Expanding the Reach of an Evidence-Based, System-Level, Racial Equity Intervention: Translating ACCURE to the Maternal Healthcare and Education Systems.

The abundance of literature documenting the impact of racism on health disparities requires additional theoretical, statistical, and conceptual contributions to illustrate how anti-racist interventions can be an important strategy to reduce racial inequities and improve population health. Accountability for Cancer Care through Undoing Racism and Equity (ACCURE) was an NIH-funded intervention that utilized an antiracism lens and community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches to address Black-White disparities in cancer treatment completion. ACCURE emphasized change at the institutional level of healthcare systems through two primary principles of antiracism organizing: transparency and accountability.

: using an antiracism framework to analyze patients' encounters in the cancer system.

Cancer patients can experience healthcare system-related challenges during the course of their treatment. Yet, little is known about how these challenges might affect the quality and completion of cancer treatment for all patients, and particularly for patients of color. Accountability for Cancer Care through Undoing Racism and Equity is a multi-component, community-based participatory research intervention to reduce Black-White cancer care disparities.

Effects of combined pre- and post-natal enrichment on anxiety-like, social, and cognitive behaviours in juvenile and adult rat offspring.

The pre- and post-natal periods are characterized by unrivalled growth and are sensitive to environmental changes. A correctly stimulating early environment is essential for developing natural behaviors and maintaining affective wellness. Five litters of rat progeny were co-housed through gestation until juvenile age in housing providing physical and social enrichment.

In utero programming alters adult response to chronic mild stress: part 3 of a longitudinal study.

Exposure to stress before birth may lay the foundation for the development of sensitivities or protection from psychiatric disorders while later stress exposure may trigger either their expression or suppression. This report, part three of a longitudinal study conducted in our laboratory, aimed to examine the interaction between early and adult stress and their effects on measures of anxiety and depression. In parts one and two, we reported the effects of gestational stress (GS) in Long Evans rat dams and their juvenile and young adult offspring.

Bisphenol-A: epigenetic reprogramming and effects on reproduction and behavior.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a synthetic compound used in the production of many polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. It is one of the most widely produced chemicals in the world today and is found in most canned goods, plastics, and even household dust. Exposure to BPA is almost universal: most people have measurable amounts of BPA in both urine and serum.

Environmental-enrichment-related variations in behavioral, biochemical, and physiologic responses of Sprague-Dawley and Long Evans rats.

The behavioral, biochemical, and physiologic consequences of 6 wk of environmental enrichment were evaluated in male Long Evans and Sprague-Dawley rats and compared with those of rats in standard single-housing conditions. Standard housing provided little or no social or physical stimulation whereas environmental enrichment comprised group housing for 8 h daily in a 3-story cage equipped with novel stimuli. Dependent measures included performance in the forced swim test, thresholds for brain-stimulation reward, sucrose intake and preference, determination of corticosterone levels before and after brief restraint stress, and rate of weight gain.

Behavioral and physiological effects of chronic mild stress in female rats.

Anhedonia, a core symptom of clinical depression, refers to the loss of interest in normally rewarding stimuli; the chronic mild stress paradigm, an animal model of depression, was designed with this as an underlying feature. The procedure consists of the administration of a variety of ecologically relevant stressors over long durations. Its effects have been thoroughly investigated in male but not female rats.

Evaluation of the effects of chronic mild stressors on hedonic and physiological responses: sex and strain compared.

The chronic mild stress (CMS) paradigm was developed in order to simulate in animals the symptom of anhedonia, a major feature of depression. Typically, changes in hedonic status are interpreted from a decrease in either intake or preference for a mild sucrose solution. Although the incidence of clinical depression is significantly higher in women than in men, the study of this disorder in most animal models of depression has been based on the responses of male rodents.