Importance: Enterococcus faecalis urinary tract infection (UTI) is common in postmenopausal females and these bacteria create biofilms that may reduce treatment efficacy. The role of local vaginal estrogen therapy in susceptibility to E. faecalis infection is unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis Perspective article encourages the field of nutrition and dietetics to move away from a weight-centric paradigm that emphasizes weight loss and weight management as primary health outcomes. This approach can perpetuate weight stigma, which is associated with poorer health behaviors, poorer mental health, disordered eating, and even increased mortality risk. We propose an alternative approach-adopting a weight-inclusive paradigm-that focuses on providing care across the weight spectrum by centering health behaviors rather than weight.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Assess the impact of a weight-inclusive podcast (WIP) intervention on body appreciation, intuitive eating (IE), anti-fat attitudes, and weight and health attitudes in university students enrolled in an upper-division nutrition course.
Methods: Quasi-experimental design: Intervention participants listened to 8 weekly WIP episodes (n = 16); the comparison group listened to 8 weekly general nutrition podcasts (n = 29). Intuitive eating, body appreciation, anti-fat attitudes, and general weight and health attitudes were measured preintervention and postintervention.
Importance: Robot-assisted sacrocolpopexy (SCP) is a commonly performed procedure for the repair of apical pelvic organ prolapse; therefore, novel devices and techniques to improve safety and efficacy of this procedure should be explored.
Objective: The objective of this study was to assess safety and efficacy of 8-mm trocar site for use of a disposable suture/needle management device (StitchKit; Origami Surgical, Madison, NJ) for robot-assisted SCP with a 4-arm configuration and no assistant port.
Study Design: This is a retrospective case series of patients undergoing robot-assisted SCP at a tertiary center from 2018 to 2021.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in many health systems worldwide with profound implications for health and society. The public health challenges experienced during the pandemic have highlighted the importance of resilient health systems, that can adapt and transform to meet the population's evolving health needs. Essential public health functions (EPHFs) offer a holistic, integrated and sustainable approach to public health by contributing to achieving several health priorities and goals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To describe the participation of racial and ethnic minority groups (REMGs) in gynecologic oncology trials.
Methods: Gynecologic oncology studies registered on ClinicalTrials.gov between 2007 and 2020 were identified.
Background: YouTube is an increasingly common source of health information; however, the reliability and quality of the information are inadequately understood. Several studies have evaluated YouTube as a resource during pregnancy and found the available information to be of poor quality. Given the increasing attention to postpartum health and the importance of promoting safe opioid use after birth, YouTube may be a source of information for birthing individuals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCountries across the world are experiencing syndemic health crises where infectious pathogens including COVID-19 interact with epidemics of communicable and non-communicable diseases. Combined with war, environmental instability and the effects of soaring inflation, a public health crisis has emerged requiring an integrated response. Increasingly, national public health institutes (NPHIs) are at the forefront of leading this, as demonstrated at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe apparent failure of global health security to prevent or prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for closer cooperation between human, animal (domestic and wildlife), and environmental health sectors. However, the many institutions, processes, regulatory frameworks, and legal instruments with direct and indirect roles in the global governance of One Health have led to a fragmented, global, multilateral health security architecture. We explore four challenges: first, the sectoral, professional, and institutional silos and tensions existing between human, animal, and environmental health; second, the challenge that the international legal system, state sovereignty, and existing legal instruments pose for the governance of One Health; third, the power dynamics and asymmetry in power between countries represented in multilateral institutions and their impact on priority setting; and finally, the current financing mechanisms that predominantly focus on response to crises, and the chronic underinvestment for epidemic and emergency prevention, mitigation, and preparedness activities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Clinical trials guide evidence-based obstetrics and gynecology (OB-GYN) but often enroll nonrepresentative participants.
Objective: To characterize race and ethnicity reporting and representation in US OB-GYN clinical trials and their subsequent publications and to analyze the association of subspecialty and funding with diverse representation.
Design And Setting: Cross-sectional analysis of all OB-GYN studies registered on ClinicalTrials.
Background: Obstetrical clinical trials are the foundation of evidence-based medicine during pregnancy. As more obstetrical trials are conducted, understanding the publication characteristics of these trials is of utmost importance to advance obstetrical health.
Objective: This study aimed to characterize the frequency of publication and trial characteristics associated with publication among obstetrical clinical trials in the United States.
Purpose: This study was performed to characterize changes in contrast sensitivity (CS) that occur in patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) using a novel test, the motion diamond stimulus (MDS).
Methods: This was a cross-sectional study in which 20 subjects with unilateral exudative AMD (eAMD) and contralateral dry AMD received 3 assessments: the Pelli-Robson (PR) CS Chart, the MDS test, and a visual function questionnaire-25 (VFQ-25). CS results from the PR, and MDS tests were compared across 3 groups: eyes with eAMD vs dry AMD, eAMD vs control, dry AMD vs control.
Perspect Public Health
November 2021
National public health institutes and WHO collaborating centres, and their global networks, are a key resource to support public health system strengthening with essential public health functions and generate evidence for health policy central to national health and socioeconomic development. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare global inequities in public health capacities, made urgent the need to examine sources of global knowledge and understand how to better invest in and use public health institutes and their capacities. This analysis paper incorporates experiences and perspectives from the WHO and International Association of Public Health Associations including the ongoing pandemic and work conducted in the UK-WHO 'Tackling Deadly Diseases in Africa Programme'.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The aims of this study were to determine the proportion of women presenting for recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs) who met the diagnostic criteria (culture-proven UTI ≥3 in 1 year or ≥2 in 6 months) and to assess advanced testing utilization, preventive therapy use, and risk factors.
Methods: This is a retrospective chart review of women seen as new urogynecology consults for recurrent UTI (rUTI) between April 1, 2017, and April 1, 2018, followed through April 1, 2019. Exclusion criteria included catheter use, cancer treatment within 2 years, and prior organ transplant, urinary diversion, conduit, or bladder augmentation.
The COVID-19 epidemic is the latest evidence of critical gaps in our collective ability to monitor country-level preparedness for health emergencies. The global frameworks that exist to strengthen core public health capacities lack coverage of several preparedness domains and do not provide mechanisms to interface with local intelligence. We designed and piloted a process, in collaboration with three National Public Health Institutes (NPHIs) in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Pakistan, to identify potential preparedness indicators that exist in a myriad of frameworks and tools in varying local institutions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTransl Vis Sci Technol
October 2020
Purpose: This study evaluated a novel tool known as the motion diamond stimulus (MDS), which utilizes contrast-generated illusory motion in dynamic test regions to determine contrast sensitivity (CS).
Methods: Patients with treated unilateral retinal vein occlusions (RVOs) underwent three assessments: the MDS, the Pelli-Robson (PR), and the National Eye Institute's Visual Function Questionnaire (VFQ-25). The MDS assessment produced two data end points, α and β.
Injury induces retinal Müller glia of certain cold-blooded vertebrates, but not those of mammals, to regenerate neurons. To identify gene regulatory networks that reprogram Müller glia into progenitor cells, we profiled changes in gene expression and chromatin accessibility in Müller glia from zebrafish, chick, and mice in response to different stimuli. We identified evolutionarily conserved and species-specific gene networks controlling glial quiescence, reactivity, and neurogenesis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCOVID-19 has demonstrated that most countries' public health systems and capacities are insufficiently prepared to prevent a localised infectious disease outbreak from spreading. Strengthening national preparedness requires National Public Health Institutes (NPHIs), or their equivalent, to overcome practical challenges affecting timely access to, and use of, data that is critical to preparedness. Our situational analysis in collaboration with NPHIs in three countries-Ethiopia, Nigeria and Pakistan-characterises these challenges.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAchieving improvements in Universal Health Coverage will require a re-orientation of medical education towards a stronger focus on primary health care. Innovative medical curricula have been implemented in some countries, but in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the emphasis remains focused on hospital and speciality services. Cuba has a long history of supporting LMICs and has made major contributions to African health care and medical training.
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