Integration of Health Coaches in a Whole Health Team Model of Chronic Pain Care: a Qualitative Study.

Objective: Health coaching has shown promise in helping patients manage their chronic disease and in improving health outcomes, yet the implementation of health coaching in healthcare systems is understudied. Further, evidence suggests that interdisciplinary care teams may be more effective in treating chronic pain than usual care. As such, we sought to examine the benefits and drawbacks to embedding health coaches within interdisciplinary pain care teams ("Whole Health Teams").

Evidence of Hippocampal Structural Alterations in Gulf War Veterans With Predicted Exposure to the Khamisiyah Plume.

Objectives: To replicate and expand our previous findings of smaller hippocampal volumes in Gulf War (GW) veterans with predicted exposure to the Khamisiyah plume.

Methods: Total hippocampal and hippocampal subfield volumes were quantified from 3 Tesla magnetic resonance images in 113 GW veterans, 62 of whom had predicted exposure as per the Department of Defense exposure models.

Results: Veterans with predicted exposure had smaller total hippocampal and CA3/dentate gyrus volumes compared with unexposed veterans, even after accounting for potentially confounding genetic and clinical variables.

Insomnia Severity, Subjective Sleep Quality, and Risk for Obstructive Sleep Apnea in Veterans With Gulf War Illness.

Despite the fact that sleep disturbances are common in veterans with Gulf War Illness (GWI), there has been a paucity of published sleep studies in this veteran population to date. Therefore, the present study examined subjective sleep quality (assessed with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index), insomnia severity (assessed with the Insomnia Severity Index), and risk for obstructive sleep apnea (assessed with the STOP questionnaire) in 98 Gulf War veterans. Veterans with GWI, defined either by the Kansas or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria, had greater risk for obstructive sleep apnea (i.

Associations between the self-reported frequency of hearing chemical alarms in theater and regional brain volume in Gulf War Veterans.

Background: We previously reported evidence of reduced cortical gray matter (GM), white matter (WM), and hippocampal volume in Gulf War (GW) veterans with predicted exposure to low-levels of nerve agent according to the 2000 Khamisiyah plume model analysis. Because there is suggestive evidence that other nerve agent exposures may have occurred during the Gulf War, we examined the association between the self-reported frequency of hearing chemical alarms sound during deployment in the Gulf War and regional brain volume in GW veterans.

Methods: Ninety consecutive GW veterans (15 female, mean age: 52±8years) participating in a VA-funded study underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on a 3T scanner.