Publications by authors named "Rouba Chahine"

Article Synopsis
  • - The HEALing Communities Study (HCS) aimed to reduce opioid overdose deaths in 67 affected communities by implementing health campaigns focused on opioid use disorder (OUD), overdose prevention, and stigma reduction, developed with community input.
  • - Surveys conducted via Facebook/Instagram indicated that participants in HCS communities experienced reduced stigma related to OUD and improved beliefs about the efficacy of naloxone, though recognition of campaign messages was not significantly different from control communities.
  • - The study suggests a connection between recognizing campaign messages and achieving positive outcomes, but it also raises concerns about the effectiveness of traditional evaluation methods for social media health campaigns.
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Importance: The HEALing Communities Study (HCS) evaluated the effectiveness of the Communities That HEAL (CTH) intervention in preventing fatal overdoses amidst the US opioid epidemic.

Objective: To evaluate the impact of the CTH intervention on total drug overdose deaths and overdose deaths involving combinations of opioids with psychostimulants or benzodiazepines.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This randomized clinical trial was a parallel-arm, multisite, community-randomized, open, and waitlisted controlled comparison trial of communities in 4 US states between 2020 and 2023.

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Background: Incubator oxygen may improve respiratory stability in preterm infants compared with nasal cannula oxygen.

Methods: Single center randomized trial of infants <29 weeks' gestation on supplemental oxygen at ≥32 weeks' postmenstrual age. Infants were crossed-over every 24 hours for 96 hours between incubator oxygen and nasal cannula ≤1.

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Importance: Local-level data are needed to understand whether the relaxation of X-waiver training requirements for prescribing buprenorphine in April 2021 translated to increased buprenorphine treatment.

Objective: To assess whether relaxation of X-waiver training requirements was associated with changes in the number of clinicians waivered to and who prescribe buprenorphine for opioid use disorder and the number of patients receiving treatment.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This serial cross-sectional study uses an interrupted time series analysis of 2020-2022 data from the HEALing Communities Study (HCS), a cluster-randomized, wait-list-controlled trial.

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Article Synopsis
  • Patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) still have poor outcomes, making effective contouring methods essential for improving treatment and research.
  • This study assesses the AI models developed by MRIMath© for T1c and FLAIR imaging by comparing their contouring results with those of three neuro-radiologists, showing high accuracy and agreement.
  • The AI models achieved high Sørensen-Dice Similarity Coefficient scores (95% for T1c and 90% for FLAIR), indicating strong performance, alongside low inter-user variability among radiologists.
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Randomized clinical trials are the gold standard for clinical trials as they reduce bias and minimize variability between different arms of a study. One of the drawbacks of these designs is their lack of flexibility to incorporate participant's treatment choice, which may reduce recruitment rates and/or reduce participant's tolerance if they receive a non-preferred treatment. Designs incorporating choice allow a subset of participants to choose their preferred treatment.

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Importance: Buprenorphine significantly reduces opioid-related overdose mortality. From 2002 to 2022, the Drug Addiction Treatment Act of 2000 (DATA 2000) required qualified practitioners to receive a waiver from the Drug Enforcement Agency to prescribe buprenorphine for treatment of opioid use disorder. During this period, waiver uptake among practitioners was modest; subsequent changes need to be examined.

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Methods for designing and analyzing multiple arms survival trials that incorporate patient's treatment choice are needed. In these trials, patients are randomized into two groups, random and choice. Participants in the choice group choose their treatment, which is not a current standard practice in randomized clinical trials.

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Objective: Determine if targeting higher transcutaneous carbon dioxide improves respiratory stability among very preterm infants on ventilatory support.

Design: Single-centre pilot randomised clinical trial.

Setting: The University of Alabama at Birmingham.

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Objective: The goal was to characterize short-term kidney status and describe variation in early care utilization in a multicenter cohort of patients with childhood-onset systemic lupus erythematosus (cSLE) and nephritis.

Methods: We analyzed previously collected prospective data from North American patients with cSLE with kidney biopsy-proven nephritis enrolled in the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA) Registry from March 2017 through December 2019. We determined the proportion of patients with abnormal kidney status at the most recent registry visit and applied generalized linear mixed models to identify associated factors.

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Objective: To evaluate patient-reported care utilization and outcomes among young adults with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), including factors associated with complete transfer to adult rheumatology.

Methods: We included young adults with JIA enrolled in the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA) Registry from 2015 to 2019 with age ≥ 18 years at their last clinical site visit. We used data from the CARRA Registry Long-term Follow-up program, which follows inactive CARRA Registry patients and collects patient-reported information through phone surveys.

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Background: High-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) use is increasing in pediatric patients. Objective measures that predict HFNC outcomes are lacking. The respiratory rate-oxygenation (ROX) and ROX heart rate (ROX-HR) indices are validated to predict HFNC therapy failure in adults.

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Background: Falls are common and impactful in people with multiple sclerosis (MS) but currently there is no accepted standard of care for fall prevention in MS. Evidence supports that the in-person, group-based, Free from Falls (FFF) program is associated with both immediate and six-month sustained improvements in mobility and balance and a reduction in falls, but program attendance is limited by access to the class at a given time and location and by the cost and availability of trained facilitators. Therefore, we developed and evaluated an online, web-based version of FFF, Free from Falls Online (FFFO).

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Synopsis of recent research by authors named "Rouba Chahine"

  • - Rouba Chahine's recent research primarily focuses on the intersection of clinical interventions for opioid use disorder and pediatric respiratory care, as evidenced by her involvement in studies examining the impact of the Communities That HEAL intervention and the respiratory stability in preterm infants.
  • - Her work includes randomized clinical trials, such as the evaluation of buprenorphine prescribing patterns following regulatory changes, and innovations in AI-driven techniques for medical imaging in neuro-oncology, highlighting the blend of clinical practice with emerging technologies.
  • - Chahine's research also addresses methodological advancements in clinical trial design, incorporating patient treatment choices and examining treatment variations in chronic conditions like childhood lupus and juvenile idiopathic arthritis, emphasizing the need for responsive and adaptive study frameworks in healthcare research.