Patient Perspectives on Lifestyle Medicine Virtual Group Visits.

Lifestyle Medicine Virtual Group Visits (LMVGVs) have potential for providing effective lifestyle education and counseling to patients who have or are at risk for chronic disease. The purpose of this study was to assess primary care patients' motivations for participation in and preferences for future engagement with LMVGVs. This was a cross-sectional survey conducted in an academic community-based clinic.

Power on: The rapid transition of a large interdisciplinary behavioral health department to telemental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a rapid transition to telemental health (TMH) for behavioral health services in the behavioral health department of a large integrated primary care organization. Although the COVID-19 pandemic was the initial trigger for rapid organizational change, systems were developed with a focus on longer term scalability and sustainability.

Methods: This paper discusses the process of organizational change within our healthcare delivery system using the Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results (SOAR) framework.

Massachusetts General Hospital Revere Food Pantry: Addressing hunger and health at an academic medical center community clinic.

Food insecurity is defined by limited access to adequate food. As a result, it is associated with chronic disease for millions of Americans. Healthcare systems take responsibility for improving patient health and thus are well positioned to create food security interventions that improve health.

Virtual Group Visits: Hope for Improving Chronic Disease Management in Primary Care During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic.

As health care systems respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, new virtual care approaches are emerging for health promotion and chronic disease management. Virtual group visits (VGVs) supporting a healthy lifestyle, adapted from the well-established shared medical appointment (SMA) model, hold promise as a primary care delivery tool for preventing and managing chronic disease. In order to establish VGVs as standard of care, evidence for clinical effectiveness, financial sustainability, and access for vulnerable populations is needed.

Chronic disease management in the COVID-19 era.

In the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) era, clinical registries and innovative virtual care delivery tools should be leveraged to engage populations in effective chronic disease management.

Identification of Racial Inequities in Access to Specialized Inpatient Heart Failure Care at an Academic Medical Center.

Background: Racial inequities for patients with heart failure (HF) have been widely documented. HF patients who receive cardiology care during a hospital admission have better outcomes. It is unknown whether there are differences in admission to a cardiology or general medicine service by race.

COMPASS: An Open-Source, General-Purpose Software Toolkit for Computational Psychiatry.

Mathematical modeling of behavior during a psychophysical task, referred to as "computational psychiatry," could greatly improve our understanding of mental disorders. One barrier to the broader adoption of computational methods, is that they often require advanced statistical modeling and mathematical skills. Biological and behavioral signals often show skewed or non-Gaussian distributions, and very few toolboxes and analytical platforms are capable of processing such signal categories.

Gaps Between Immigrant Spouses in Host Country Language Proficiency: Longitudinal Effects on Marital Satisfaction.

Research on immigration underscores the importance of language acculturation in successful adjustment to life in a new country. However, the profound impact of different levels of language proficiency between immigrant spouses on their married life is an understudied topic. The current study explores whether differences between immigrant spouses in host language proficiency predict marital satisfaction in their first four years in the host country.

A Mixed-Methods Study of Patient-Provider E-Mail Content in a Safety-Net Setting.

To explore the content of patient-provider e-mails in a safety-net primary care clinic, we conducted a content analysis using inductive and deductive coding of e-mail exchanges (n = 31) collected from January through November 2013. Participants were English-speaking adult patients with a chronic condition (or their caregivers) cared for at a single publicly funded general internal medicine clinic and their primary care providers (attending general internist physicians, clinical fellows, internal medicine residents, and nurse practitioners). All e-mails were nonurgent.

Readability assessment of patient-provider electronic messages in a primary care setting.

Background: The high prevalence of limited health literacy among patients threatens the success of secure electronic messaging between patients from diverse populations and their providers.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to generate hypotheses about the readability of patient and provider electronic messages.

Methods: We collected 31 patient-provider e-mail exchanges (n = 119 total messages) from a safety-net primary care clinic.

Interplay of identities: a narrative study of self-perceptions among immigrants with severe mental illness from the former Soviet Union.

This study explored the self-perceptions of individuals with mental illness who immigrated from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) to Israel. In particular, we examined the double stigma borne by these individuals as new immigrants and psychiatric patients, which may threaten their identity and render them at risk for social marginalization. We interviewed 12 FSU immigrants diagnosed with severe mental illness (SMI), who had been hospitalized in psychiatric facilities in the past and, at the time of the interview, were residing in community rehabilitation centers.

The functional oculomotor network and saccadic cognitive control in healthy elders.

Decline in executive function is the most common age-associated cognitive deficit and may be a risk factor for neurodegenerative disease. The antisaccade (AS) task involves inhibition of a prepotent visuomotor response and is a well-validated executive function test in aging and neurodegeneration. We investigated the functional connectivity of the cortical oculomotor network during successful AS performance in healthy elders.

Antisaccade task reflects cortical involvement in mild cognitive impairment.

Objective: The aims of this study were to examine executive dysfunction using an antisaccade (AS) task in normal elderly (NE) and patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer disease (AD) as well as to evaluate the relationship between AS performance and cortical thinning within AD-associated regions.

Methods: We recorded eye movements in 182 subjects (NE: 118; MCI: 36; AD: 28) during an AS task. We also performed neuropsychological measures of executive function for comparison.

Intrinsic connectivity network disruption in progressive supranuclear palsy.

Objective: Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) has been conceptualized as a large-scale network disruption, but the specific network targeted has not been fully characterized. We sought to delineate the affected network in patients with clinical PSP.

Methods: Using task-free functional magnetic resonance imaging, we mapped intrinsic connectivity to the dorsal midbrain tegmentum (dMT), a region that shows focal atrophy in PSP.

In praise of cultural-competence training for mental health professionals.

Background: Mental health practitioners in Israel encounter clients from a variety of ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds. Yet, culturally-informed practice standards have neither been defined nor promoted by the professional establishment.

Method: A model for cultural-competence training for mental health professionals is presented and evaluated based on self-reports of 51 trainees.

Food insecurity among psychiatric patients and welfare clients in Israel.

Background: Twenty-two percent of households in Israel experience food insecurity, and it is especially widespread in socio-economically distressed strata. Although their low socio-economic status renders psychiatric patients at risk for food insecurity, this issue has thus far been ignored in both practice and research.

Objective: To explore food insecurity among psychiatric patients in comparison with welfare-services clients in order to raise awareness of food insecurity in this population.

Multicenter validation of a bedside antisaccade task as a measure of executive function.

Objective: To create and validate a simple, standardized version of the antisaccade (AS) task that requires no specialized equipment for use as a measure of executive function in multicenter clinical studies.

Methods: The bedside AS (BAS) task consisted of 40 pseudorandomized AS trials presented on a laptop computer. BAS performance was compared with AS performance measured using an infrared eye tracker in normal elders (NE) and individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia (n = 33).

Saccade abnormalities in autopsy-confirmed frontotemporal lobar degeneration and Alzheimer disease.

Background: Deficits in the generation and control of saccades have been described in clinically defined frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Alzheimer disease (AD).

Objective: To determine the saccade abnormalities associated with autopsy-defined cases of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and of AD, because clinical FTD syndromes can correspond to a number of different underlying neuropathologic FTD and non-FTD diagnoses.

Design: An infrared eye tracker was used to record visually guided saccades to 10° targets and antisaccades in subjects with autopsy-confirmed FTD and subjects with autopsy-confirmed AD, a mean (SE) of 35.

Anti-saccade performance predicts executive function and brain structure in normal elders.

Objective: To assess the neuropsychological and anatomical correlates of anti-saccade (AS) task performance in normal elders.

Background: The AS task correlates with neuropsychological measures of executive function and frontal lobe volume in neurological diseases, but has not been studied in a well-characterized normal elderly population. Because executive dysfunction can indicate an increased risk for cognitive decline in cognitively normal elders, we hypothesized that AS performance might be a sensitive test of age-related processes that impair cognition.

Visual search patterns in semantic dementia show paradoxical facilitation of binding processes.

While patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) show deficits in attention, manifested by inefficient performance on visual search, new visual talents can emerge in patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), suggesting that, at least in some of the patients, visual attention is spared, if not enhanced. To investigate the underlying mechanisms for visual talent in FTLD (behavioral variant FTD [bvFTD] and semantic dementia [SD]) patients, we measured performance on a visual search paradigm that includes both feature and conjunction search, while simultaneously monitoring saccadic eye movements. AD patients were impaired relative to healthy controls (NC) and FTLD patients on both feature and conjunction search.

Food insecurity and mental health: a pilot study of patients in a psychiatric emergency unit in Israel.

The objective of this study was to examine food insecurity among psychiatric patients and as a concern for mental health practitioners. Food security and psychological distress were measured among 113 patients hospitalized in a psychiatric emergency unit. Of 113 respondents 67 (59.