Publications by authors named "Naoko Muramatsu"

Article Synopsis
  • The Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR) program, part of the National Institute on Aging, has successfully advanced minority aging research and diversified the scientific workforce over nearly 30 years.
  • The article outlines the program's development, focusing on enhancing health disparities research methods and preparing future scholars through comprehensive career development and supportive communities.
  • It concludes by discussing RCMAR's successes, ongoing challenges, and future growth opportunities in responding to evolving political and research contexts while maintaining its core mission.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

To achieve optimal, equitable health outcomes for all older adults, the United States desperately needs equity in access to, quality of, and cost of aging care. To illustrate these needs, we discuss the current inequitable state of frailty care. Frailty disproportionately affects marginalized populations, yet these populations struggle to access high-quality geriatrics care and long-term care services and supports (LTSS) that mitigate frailty, leading to accelerated frailty trajectories.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Smart speakers, such as Amazon's Echo and Google's Nest Home, combine natural language processing with a conversational interface to carry out everyday tasks, like playing music and finding information. Easy to use, they are embraced by older adults, including those with limited physical function, vision, or computer literacy. While smart speakers are increasingly used for research purposes (eg, implementing interventions and automatically recording selected research data), information on the advantages and disadvantages of using these devices for studies related to health promotion programs is limited.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Despite the need to consider multiple sources of evidence to guide locally and culturally relevant interventions, few studies have documented the process by which evidence is integrated.

Objectives: We leveraged a community-academic partnership to describe a participatory approach to integrating community and academic sources of evidence to inform cancer programming priorities in the Arab American (ArA) community in Southwest Chicago.

Methods: Informed by Intervention Mapping, this study comprised three phases led by community and academic partners: 1) qualitative assessment of cancer-related priorities through eight focus groups with 48 ArA community members, 2) a focused literature review to identify models of cancer interventions implemented with ArAs, and 3) integration of focus group and literature review findings and development of a strategy for a community-based cancer program administered by the community partner.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Assessing motor competence is essential for evaluating the effectiveness of physical activity interventions that aim to maintain or improve older adults' function. However, assessing motor competence in older adults who have difficulties walking or standing is challenging, because few instruments or guidelines are appropriate for these frail older adults. This article aims to describe challenges in evaluating motor function among frail older adults, discuss strategies for adapting motor function assessments to their home settings, and provide recommendations for future clinical trials so that older adults with ambulatory difficulties can benefit from motor function assessment and physical activity programs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This scoping review provides an overview of cancer interventions implemented with Arab Americans across the cancer control continuum, including an examination of outcomes and implementation processes. The search strategy included database searching and reviewing reference lists and forward citations to identify articles describing interventions with Arab adults living in the US, with no restrictions on date of publication or research methodology. The review included 23 papers describing 12 unique cancer interventions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Rural populations in the USA face higher rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD) incidence and mortality relative to non-rural and often lack access to health-promoting evidence-based interventions (EBIs) to support CVD prevention and management. Partnerships with faith organizations offer promise for translating preventative EBIs in rural communities; however, studies demonstrating effective translation of EBIs in these settings are limited. We used the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) and a multiple case study approach to understand the role of internal organizational context within 12 rural churches in the implementation of a 12-week CVD risk-reduction intervention followed by a 24-month maintenance program implemented in southernmost Illinois.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Food insecurity (FI), the limited access to healthy food to live an active and healthy life, is a social determinant of health linked to poor dietary health and difficulty with disease management in the United States (U.S.).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The study aims to evaluate the modified Stand-Up test (MSUT) in Little League baseball players and its connection to elbow disorders, particularly osteochondritis dissecans (OCD) and medial epicondylar fragmentation (MEF).
  • - A total of 245 players were examined, revealing that 2% had difficulty performing the MSUT, which correlated with the presence of elbow pain and specific diagnoses identified through ultrasonography.
  • - Findings suggest the MSUT could be a useful tool for screening players and assessing their readiness for physical activity, particularly in relation to elbow injury risks associated with poor leg and trunk control.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The implementation of evidence-based physical activity (PA) programs for older adults is limited in part due to the administration-related personnel costs. The rapid growth of the off-the-shelf smart speakers, conversational agents (CAs), demonstrates the potential of scalable delivery of PA programs to older adults at home. We implemented a PA virtual coach based on an evidence-based PA program on a Google Home device, and conducted a user study to examine how older adults interact with the virtual coach.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Multilevel barriers can arise after a cancer diagnosis, especially in underserved racial/ethnic minority patient populations, raising the need for diverse and contextually adapted interventions. However, limited data exists on Arab American (ArA) cancer patients' needs, partly due to their racial/ethnic misclassification as Whites. This study leveraged the perspectives of cancer survivors and community stakeholders (i.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aotearoa-New Zealand is expecting the number of older adults to double in the next 20 years. Despite publicly funded health and welfare support for older citizens, the aging experience differs across ethnic groups. This creates opportunities and challenges for health and social services to deliver culturally safe and equitable care for all older New Zealanders.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objectives: Caregiving dyads are fertile contexts for health promotion such as physical activity. However, previous physical activity interventions in caregiving dyads paid limited attention to care recipients' outcomes and rarely involved paid caregivers. Home care aides (HCAs) provide nonmedical care for older family members or nonfamily clients in publicly funded home care programs in the United States.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Home care aides (HCAs) provide housekeeping and personal care services to help older clients remain in the community. However, little is known about the health of HCAs, who themselves constitute an underserved population. The goal of this study was to investigate how HCAs' work and life contexts manifest themselves in HCAs' health as perceived by HCAs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Job categories shape the contexts that contribute to worker well-being, including their health, connectivity, and engagement. Using data from the 2014 Gallup Daily tracking survey, this study documented the distribution of worker well-being across 11 broad job categories among a national sample of employed adults in the United States. Well-being was measured by Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being 5™, a composite measure of five well-being dimensions (purpose, community, physical, financial, and social).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objectives: Technology can enhance the health and quality of life of diverse populations and may play an important role in reducing health disparities. Although a "digital divide" between the young and the old has been noted, it is unclear whether the use of technology for managing health differs by race/ethnicity among older adults. This study uses nationally representative data from community-dwelling older Americans to characterize racial/ethnic differences in health-related technology use.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF