Objective: Studies of body size and blood pressure (BP) in African American women typically focus on obesity overall or collapse obesity classes II and III into a single subgroup, ignoring potential heterogeneity in associations across categories. Moreover, ambulatory BP outcomes are primarily analyzed as mean daytime and/or nighttime BP, without examination of circadian changes during the day-to-night transition or the full 24-h cycle.
Methods: Functional data analysis methods were used to examine whether obesity categories modified ambulatory monitoring-assessed BP circadian rhythm in a cohort of 407 African American women.
Food fortification can deliver essential micronutrients to populations at a large scale, thereby reducing nutritional anemia. This study aimed to review and meta-analyze the literature on the impact of wheat flour, maize flour, rice, and oil (singly or combined) fortification on women's (10-49 years) hemoglobin and anemia. A search of 17 databases yielded 2284 results.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Despite the benefits of outdoor activity in older adults, a paucity of research explores factors associated with the frequency of older adults going outdoors. The aim of the current study was to investigate if factors of cognitive status, physical performance, and neighborhood characteristics were associated with outdoor frequency among older adults.
Method: This cross-sectional study used National Health and Aging Trends Study data to characterize outdoor frequency among Medicare beneficiaries by participant demographics, health, and neighborhood characteristics, and estimated relationships between participant factors and outdoor frequency.
Background: African American women bear a disproportionate burden of cardiovascular diseases, potentially due to altered central hemodynamics. Racism and sexism often lead to African American women taking on numerous caretaking roles and overall increases their use of the Strong Black Woman (ie, Superwoman) mindset, which may have negative health consequences. We hypothesized that endorsing the Superwoman role and its Obligation to Help Others dimension would be associated with a deleterious central hemodynamics profile in African American women.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Early vascular ageing (EVA) contributes to elevated risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), which disproportionately affects African American women. Incarceration, an event disproportionately impacting African Americans, may be a stressor contributing to EVA in African American women. Further, the subjective perspective, commonly referred to as appraisal, of incarceration may also be important for health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To compare dimensions of financial hardship and self-reported sleep quality among Black women with versus without systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).
Methods: Participants were 402 Black women (50% with validated diagnosis of SLE) living in Georgia between 2017 and 2020. Black women with SLE were recruited from a population-based cohort established in Atlanta, and Black women without SLE were recruited to be of comparable age and from the same geographic areas as SLE women.
Background: African-American women have excess rates of elevated blood pressure (BP) and hypertension compared to women of all other racial/ethnic backgrounds. Several researchers have speculated that race and gender-related socioeconomic status (SES) stressors might play a role.
Objective: To examine the association between a novel SES-related stressor highly salient among African-American women, financial responsibility for one's household, and 48-h ambulatory BP.
Objectives: Similar to women overall, Black women are socialized to be communal and "self-sacrificing," but unlike women from other racial/ethnic backgrounds, Black women are also socialized to be "strong" and "invulnerable." This phenomenon is labeled Superwoman schema. This study examined associations between Superwoman schema endorsement and subjective sleep quality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGendered racial microaggressions reflect historical and contemporary gendered racism that Black women encounter. Although gendered racial microaggressions are related to psychological outcomes, it is unclear if such experiences are related to sleep health. Moreover, the health effects of gendered racial microaggressions dimensions are rarely investigated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The Superwoman Schema (SWS) construct elucidates Black women's socialization to be strong, suppress their emotions, resist vulnerability, succeed despite limited resources, and help others at their own expense. Drawing from intersectionality and social psychological research on self-schemas, this study examined the extent to which SWS was associated with Black women's self-rated health. We also investigated whether socioeconomic status (SES) moderated the association between SWS, its five dimensions, and self-rated health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: To fully leverage the potential of the early care and education (ECE) setting for childhood obesity prevention, initiatives must not intervene solely at the organizational level, but rather they should also address the health needs of the ECE workers. Workers suffer disproportionately high rates of obesity, and have reported low confidence in modeling and promoting healthy eating and activity behaviors. However, information regarding the effectiveness of improving ECE workers' health behaviors or whether such improvements elicit meaningful change in the ECE environment and/or the children in their care is limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Life stressors have been linked to cardiovascular risk; however, studies typically focus on stressors that directly impact the individual, that is, personal stressors. Research suggests that women, particularly African-American women, may be more vulnerable to network stressors that involve family members and friends-potentially due to norms around needing to be a "Superwoman." Yet few studies have examined these phenomena.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Engaging youth as peer educators has yet to be considered to promote literacy concerning conjoint genetic and environmental (G × E) influences on health conditions. Whether youth living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) could and would be willing to serve as lay educators of G × E education is unclear.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey of youth living in Southern Ethiopia was conducted from August to September 2017.
Background: Compatible pair housing of macaques in research settings increases species-typical behaviors and facilitates beneficial social buffering. It is not yet established whether these benefits are maintained after intrafacility transfer and domestic quarantine, which are two stressors that can lead to behavioral and clinical abnormalities.
Methods: We evaluated 40 adolescent male rhesus macaques who were single- or pair-housed immediately following an intrafacility transfer.
Rationale: Much of the research linking racism-related stressors to poor health has focused on fairly non-violent forms of racism that directly impact individuals under study. Exposure to particularly extreme and/or violent racist events are increasingly visible via smartphone recordings and social media, with consistent anecdotal reports of the effects of seeing and hearing about these events on sleep among minorities who racially identify with the victims.
Objective: This study examines whether exposure to direct and vicarious racism-related events (RREs), including more extreme events, are associated with sleep quality.
Observational studies suggest that angiotensin receptor blockers in hypertensive adults are associated with lower post-mortem indicators of Alzheimer's disease pathology. Candesartan, an angiotensin receptor blocker, has a positive cognitive effect in mild cognitive impairment with hypertension. However, its safety and effects in non-hypertensive individuals with Alzheimer's disease are unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Health care professionals (HCPs) performing tracheostomies in patients with COVID-19 may be at increased risk of infection.
Objective: To evaluate factors underlying HCPs' COVID-19 infection and determine whether tracheostomy providers report increased rates of infection.
Methods: An anonymous international survey examining factors associated with COVID-19 infection was made available November 2020 through July 2021 to HCPs at a convenience sample of hospitals, universities, and professional organizations.
Rationale: Much of the research linking racism-related stressors to poor health has focused on fairly non-violent forms of racism that directly impact individuals under study. Exposure to particularly extreme and/or violent racist events are increasingly visible via smartphone recordings and social media, with consistent anecdotal reports of the effects of seeing and hearing about these events on sleep among minorities who racially identify with the victims.
Objective: This study examines whether exposure to direct and vicarious racism-related events (RREs), including more extreme events, are associated with sleep quality.
Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) belongs to the Pneumoviridae family and is closely related to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). The surface fusion (F) glycoprotein mediates viral fusion and is the primary target of neutralizing antibodies against hMPV. Here we report 113 hMPV-F specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) isolated from memory B cells of human donors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Optimal sepsis outcomes are achieved when sepsis is recognized early. Recognizing sepsis in the prehospital, EMS setting can be challenging and unreliable. The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether implementation of an EMS sepsis screening and prehospital alert protocol called PRESS (PREhospital SepsiS) is associated with improved sepsis recognition by EMS providers.
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