Estimated public health impact of concurrent mask mandate and vaccinate-or-test requirement in Illinois, October to December 2021.

Background: Facing a surge of COVID-19 cases in late August 2021, the U.S. state of Illinois re-enacted its COVID-19 mask mandate for the general public and issued a requirement for workers in certain professions to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing.

Rural-Urban Disparities in HPV Vaccination Coverage Among Adolescents in the Central Part of the State of Illinois, USA.

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is associated with six cancers and widespread immunization with HPV vaccine could reduce the number of these cancers. Although HPV vaccination rates are available for the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago, data are limited for specific areas. We assessed rates of HPV vaccine initiation and completion among adolescents in central Illinois and identified factors associated with initiation and completion.

Designing Policy Solutions to Build a Healthier Rural America.

Disparities exist in the health, livelihood, and opportunities for the 46-60 million people living in America's rural communities. Rural communities across the United States need a new energy and focus concentrated around health and health care that allows for the designing capturing, and spreading of existing and new innovations. This paper aims to provide a framework for policy solutions to build a healthier rural America describing both the current state of rural health policy and the policies and practices in states that could be used as a national model for positive change.

Pediatric population health analysis of southern and central Illinois region: A cross sectional retrospective study using association rule mining and multiple logistic regression.

Background: Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (SIUSOM) collects large amounts of data every day. SIUSOM and other similar healthcare systems are always looking for better ways to use the data to understand and address population level problems. The purpose of this study is to analyze the administrative dataset for pediatric patients served by Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (SIUSOM) to uncover patterns that correlate specific demographic information to diagnoses of pediatric diseases.

The Role of Community Health Needs Assessments in Medicalizing Poverty.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), passed in 2010, is considered by many to be the most significant healthcare overhaul since the 1960s, but part of its promise - improvement of population health through requirements for non-profit hospitals to provide "community benefit" - has not been met. This paper examines the history of community benefit legislation, how community benefit dollars are allocated, and innovative practices by a few hospitals and communities that are addressing primarily non-medical factors that influence health such as social disadvantage, attitudes, beliefs, risk exposure, and social inequalities.

Irregular menses linked to vomiting in a nonclinical sample: findings from the National Eating Disorders Screening Program in high schools.

Purpose: Using data from an eating disorders screening initiative conducted in high schools across the United States, we examined the relationship between vomiting frequency and irregular menses in a nonclinical sample of adolescent females.

Methods: A self-report questionnaire was administered to students from U.S.