Rapidly developing communications materials during public health emergencies: the Âu Cơ campaign in the USA.

During public health emergencies, health communication materials to contain the outbreak are needed promptly, which prevents the use of standard approaches for getting feedback from the intended audience. We propose a strategy for rapidly obtaining community feedback on new health communication materials during the public health emergencies. We illustrate this with COVID-19 testing campaign in a Vietnamese-American enclave in the USA.

Differences in post-disaster mental health among Vietnamese and African Americans living in adjacent urban communities flooded by Katrina.

Some communities recover more quickly after a disaster than others. Some differentials in recovery are explained by variation in the level of disaster-related community damage and differences in pre-disaster community characteristics, e.g.

The impact of early social support on subsequent health recovery after a major disaster: A longitudinal analysis.

Social support may facilitate disaster recovery. Prior analyses are hampered by the limits of cross-sectional approaches. We use longitudinal data from the KATIVA-NOLA survey to explore whether social support soon after Hurricane Katrina facilitated recovery of health status for a representative sample of 82 Vietnamese New Orleanians.

Migration and sexual partnerships among unmarried young men in Thailand: a longitudinal approach.

Objectives: Migrants typically report more sexual behavior than non-migrants. In existing work, the potentially confounding effects of selection loom large. Our objective is to discern whether migrants actually do engage in more sexual activity than their non-migrating counterparts, once selection is accounted for.

Health Selection, Migration, and HIV Infection in Malawi.

Despite its importance in studies of migrant health, selectivity of migrants-also known as migration health selection-has seldom been examined in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This neglect is problematic because several features of the context in which migration occurs in SSA-very high levels of HIV, in particular-differ from contextual features in regions that have been studied more thoroughly. To address this important gap, we use longitudinal panel data from Malawi to examine whether migrants differ from nonmigrants in pre-migration health, assessed via SF-12 measures of mental and physical health.

Cohort profile: internal migration in sub-Saharan Africa-The Migration and Health in Malawi (MHM) study.

Purpose: The Migration and Health in Malawi (MHM) study focuses on a key challenge in migration research: although it has long been established that migration and health are closely linked, identifying the effect of migration on various health outcomes is complicated by methodological challenges. The MHM study uses a longitudinal panel premigration and postmigration study design (with a non-migrant comparison group) to measure and/or control for important characteristics that affect both migration and health outcomes.

Participants: Data are available for two waves.

Migration and HIV infection in Malawi.

Objective: To evaluate the assumption that moving heightens HIV infection by examining the time-order between migration and HIV infection and investigate differences in HIV infection by migration destination and permanence.

Methods: We employ four waves of longitudinal data (2004-2010) for 4265 men and women from a household-based study in rural Malawi and a follow-up of migrants (2013). Using these data, we examine HIV status prior to migration.

The relationship between mechanical properties and ballistic penetration depth in a viscoelastic gel.

The fundamental material response of a viscoelastic material when impacted by a ballistic projectile has important implication for the defense, law enforcement, and medical communities particularly for the evaluation of protective systems. In this paper, we systematically vary the modulus and toughness of a synthetic polymer gel to determine their respective influence on the velocity-dependent penetration of a spherical projectile. The polymer gels were characterized using tensile, compression, and rheological testing taking special care to address the unique challenges associated with obtaining high fidelity mechanical data on highly conformal materials.

Rural-to-Urban Migration and Changes in Health Among Young Adults in Thailand.

We investigate the impacts of rural-to-urban migration on the health of young adult migrants. A key methodological challenge involves the potentially confounding effects of selection on the relationship between migration and health. Our study addresses this challenge in two ways.

Rural-to-urban migration and sexual debut in Thailand.

Migration from one's parents' home and sexual debut are common features of the transition to adulthood. Although many studies have described both of these features independently, few have examined the relationship between migration and sexual debut in a systematic manner. In this study, we explore this link for young adults in Thailand.

Interfacial optimization of fiber-reinforced hydrogel composites for soft fibrous tissue applications.

Meniscal tears are the most common orthopedic injuries to the human body, yet the current treatment of choice is a partial meniscectomy, which is known to lead to joint degeneration and osteoarthritis. As a result, there is a significant clinical need to develop materials capable of restoring function to the meniscus following an injury. Fiber-reinforced hydrogel composites are particularly suited for replicating the mechanical function of native fibrous tissues due to their ability to mimic the native anisotropic property distribution present.

Tunable mechanical behavior of synthetic organogels as biofidelic tissue simulants.

Solvent-swollen polymer gels can be utilized as mechanical simulants of biological tissues to evaluate protective systems and assess injury mechanisms. However, a key challenge in this application of synthetic materials is mimicking the rate-dependent mechanical response of complex biological tissues. Here, we characterize the mechanical behavior of tissue simulant gel candidates comprising a chemically crosslinked polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) network loaded with a non-reactive PDMS solvent, and compare this response with that of tissue from murine heart and liver under comparable loading conditions.

Disentangling the effects of migration, selection and acculturation on weight and body fat distribution: results from a natural experiment involving Vietnamese Americans, returnees, and never-leavers.

