Innovative Strategies for Addressing Adolescent Health in Primary Care Through Telehealth.

With recent gains in telehealth access across health sectors, this editorial explores adolescent-specific health issues where innovative use of virtual care is improving outcomes and access for adolescents. These include contraception, obesity, gender-affirming care, mental health, and eating disorder care. Clinicians caring for adolescents should be aware of advances in this field to maximize opportunities for their patients to receive evidence-based care in a manner that supports health equity and confidentiality concerns while understanding the evolving regulatory landscape of telehealth.

Experimental evidence for a semantic typology of emoji: Inferences of co-, pro-, and post-text emoji.

Emoji symbols are widely used in online communication, particularly in instant messaging and on social media platforms. Existing research draws comparisons between the functions of emoji and those of gestures, with recent work extending a proposed typology of gestures to emoji, arguing that different emoji types can be distinguished by their placement within the modified text and by their semantic contribution (the linguistic inferences that they give rise to). In this paper, we present four experiments designed to test the predictions of this extended typology, the results of which suggest that emoji symbols indeed trigger the hypothesised linguistic inferences.

21st Century Cures Act ONC Rule: Implications for Adolescent Care and Confidentiality Protections.

Ensuring the confidentiality and protection of health information is the standard of care for adolescents. In 2023 and beyond, the protection of personal health information is more critical than ever. The 21st Century Cures Act Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Rule, with its requirements for the broad sharing of electronic health information and ban on "information blocking," poses serious concerns for confidentiality in adolescent health care delivery.

Co-linguistic content inferences: From gestures to sound effects and emoji.

Among other uses, co-speech gestures can contribute additional semantic content to the spoken utterances with which they coincide. A growing body of research is dedicated to understanding how inferences from gestures interact with logical operators in speech, including negation ("not"/"n't"), modals (e.g.

Louisiana Pharmacies' Availability of Emergency Contraception and Counseling Accuracy to Adolescent and Physician Callers.

Study Objective: Adolescents face many barriers to obtaining emergency contraception (EC), despite it being an approved and recommended method to prevent unintended pregnancy. This study examined pharmacy-related barriers to adolescents' access to EC in Louisiana.

Design: Prospective, telephone-call secret shopper study to pharmacies to assess same-day EC availability and barriers to purchase.

Population Geography and Emergency Contraception Access in Louisiana.

We assessed the same-day availability of oral emergency contraception (EC) in five Louisiana communities, and evaluated this data for relationships between availability and local population demographics. Researchers called all retail pharmacies in five municipalities of varying sizes in order to inquire about the same-day stockage of EC products and their availability to teens. Individual pharmacies were then geolocated to a census tract, and call data was analyzed against neighborhood census data regarding population size, income, gender, race, family structure, and educational level.

The Community and Patient Partnered Research Network (CPPRN): Application of Patient-Centered Outcomes Research to Promote Behavioral Health Equity.

Objective: We describe the rationale, development, and progress on the Community and Patient Partnered Research Network (CPPRN). The CPPRN builds on more than a decade of partnered work and is designed to promote health equity by developing partnered research on behavioral health and social risk factors in Los Angeles and New Orleans.

Setting: A community-academic partnership across Los Angeles County and New Orleans.

Is Perceived Parental Monitoring Associated with Sexual Risk Behaviors of Young Black Males?

Objective: This study determined whether perceived parental monitoring (PPM) is associated with any of twelve selected outcomes related to sexual risk behaviors of young Black males (YBM).

Methods: Recruitment occurred in clinics diagnosing and treating sexually transmitted infections. YBM living with a parent or guardian (N = 324) were administered a 9-item scale assessing level of PPM.

Sexually transmitted infections in pediatric renal transplant recipients: Time to take notice!

We sought to assess the prevalence of STIs, contraception use, and unintentional pregnancy in our pediatric renal transplant recipients. We performed a retrospective chart review. Forty-nine of 65 patients in our program are currently in the high-risk age window of 13 yr or older (34 men, 15 women; mean age 17 yr old, range 13-23 yr old).

Desire to father a child and condom use: a study of young black men at risk of sexually transmitted infections.

To determine whether men's reported desire to father a child or their perception that someone wanted to have their child was associated with elevated rates of unprotected vaginal sex, we studied a sample of young Black men at high risk of sexually transmitted infection acquisition. Data were collected in clinics treating sexually transmitted infections in three southern U.S.

