"We Need to Know These Things": Use Cases for Combined Social and Clinical Data Among Primary Care-Based Clinical and Social Care Providers.

Introduction/objectives: Primary care organizations are increasingly collecting data on patients' social risks, bringing forth an unprecedented opportunity to present combined health and social data that clinical and social care providers could leverage to improve patient care and outcomes. Little is known, however, about how these data could be used and what combinations of specific data elements are most helpful. We explored how primary care staff who provide clinical or social care services view potential benefits of and use cases for combined patient-level clinical and social data.

Multiplexed reverse-transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction using plasmonic nanoparticles for point-of-care COVID-19 diagnosis.

Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) offers the capabilities of real-time monitoring of amplified products, fast detection, and quantitation of infectious units, but poses technical hurdles for point-of-care miniaturization compared with end-point polymerase chain reaction. Here we demonstrate plasmonic thermocycling, in which rapid heating of the solution is achieved via infrared excitation of nanoparticles, successfully performing reverse-transcriptase qPCR (RT-qPCR) in a reaction vessel containing polymerase chain reaction chemistry, fluorescent probes and plasmonic nanoparticles. The method could rapidly detect SARS-CoV-2 RNA from human saliva and nasal specimens with 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity, as well as two distinct SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Impact of Housing Instability and Social Risk Factors on Food Insecurity Among Vulnerable Residents in San Diego County.

To analyze the impact of housing instability and social risk facts on food insecurity using resource center client information. We utilized 2-1-1 San Diego's client database to analyze the association of food insecurity and housing instability among residents from August 2017 to March 2020. 3468 clients had food or housing needs assessed by a risk rating scale.

A direct tissue-grafting approach to increasing endogenous brown fat.

There is widespread evidence that increasing functional mass of brown adipose tissue (BAT) via browning of white adipose tissue (WAT) could potentially counter obesity and diabetes. However, most current approaches focus on administration of pharmacological compounds which expose patients to highly undesirable side effects. Here, we describe a simple and direct tissue-grafting approach to increase BAT mass through ex vivo browning of subcutaneous WAT, followed by re-implantation into the host; this cell-therapy approach could potentially act synergistically with existing pharmacological approaches.