Activity patterns of the nectar-feeding bat on the Baja California Peninsula, Mexico.

Temporal activity patterns of animals can indicate how individuals respond to changing conditions. Gregarious roosting bats provide an opportunity to compare activity patterns among individuals living in the same location to investigate how reproductive status or sex may influence activity budgets. We examined how the activity patterns of the nectarivorous bat vary depending on reproductive conditions, sex, and environmental conditions.

Persist or Perish: Can Bats Threatened with Extinction Persist and Recover from White-nose Syndrome?

Emerging mycoses are an increasing concern in wildlife and human health. Given the historical rarity of fungal pathogens in warm-bodied vertebrates, there is a need to better understand how to manage mycoses and facilitate recovery in affected host populations. We explore challenges to host survival and mechanisms of host recovery in three bat species (Myotis lucifugus, Perimyotis subflavus, and M.

Effect of a Comprehensive School-Based Health Center on Academic Growth in K-8th Grade Students.

Objective: School-based health centers (SBHCs) improve health care access, but associations with educational outcomes are mixed and limited for elementary and middle school students. We investigated whether students enrolled in a comprehensive SBHC demonstrated more growth in standardized math and reading assessments over 4 school years versus nonenrolled students. We also explored changes in absenteeism.

White-nose syndrome restructures bat skin microbiomes.

Inherent complexities in the composition of microbiomes can often preclude investigations of microbe-associated diseases. Instead of single organisms being associated with disease, community characteristics may be more relevant. Longitudinal microbiome studies of the same individual bats as pathogens arrive and infect a population are the ideal experiment but remain logistically challenging; therefore, investigations like our approach that are able to correlate invasive pathogens to alterations within a microbiome may be the next best alternative.

Defining longitudinal trajectory of body mass index percentile and predicting childhood obesity: methodologies and findings in the Boston Birth Cohort.

Background: Overweight or obesity (OWO) in school-age childhood tends to persist into adulthood. This study aims to address a critical need for early identification of children at high risk of developing OWO by defining and analyzing longitudinal trajectories of body mass index percentile (BMIPCT) during early developmental windows.

Methods: We included 3029 children from the Boston Birth Cohort (BBC) with repeated BMI measurements from birth to age 18 years.

Crossing the Quality Chasm and the Ignored Pillar of Health Care Equity.

Although there has been tremendous progress toward the aspiration of delivering quality health care, among the National Academy of Medicine's (previously Institute of Medicine) six pillars of quality (health care should be safe, effective, timely, patient-centered, efficient, and equitable), the last pillar, equity, has been largely ignored. Examples of how the quality improvement (QI) process leads to improvements are numerous and must be applied to the pillar of equity related to race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. This article describes how equity should be addressed using the QI process.

Clarity on Disparity: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.

This article offers a framework of who, what, when, where, why, and how of health disparities that can serve as a systematic approach to move from description to understanding causes and taking action to ensure health equity.

A Framework for Pursuing Child Health Equity in Pediatric Practice.

This article brings together several disparate frameworks to help outline a needed shift in pediatric practice to ensure child health equity. That shift involves moving from a commitment to equal care delivery to an explicit commitment to equitable health outcomes. The frameworks describe (1) the distinct domains of child health where inequity can be expressed, (2) the shortfalls of equal care delivery in meeting that promise, (3) a coherent typology of the barriers that drive health inequity and (4) a characterization of interventions as downstream, midstream, and upstream in nature.