Enhancing condom use among Black male youths: a randomized controlled trial.

Objectives: We tested the efficacy of a brief intervention to promote correct and consistent use of condoms among Black male youths attending sexually transmitted infection (STI) clinics in 3 southern US cities.

Methods: In 2010 to 2012, we screened (n = 1102) and enrolled (n = 702) youths aged 15 to 23 years who identified as Black and reported recent (past 2 months) sexual activity and randomized them to a private, brief, interactive intervention (n = 349) or an attention-equivalent control condition (n = 353). Assessments occurred at baseline and 2 and 6 months after the intervention.

Racial disparities in the use of blood transfusion in major surgery.

Background: Racial disparities in healthcare in the United States are widespread and have been well documented. However, it is unknown whether racial disparities exist in the use of blood transfusion for patients undergoing major surgery.

Methods: We used the University HealthSystem Consortium database (2009-2011) to examine racial disparities in perioperative red blood cells (RBCs) transfusion in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG), total hip replacement (THR), and colectomy.

How do young black men having sex with only women differ from those also having sex with men?

In the US, young Black men (YBM) disproportionately acquire sexually transmissible infections (STI), including infection with HIV. This secondary analysis compared sexual behaviours of YBM (n = 568) not reporting sex with men with those of YBM who have sex with men (YBMSM). In the present study YBMSM were generally less likely to report engagement in sexual risk behaviours, less likely to report incarceration and more likely to ever be tested for HIV.

Blood transfusion in the perioperative period.

Anemia is associated with perioperative mortality and morbidity. Since the presence of anemia and blood transfusion often go hand in hand, it can be difficult to separate the effects of anemia from the effects of perioperative transfusion. The role for blood transfusion in mitigating the mortality and morbidity associated with anemia is unclear.

Variation of blood transfusion in patients undergoing major noncardiac surgery.

Objective: To examine the hospital variability in use of red blood cells (RBCs), fresh-frozen plasma (FFP), and platelet transfusions in patients undergoing major noncardiac surgery.

Background: Blood transfusion is commonly used in surgical procedures in the United States. Little is known about the hospital variability in perioperative transfusion rates for noncardiac surgery.

Effective strategies for behavior change.

Strategies that are most effective in both prevention and management of chronic disease consider factors such as age, ethnicity, community, and technology. Most behavioral change strategies derive their components from application of the health belief model, the theory of reasoned action/theory of planned behavior, transtheoretical model, and social cognitive theory. Many tools such as the readiness ruler and personalized action plan form are available to assist health care teams to facilitate healthy behavior change.

Adolescent medicine: workforce trends and recommendations.

The academic successes of AM during the past 2 decades are marked by board certification, fellowship program accreditation, residency curricula creation, and the evolution of a remarkably respected scientific journal, the Journal of Adolescent Health. These same accomplishments have increased professional and public recognition of unmet population needs and the specialists who can help address them. The adolescent population is large, diverse, underserved, and characterized by increasingly complex medical and behavioral issues.

Carotid atherosclerosis progression in familial hypercholesterolemia patients: a pooled analysis of the ASAP, ENHANCE, RADIANCE 1, and CAPTIVATE studies.

Background: Until recently, patients with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HeFH) were considered the best subjects for the assessment of changes in carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) in randomized intervention trials. Our aims were to investigate whether contemporary statin-treated HeFH patients still show accelerated cIMT increase and to assess the impact of statin treatment, before and after random assignment, on atherosclerosis progression.

Methods And Results: We retrospectively evaluated cIMT change, and prior statin treatment and postbaseline LDL-C change as predictors of cIMT change, in 1513 HeFH patients who were randomly assigned to the statin arms of the early ASAP and more recent RADIANCE 1, CAPTIVATE, and ENHANCE studies.

Relation of different measures of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol to risk of coronary artery disease and death in a meta-regression analysis of large-scale trials of statin therapy.

Multiple randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have established the efficacy of statins for the prevention of cardiovascular disease. The benefits observed are often framed in terms of percentage reductions in low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol from baseline or percentage reductions between control and treatment groups, although epidemiologic data suggest that the absolute intergroup difference in LDL cholesterol (DeltaLDL(Control-Rx)) is the more informative measure. A systematic review of large-scale trials of statins versus placebo, usual care, or active (lower dose statin) control was conducted to calculate updated summary estimates of risk reduction in coronary artery disease and all-cause mortality.