Preventing Infant Mortality Through Medicaid-Administered Prenatal Care Coordination: Evidence From Wisconsin.

Objective: To estimate associations between Wisconsin Medicaid's Prenatal Care Coordination (PNCC) program and infant mortality.

Data Sources And Study Setting: We analyzed birth records, Medicaid claims, and infant death records for all resident and in-state Medicaid-paid live deliveries during 2010-2018.

Study Design: We measured PNCC exposure during pregnancy dichotomously (none; any) and categorically (none; assessment/care plan only; service receipt).

"Catching Chain" With Medicaid: The Impact of Medicaid Access on Opioid Overdose Mortality in Adults Released From State Detention.

Objective: To combat the heightened risk of opioid overdose death for individuals with criminal justice involvements, enhanced access to Medicaid remains paramount. This study examines the effect of a 2017 policy change in Pennsylvania that allowed for suspension, rather than termination, of Medicaid coverage while in prison on post-release opioid overdose mortality risk (OOMR) for adults released from Pennsylvania prisons.

Methods: This retrospective cohort study utilizes administrative records from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections for adults ≥18 years diagnosed with opioid use disorder (OUD) released in either 2015 or 2018.

Rural reticence to inform physicians of cannabis use.

Purpose: Over 75% of Americans have legal access to medical cannabis, though physical access is not uniform and can be difficult for rural residents. Additionally, substantial stigma remains in using medical cannabis, particularly within the health care system. This article argues that rural Americans may be particularly affected by such stigma and may thus be more likely to not report cannabis use to health care providers.

Cannabinoid Awareness, Reporting Use to Health Care Providers, and Perceptions Regarding Safety - Pennsylvania, March 2023-April 2023.

Introduction: With the continued societal and policy interest in cannabinoids, the Penn State Harrisburg Center for Survey Research (CSR) conducted a web survey (Cannabinoid Lion Poll) for adult-aged Pennsylvanians between March 6 and April 2, 2023.

Methods: The Lion Poll omnibus survey asked questions of adult-aged Pennsylvanians to assess awareness of cannabidiol (CBD) and products containing tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), including marijuana, the likelihood of reporting cannabinoid use to health care providers (HCPs), and perceptions regarding safety.

Results: Of these 1,045 respondents, 51.

Cannabis policy bundles and traffic fatalities in the American States over time.

Background And Aim: Since 1996, 38 US states have legalized access to cannabis (medical and/or adult-use recreational). We aimed to estimate the effect of three dimensions of state cannabis policy design - pharmaceutical, permissive and fiscal - on levels of overall, alcohol-impaired, occupant, light truck and pedestrian fatality rates.

Design And Setting: Observational study of US states' overall, alcohol-impaired, occupant, light truck and pedestrian fatalities between 1994 and 2020.

Spillover effects of gestational age on sibling's literacy.

Adverse health events within families can harm children's development, including their early literacy. Using data from a longitudinal Wisconsin birth cohort, we estimated the spillover effect of younger siblings' gestational ages on older siblings' kindergarten-level literacy. We sampled 20,014 sibling pairs born during 2007-2010 who took Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening-Kindergarten tests during 2012-2016.

Maternal opioid use disorder and infant mortality in Wisconsin, United States, 2010-2018.

Objective: The difference in infant health outcomes by maternal opioid use disorder (OUD) status is understudied. We measured the association between maternal OUD during pregnancy and infant mortality and investigated whether this association differs by infant neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS) or maternal receipt of medication for OUD (MOUD) during pregnancy.

Methods: We sampled 204,543 Medicaid-paid births from Wisconsin, United States (2010-2018).

Racial and Geographic Variation of Prenatal Care Coordination Receipt in the State of Wisconsin, 2010-2019.

Medicaid-funded obstetric care coordination programs supplement prenatal care with tailored services to improve birth outcomes. It is uncertain whether these programs reach populations with elevated risks of adverse birth outcomes-namely non-white, highly rural, and highly urban populations. This study evaluates racial and geographic variation in the receipt of Wisconsin Medicaid's Prenatal Care Coordination (PNCC) program during 2010-2019.

Spillover Effects of Prenatal Care Coordination on Older Siblings Beyond the Mother-Infant Dyad.

Background: Pregnancy care coordination increases preventive care receipt for mothers and infants. Whether such services affect other family members' health care is unknown.

Objective: To estimate the spillover effect of maternal exposure to Wisconsin Medicaid's Prenatal Care Coordination (PNCC) program during pregnancy with a younger sibling on the preventive care receipt for an older child.

Measuring Fertility Intentions During Times of Crisis: An Example Using Survey Data Amid the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Fertility intentions-intentions regarding whether and when to have children-predict reproductive health outcomes. Measuring fertility intentions is difficult, particularly during macrostructural shocks, for at least two reasons: (1) fertility intentions may be especially volatile during periods of uncertainty and (2) macrostructural shocks may constrain data collection. We propose a set of indicators that capture how a macrostructural shock directly alters fertility intentions, with a particular focus on the Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic.

Trumping the Centers for Disease Control: A Case Comparison of the CDC's Response to COVID-19, H1N1, and Ebola.

Despite being the richest and most prepared nation in the world, the U.S. responded badly to the COVID-19 crisis.

Fertility rates in women with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Wisconsin Medicaid.

