North Carolina's multi-institutional pharmacogenomics efforts with the North Carolina Precision Health Collaborative.

The North Carolina Precision Health Collaborative is an interdisciplinary, public-private consortium of precision health experts who strategically align statewide resources and strengths to elevate precision health in the state and beyond. Pharmacogenomics (PGx) is a key area of focus for the North Carolina Precision Health Collaborative. Experts from Atrium Health's Levine Cancer Institute, Duke University/Duke Health System, Mission Health and the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill/UNC Health System have collaborated since 2017 to implement strategic PGx initiatives, including basic sciences research, translational research and clinical implementation of germline testing into practice and policy.

Promoting a "good death": determinants of pain-management policies in the United States.

Many Americans do not experience a good death. The inadequate treatment of pain at the end of life has been associated with a lack of supportive public policies more than a lack of evidence-based clinical practices or organizational efforts. Given a widespread lack of understanding about pain policies, we examine the critical role played by state medical boards in developing pain policies and then apply event history analysis to identify the variables most critical to the formation of these policies.

How can we make the pain go away? Public policies to manage pain at the end of life.

The continued undertreatment of pain at the end of life is a substantive public health problem that has not been resolved through increased public awareness, the issuance of clinical guidance for providers, or expanded organizational commitments. In this forum, we illuminate the role of public policies in promoting pain management. We review federal and state policies and consider empirical evaluations that compared the quality of state policies and the factors that contributed to their formation.

Civic engagement as a retirement role for aging Americans.

Purpose: Public attention directed toward the civic engagement of retired Americans has increased considerably. The purpose of this research was to define civic engagement as a retirement role and differentiate individuals who met this role definition from other retirees.

Design And Methods: Retirees who met our definition of civic engagement were identified from a sample of 683 retired older adults living in a rural Midwestern state.

Finding the way to a better death: an evaluation of palliative care referral tools.

The authors of this study sought to identify a tool for assessing and referring dying inpatients to palliative care. Six currently available tools were evaluated to determine how well each tool incorporated 16 clinical criteria that indicate the need for palliative care. Scientific evidence supporting each instrument and the tools' ease of use at patients' bedside also was assessed.

What do we owe the dying? Strategies to strengthen end-of-life care.

More than 2.5 million Americans died last year, and a majority of these persons died within an inpatient hospital setting. The demand for inpatient hospital care at the end of life (EOL) will increase appreciably as the population continues to age; several leading bodies, including the Institute of Medicine, have called for an expansion of evidence-based, patient-centered EOL care.

Validity and reliability of the Minimum Data Set Depression Rating Scale (MDSDRS) for older adults in nursing homes.

Objective: this research examined the psychometric properties of the Minimum Data Set Depression Rating Scale for use among older adults living in nursing homes.

Methods: interviews with 145 older adults in three nursing homes were conducted to complete the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and the Geriatric Depression Scale. Information relevant to completing the Minimum Data Set Depression Rating Scale was gathered from the Minimum Data Set.