Community change and resident needs: Designing a Participatory Action Research study in Metropolitan Boston.

The health implications of urban development, particularly in rapidly changing, low-income urban neighborhoods, are poorly understood. We describe the Healthy Neighborhoods Study (HNS), a Participatory Action Research study examining the relationship between neighborhood change and population health in nine Massachusetts neighborhoods. Baseline data from the HNS survey show that social factors, specifically income insecurity, food insecurity, social support, experiencing discrimination, expecting to move, connectedness to the neighborhood, and local housing construction that participants believed would improve their lives, identified by a network of 45 Resident Researchers exhibited robust associations with self-rated and mental health.

Variation in care among spinal deformity surgeons: results of a survey of the Shriners hospitals for children.

Study Design: Survey.

Objective: To understand the variation in scoliosis surgery and perioperative care among spinal deformity surgeons.

Summary Of Background Data: While variation in care has been well described in many spinal disorders, the degree of variation has not been described for spinal deformity.

Functional valvular incompetence in decompensated heart failure: noninvasive monitoring and response to medical management.

Objective: We hypothesized that functional mitral and tricuspid valvular incompetence (MR and TR, respectively) are reversible causes of reduced cardiac output in decompensated heart failure (DF) that accompanies systolic dysfunction in ischemic or nonischemic cardiomyopathy.

Background: DF, defined as signs and symptoms of heart failure at rest, is rooted in a salt-avid state transduced by neurohormonal activation secondary to impaired renal perfusion. Functional MR and TR are reversible causes of reduced systemic blood flow.