for nondeployability in the U.S. Army.

Alignment Between Objective and Subjective Assessments of Health System Performance: Findings From a Mixed-Methods Study.

The article examines whether subjective performance assessments from health system executives match objective performance assessments and qualitatively explores ways to achieve high performance. We interviewed 138 C-suite executives of 24 health systems in California, Minnesota, Washington, and Wisconsin between 2017 and 2019. We used maximum variation sampling to select health systems to achieve diversity in performance on objective measures of clinical performance.

Optimizing health IT to improve health system performance: A work in progress.

Background: Despite significant investments in health information technology (IT), the technology has not yielded the intended performance effects or transformational change. We describe activities that health systems are pursuing to better leverage health IT to improve performance.

Methods: We conducted semi-structured telephone interviews with C-suite executives from 24 U.

Some Aspects of Patient Experience Assessed by Practices Undergoing Patient-Centered Medical Home Transformation Are Measured by CAHPS, Others Are Not.

Background And Objectives: Delivering care as a patient-centered medical home (PCMH) is being widely adopted across the United States by primary care practices to better meet patient needs. A key PCMH element is measuring patient experience for practice improvement. The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) PCMH recognition program requires practices to both measure patient experience and engage in continuous practice/quality improvement to attain PCMH recognition and then throughout full PCMH transformation.

Factors Influencing Physician Practices' Adoption of Behavioral Health Integration in the United States: A Qualitative Study.

Background: Behavioral health integration is uncommon among U.S. physician practices despite recent policy changes that may encourage its adoption.

Evaluation of an Integrative Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Treatment Program.

Objectives: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and combat-related stress can be refractory, pervasive, and have a devastating impact on those affected, their families, and society at large. Challenges dealing with symptoms may in turn make a servicemember more susceptible to problems, including alcohol abuse, interpersonal conflict, and occupational problems. An effective treatment strategy will address multifactorial issues by using a holistic multimodal approach.

Improving Disaster Resilience Among Older Adults: Insights from Public Health Departments and Aging-in-Place Efforts.

This study uses interview data collected from public health departments and aging-in-place efforts-specifically, from coordinators of age-friendly communities and village executive directors-to explore how current aging-in-place efforts can be harnessed to strengthen the disaster resilience of older adults and which existing programs or new collaborations among public health departments and these organizations show promise for improving disaster resilience for older populations. Interviews with stakeholders revealed that most age-friendly communities and senior villages did not place a high priority on promoting disaster preparedness. While most public health departments conducted or took the lead on disaster preparedness and resilience activities, they were not necessarily tailored to older adults.

How Community and Public Health Partnerships Contribute to Disaster Recovery and Resilience.

Objective: To summarize ways that networks of community-based organizations (CBO), in partnership with public health departments, contribute to community recovery from disaster.

Methods: The study was conducted using an online survey administered one and 2 years after Hurricane Sandy to the partnership networks of 369 CBO and the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The survey assessed the structure and durability of networks, how they were influenced by storm damage, and whether more connected networks were associated with better recovery outcomes.

The Unified Behavioral Health Center for Military Veterans and Their Families: Documenting Structure, Process, and Outcomes of Care.

Many veterans and their families struggle with behavioral health problems, family reintegration difficulties, and relationship problems. Although many veterans are eligible to receive care at Department of Veterans Affairs health facilities, family members are generally not eligible and therefore must seek care elsewhere. This situation can pose a barrier to family members' access to care and also make it more difficult for veterans and families to receive high-quality services that are coordinated across providers.

A systematic review of peer-supported interventions for health promotion and disease prevention.

Unlabelled: Prior research has examined peer programs with respect to specific peer roles (e.g.; peer support) or specific health/wellness domains (e.

Mindfulness Meditation for Chronic Pain: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Background: Chronic pain patients increasingly seek treatment through mindfulness meditation.

Purpose: This study aims to synthesize evidence on efficacy and safety of mindfulness meditation interventions for the treatment of chronic pain in adults.

Method: We conducted a systematic review on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with meta-analyses using the Hartung-Knapp-Sidik-Jonkman method for random-effects models.

The Impact of Massage Therapy on Function in Pain Populations-A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials: Part I, Patients Experiencing Pain in the General Population.

Purpose: Pain is multi-dimensional and may be better addressed through a holistic, biopsychosocial approach. Massage therapy is commonly practiced among patients seeking pain management; however, its efficacy is unclear. This systematic review and meta-analysis is the first to rigorously assess the quality of massage therapy research and evidence for its efficacy in treating pain, function-related and health-related quality of life outcomes across all pain populations.

The Impact of Massage Therapy on Function in Pain Populations-A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials: Part III, Surgical Pain Populations.

Objective: Pain is multi-dimensional and may be better addressed through a holistic, biopsychosocial approach. Massage therapy is commonly practiced among patients seeking pain management; however, its efficacy is unclear. This systematic review and meta-analysis is the first to rigorously assess the quality of the evidence for massage therapy's efficacy in treating pain, function-related, and health-related quality of life outcomes in surgical pain populations.

The Impact of Massage Therapy on Function in Pain Populations-A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials: Part II, Cancer Pain Populations.

Purpose: Pain is multi-dimensional and may be better addressed through a holistic, biopsychosocial approach. Massage therapy is commonly practiced among patients seeking pain management; however, its efficacy is unclear. This systematic review and meta-analysis is the first to rigorously assess the quality of massage therapy research and evidence for its efficacy in treating pain, function-related and health-related quality of life in cancer populations.

A Qualitative Inquiry on Palliative and End-of-Life Care Policy Reform.

Background: There is increasing recognition of the role of palliative care (PC) in health care delivery, but priorities for state and federal policy to support PC are unclear and have sometimes engendered controversy. We canvassed experts to shed light on general recommendations for improving PC.

Objective: The study objective was to identify challenges to and potential solutions for promoting, adopting, and implementing policies that would support or expand high-quality PC.

A Cluster-Randomized Trial of Restorative Practices: An Illustration to Spur High-Quality Research and Evaluation.

Restorative Practices in schools lack rigorous evaluation studies. As an example of rigorous school-based research, this paper describes the first randomized control trial of restorative practices to date, the Study of Restorative Practices. It is a 5-year, cluster-randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the Restorative Practices Intervention (RPI) in 14 middle schools in Maine to assess whether RPI impacts both positive developmental outcomes and problem behaviors and whether the effects persist during the transition from middle to high school.

Guidelines for Creating, Implementing, and Evaluating Mind-Body Programs in a Military Healthcare Setting.

Research suggests that the development of mind-body skills can improve individual and family resilience, particularly related to the stresses of illness, trauma, and caregiving. To operationalize the research evidence that mind-body skills help with health and recovery, Samueli Institute, in partnership with experts in mind-body programming, created a set of guidelines for developing and evaluating mind-body programs for service members, veterans, and their families. The Guidelines for Creating, Implementing, and Evaluating Mind-Body Programs in a Military Healthcare Setting outline key strategies and issues to consider when developing, implementing, and evaluating a mind-body focused family empowerment approach in a military healthcare setting.