Publications by authors named "Susan Acosta"

School nurses are critical components of school-based interdisciplinary teams supporting student behavioral health. The purpose of the present study is to understand the extent to which school nurses in New Mexico across grade levels manage emergencies related to behavioral health, violence, and trauma. The study also seeks to identify which topics the school nurses received continuing education (CE) for, and which topics they consider to be important to their practice.

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Article Synopsis
  • The experiences of school nurses in non-urban areas are less documented compared to their urban counterparts.
  • Non-urban school nurses in New Mexico tend to handle clinical services across multiple campuses and serve both elementary and secondary schools more frequently than urban nurses.
  • However, they are generally less likely to have advanced educational qualifications and recent training on topics like diabetes, reproductive health, and LGBTQ+ student health, highlighting disparities in health equity access for students.
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To better understand early positive emotional expression, automated software measurements of facial action were supplemented with anatomically based manual coding. These convergent measurements were used to describe the dynamics of infant smiling and predict perceived positive emotional intensity. Over the course of infant smiles, degree of smile strength varied with degree of eye constriction (cheek raising, the Duchenne marker), which varied with degree of mouth opening.

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Infants with older siblings with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD-sibs) are at risk for socioemotional difficulties. ASD-sibs were compared to infants with typically developing older siblings (TD-sibs) using the face-to-face/still-face (FFSF) at 6 months and the Early Social Communication Scale (ESCS) at 8, 10, 12, 15, and/or 18 months. ASD-sibs smiled for a lower proportion of the FFSF than TD-sibs and lacked emotional continuity between episodes.

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