Country-scale assessment of urban areas, population, and households exposed to land subsidence using Sentinel-1 InSAR, and GPS time series.

Unlabelled: The increased need for water resources in urban sprawls and intense droughts has forced more aggressive groundwater extraction resulting in numerous urban areas undergoing land subsidence. In most cases, only some large metropolitan areas have been well-characterized for subsidence. However, there is no existing country-wide assessment of urban areas, population, and households exposed to this process.

Evaluation of a Modified Version of the Norton Scale for Use as a Pressure Injury Risk Assessment Instrument in Critical Care: A Quality Improvement Project.

Purpose: No risk assessment scale exists in the United States specifically designed for use among patients with critical illness. The aim of this project was to modify the Norton Scale for Pressure Sore Risk to improve its predictive power when used in the critical care setting.

Participants And Setting: The setting for this quality improvement project was a 1157-bed academic medical center in the Southeast United States.

Sociodemographic disparities in access to ovarian cancer treatment.

Background: Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cause of cancer death among women in the United States. Failure to receive optimal treatment and poorer survival rates have been reported for older women, African-American women, women with low income, and women with public health insurance coverage or no coverage. Additionally, regional differences in geographic access influence the type of treatment women may seek.

Earthquake swarms and slow slip on a sliver fault in the Mexican subduction zone.

The Mexican subduction zone is an ideal location for studying subduction processes due to the short trench-to-coast distances that bring broad portions of the seismogenic and transition zones of the plate interface inland. Using a recently generated seismicity catalog from a local network in Oaxaca, we identified 20 swarms of earthquakes (M < 5) from 2006 to 2012. Swarms outline what appears to be a steeply dipping structure in the overriding plate, indicative of an origin other than the plate interface.

9/11 Residential Exposures: The Impact of World Trade Center Dust on Respiratory Outcomes of Lower Manhattan Residents.

Thousands of lower Manhattan residents sustained damage to their homes following the collapse of the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001. Respiratory outcomes have been reported in this population. We sought to describe patterns of home damage and cleaning practices in lower Manhattan and their impacts on respiratory outcomes among World Trade Center Health Registry (WTCHR) respondents.

A spatial analysis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) cases in the United States and their proximity to multidisciplinary ALS clinics, 2013.

Background: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal motor neuron disease that typically results in death within 2-5 years of initial symptom onset. Multidisciplinary ALS clinics (MDCs) have been established to provide specialty care to people living with the disease.

Objective: To estimate the proximity of ALS prevalence cases to the nearest MDC in the US to help evaluate one aspect of access to care.

Geographic Access to Cancer Care and Mortality Among Adolescents.

Purpose: Adolescents with cancer have had less improvement in survival than other populations in the United States. This may be due, in part, to adolescents not receiving treatment at Children's Oncology Group (COG) institutions, which have been shown to increase survival for some cancers. The objective of this ecologic study was to examine geographic distance to COG institutions and adolescent cancer mortality.

Transforming geographic scale: a comparison of combined population and areal weighting to other interpolation methods.

Background: Transforming spatial data from one scale to another is a challenge in geographic analysis. As part of a larger, primary study to determine a possible association between travel barriers to pediatric cancer facilities and adolescent cancer mortality across the United States, we examined methods to estimate mortality within zones at varying distances from these facilities: (1) geographic centroid assignment, (2) population-weighted centroid assignment, (3) simple areal weighting, (4) combined population and areal weighting, and (5) geostatistical areal interpolation. For the primary study, we used county mortality counts from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and population data by census tract for the United States to estimate zone mortality.

Applying the PDSA Framework to Examine the Use of the Clinical Nurse Leader to Evaluate Pressure Ulcer Reporting.

The clinical nurse leader (CNL) role has been cited as an effective strategy for improving care at the microsystem level. The purpose of this article is to describe the use of the CNL role in an academic medical center for evaluating pressure ulcer reporting. The Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle was used as the methodological framework for the study.

Traditional/restrictive vs patient-centered intensive care unit visitation: perceptions of patients' family members, physicians, and nurses.

Background: Patient-centered intensive care units (ICUs) are advocated by professional organizations for critical care nursing and medicine. The patient-centered ICU paradigm recognizes the patient-family unit as inseparable and supports visitation designed to meet the needs of patients and patients' families.

Objectives: To understand perceptions about patient-centered ICUs among patients' family members, physicians, and nurses from 5 ICUs that had restrictive visitation and to guide development of a patient-centered, open visitation paradigm.

Racial disparities in travel time to radiotherapy facilities in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Low-income women with breast cancer who rely on public transportation may have difficulty in completing recommended radiation therapy due to inadequate access to radiation facilities. Using a geographic information system (GIS) and network analysis we quantified spatial accessibility to radiation treatment facilities in the Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan area. We built a transportation network model that included all bus and rail routes and stops, system transfers and walk and wait times experienced by public transportation system travelers.

Use, knowledge, and attitudes toward evidence-based practice among nursing staff.

Background: Little information is known about the use, knowledge, and attitudes toward evidence-based practice (EBP) among nurses in a large academic hospital. This cross-sectional, descriptive study examined the knowledge, attitudes, and use of EBP by nurses at a large academic, Magnet(®)-designated medical center.

Methods: Data were collected from 593 nurses who completed the Clinical Effectiveness and Evidence Based Practice Questionnaire between November 2011 and March 2012.

Time and distance barriers to mammography facilities in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

To a great extent, research on geographic accessibility to mammography facilities has focused on urban-rural differences. Spatial accessibility within urban areas can nonetheless pose a challenge, especially for minorities and low-income urban residents who are more likely to depend on public transportation. To examine spatial and temporal accessibility to mammography facilities in the Atlanta metropolitan area by public and private transportation, we built a multimodal transportation network model including bus and rail routes, bus and rail stops, transfers, walk times, and wait times.

Knowledge of limited health literacy at an academic health center.

Background: Health care providers' awareness and knowledge of the impact that limited health literacy has on the health care system and the individual patient was measured. In addition, the usefulness of the Limited Literacy Impact Measure (LLIM) was examined.

Methods: Two hundred forty providers and students attending a university-sponsored presentation on health literacy were invited to participate.