We distinguish between selection and true migration effects on weight and body fat for Vietnamese immigrants; and examine the role of acculturation on these outcomes. Data (n = 703) were collected among three population-based samples of working-age Vietnamese immigrants, repatriated emigrants and never-migrated Vietnamese nationals. This allows for a decomposition exercise to separate the effects of migration effects from selection effects on body mass index (BMI) and waist-hip ratio (WHR).

Mental health consequences of international migration for Vietnamese Americans and the mediating effects of physical health and social networks: results from a natural experiment approach.

Although the existing literature on immigrant mental health is extensive, major substantive and methodological gaps remain. Substantively, there is little population-based research that focuses on the mental health consequences of migration for Vietnamese Americans. More generally, although a wide range of mental health problems among immigrants has been identified, the potential causal or mediating mechanisms underlying these problems remain elusive.

Physical and mental health consequences of Katrina on Vietnamese immigrants in New Orleans: a pre- and post-disaster assessment.

We assessed the health impacts of a natural disaster upon a major immigrant community by comparing pre- and post-event measures for identical individuals. We collected standard health measures for a population-based sample of working-age Vietnamese-Americans living in New Orleans in 2005, just weeks before Katrina occurred. Near the first- and second-year anniversaries of the event, we located and re-assessed more than two-thirds of this original pre-Katrina cohort.

Evacuation and Return of Vietnamese New Orleanians Affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina struck near New Orleans on August 29, 2005, and resulted in the collapse of the federal protective levee system and the flooding of most of the city. New Orleans East, where the main Vietnamese enclave is located, was especially hard hit. By chance, just weeks before this disaster occurred we collected with our colleagues a wide range of demographic and health data for a population-based sample of working age Vietnamese Americans living in New Orleans.

Micro- and nanomechanical analysis of articular cartilage by indentation-type atomic force microscopy: validation with a gel-microfiber composite.

As documented previously, articular cartilage exhibits a scale-dependent dynamic stiffness when probed by indentation-type atomic force microscopy (IT-AFM). In this study, a micrometer-size spherical tip revealed an unimodal stiffness distribution (which we refer to as microstiffness), whereas probing articular cartilage with a nanometer-size pyramidal tip resulted in a bimodal nanostiffness distribution. We concluded that indentation of the cartilage's soft proteoglycan (PG) gel gave rise to the lower nanostiffness peak, whereas deformation of its collagen fibrils yielded the higher nanostiffness peak.

Race, socioeconomic status, and return migration to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans on the 29th of August 2005 and displaced virtually the entire population of the city. Soon after, observers predicted the city would become whiter and wealthier as a result of selective return migration, although challenges related to sampling and data collection in a post-disaster environment have hampered evaluation of these hypotheses. In this article, we investigate return to the city by displaced residents over a period of approximately 14 months following the storm, describing overall return rates and examining differences in return rates by race and socioeconomic status.

One year later: mental illness prevalence and disparities among New Orleans residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Objectives: We examined whether there were high levels of mental illness among displaced New Orleans, LA, residents in the fall of 2006, 1 year after Hurricane Katrina.

Methods: We used data from the Displaced New Orleans Residents Pilot Study, which measured the prevalence of probable mild or moderate and serious mental illness among a representative sample of people who resided in New Orleans at the time of the hurricane, including people who evacuated the city and did not return. We also analyzed disparities in mental illness by race, education, and income.

Mechanical characterization of soft viscoelastic gels via indentation and optimization-based inverse finite element analysis.

Polymer gels are widely accepted as candidate materials for tissue engineering, drug delivery, and orthopedic load-bearing applications. In addition, their mechanical and physical properties can be tailored to meet a wide range of design requirements. For soft gels whose elastic modulus is in the kPa range, mechanical characterization by bulk mechanical testing methods presents challenges, for example, in sample preparation, fixture design, gripping, and/or load measurement accuracy.

PTSD in Vietnamese Americans following Hurricane Katrina: prevalence, patterns, and predictors.

One year after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, we assessed 82 adults from a population-based sample of the Vietnamese American community who had participated in a larger study of immigration weeks before the disaster. Although 21% met criteria for partial posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), only 5% of the sample met all PTSD criteria. Avoidance/numbing symptoms did not form a coherent cluster and were seldom confirmed, but intrusion, arousal, and interference were common.

Disparities in health care among Vietnamese New Orleanians and the impacts of Hurricane Katrina.

This paper examines the use of routine health care and disparities by socio-economic status among Vietnamese New Orleanians. It also assesses how these differences may have changed as the result of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast in late summer 2005, devastating the infrastructure of the health care system of New Orleans. Data for this study come from a panel of Vietnamese New Orleanians who were interviewed in 2005, just weeks before the hurricane, and followed up twice near the disaster's anniversary in 2006 and 2007.

Sex and the single (older) guy: sexual lives of older unmarried Thai men during the AIDS era.

In Thailand and elsewhere, some older persons remain sexually active well into late middle and old age. Very little research, program, or advocacy effort has targeted this group with respect to HIV and their susceptibility to it. We explore these issues using qualitative data from two sets of semi-structured, in-depth interviews of unmarried older Thai men, most of whom were in their 50's.