Background: Women with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) face stigma and inequity surrounding opportunity and care during pregnancy. Little work has quantified fertility rates among women with IDD which prevents proper allocation of care.

Objective: Our objective was to cross-sectionally describe fertility patterns among women with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in 10-years of Medicaid-linked birth records.

Estimating sibling spillover effects with unobserved confounding using gain-scores.

Purpose: A growing area of research in epidemiology is the identification of health-related sibling spillover effects, or the effect of one individual's exposure on their sibling's outcome. The health within families may be confounded by unobserved factors, rendering identification of sibling spillovers challenging.

Methods: We demonstrate a gain-score (fixed effects) regression method for identifying exposure-to-outcome spillover effects within sibling pairs in linear models.

Randomised controlled trial of the effects of increased energy intake on menstrual recovery in exercising women with menstrual disturbances: the 'REFUEL' study.

Study Question: Does increased daily energy intake lead to menstrual recovery in exercising women with oligomenorrhoea (Oligo) or amenorrhoea (Amen)?

Summary Answer: A modest increase in daily energy intake (330 ± 65 kcal/day; 18 ± 4%) is sufficient to induce menstrual recovery in exercising women with Oligo/Amen.

What Is Known Already: Optimal energy availability is critical for normal reproductive function, but the magnitude of increased energy intake necessary for menstrual recovery in exercising women, along with the associated metabolic changes, is not known.

Study Design, Size, Duration: The REFUEL study (trial # NCT00392873) is the first randomised controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of 12 months of increased energy intake on menstrual function in 76 exercising women with menstrual disturbances.

Birth outcomes affecting infants of mothers with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Background: Women with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) face increased risk of adverse maternal pregnancy outcomes, yet less is known about infant outcomes.

Objectives: To examine birth outcomes of infants born to mothers with IDD and assess associations with demographics and IDD-type.

Methods: We used data from the Big Data for Little Kids project, which links Wisconsin birth records to Medicaid claims for live births covered by Medicaid from 2007 to 2016.

Pregnancy complications and maternal birth outcomes in women with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Wisconsin Medicaid.

Background: Women with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) may face greater risk for poor pregnancy outcomes. Our objective was to examine risk of maternal pregnancy complications and birth outcomes in women with IDD compared to women without IDD in Wisconsin Medicaid, from 2007-2016.

Methods: Data were from the Big Data for Little Kids project, a data linkage that creates an administrative data based cohort of mothers and children in Wisconsin.

Blood extracellular vesicles from healthy individuals regulate hematopoietic stem cells as humans age.

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) maintain balanced blood cell production in a process called hematopoiesis. As humans age, their HSCs acquire mutations that allow some HSCs to disproportionately contribute to normal blood production. This process, known as age-related clonal hematopoiesis, predisposes certain individuals to cancer, cardiovascular and pulmonary pathologies.

Correction: The effects of information and social conformity on opinion change.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Application of pharmacogenomics and bioinformatics to exemplify the utility of human ex vivo organoculture models in the field of precision medicine.

Here we describe a collaboration between industry, the National Health Service (NHS) and academia that sought to demonstrate how early understanding of both pharmacology and genomics can improve strategies for the development of precision medicines. Diseased tissue ethically acquired from patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), was used to investigate inter-patient variability in drug efficacy using ex vivo organocultures of fresh lung tissue as the test system. The reduction in inflammatory cytokines in the presence of various test drugs was used as the measure of drug efficacy and the individual patient responses were then matched against genotype and microRNA profiles in an attempt to identify unique predictors of drug responsiveness.

Subjective sleep measurement: comparing sleep diary to questionnaire.

Purpose: The sleep diary is the gold standard of self-reported sleep duration, but its comparability to sleep questionnaires is uncertain. The purpose of this study was to compare self-reported sleep duration between a sleep diary and a sleep questionnaire and to test whether sleep-related disorders were associated with diary-questionnaire differences in sleep duration.

Participants And Methods: We compared self-reported sleep duration from 5,432 questionnaire-sleep diary pairs in a longitudinal cohort of 1,516 adults.

Sediment Cores from White Pond, South Carolina, contain a Platinum Anomaly, Pyrogenic Carbon Peak, and Coprophilous Spore Decline at 12.8 ka.

A widespread platinum (Pt) anomaly was recently documented in Greenland ice and 11 North American sedimentary sequences at the onset of the Younger Dryas (YD) event (~12,800 cal yr BP), consistent with the YD Impact Hypothesis. We report high-resolution analyses of a 1-meter section of a lake core from White Pond, South Carolina, USA. After developing a Bayesian age-depth model that brackets the late Pleistocene through early Holocene, we analyzed and quantified the following: (1) Pt and palladium (Pd) abundance, (2) geochemistry of 58 elements, (3) coprophilous spores, (4) sedimentary organic matter (OC and sedaDNA), (5) stable isotopes of C (δC) and N (δN), (6) soot, (7) aciniform carbon, (8) cryptotephra, (9) mercury (Hg), and (10) magnetic susceptibility.

Gestational age, kindergarten-level literacy, and effect modification by maternal socio-economic and demographic factors.

Background: Shorter gestational age at birth is associated with worse academic performance in childhood. Socio-economic and demographic factors that affect a child's development may modify the relationship between gestational age and later academic performance.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate socio-economic and demographic effect modification of gestational age's association with kindergarten-level literacy skills in a longitudinal Wisconsin birth cohort.