Peace and health: exploring the nexus in the Americas.

The relationship between peace and health is complex, multifactorial and fraught with challenges of definitions, measurements and outcomes. This exploratory commentary on this nexus within a focus on the Americas posits this challenge clearly and calls for more scholarship and empirical work on this issue from an interdisciplinary perspective. The overall goal of this paper is to try and explore the elements that impact the relationship between peace and health with a focus on the Americas (defined as countries spanning from Canada to Argentina) in the post-Cold war period.

A Convergent Mixed Methods Study of Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors among Young Black Men in the United States.

Background: An understanding of the factors that influence cardiovascular (CVD) risk among young Black men is critically needed to promote cardiovascular health earlier in the life course and prevent poor outcomes later in life.

Purpose: To explore how individual (eg, depression, racial discrimination) and environmental factors (eg, neighborhood resources) are associated with CVD risk factors among young Black men.

Methods: We conducted a convergent mixed methods study (qualitative/quantitative, QUAL+quant) with Black men aged 18 to 30 years (N = 21; 3 focus groups).

Association of Military Employment With Late-Life Cognitive Decline and Dementia: A Population-Based Prospective Cohort Study.

Introduction: As the number of U.S. veterans over age 65 has increased, interest in whether military service affects late-life health outcomes has grown.

Secretome profiling identifies neuron-derived neurotrophic factor as a tumor-suppressive factor in lung cancer.

Clinical and preclinical studies show tissue-specific differences in tumorigenesis. Tissue specificity is controlled by differential gene expression. We prioritized genes that encode secreted proteins according to their preferential expression in normal lungs to identify candidates associated with lung cancer.

Additive drug-specific and sex-specific risks associated with co-use of marijuana and tobacco during pregnancy: Evidence from 3 recent developmental cohorts (2003-2015).

Background: Methodologic challenges related to the concomitant use (co-use) of substances and changes in policy and potency of marijuana contribute to ongoing uncertainty about risks to fetal neurodevelopment associated with prenatal marijuana use. In this study, we examined two biomarkers of fetal neurodevelopmental risk-birth weight and length of gestation-associated with prenatal marijuana use, independent of tobacco (TOB), alcohol (ALC), other drug use (OTH), and socioeconomic risk (SES), in a pooled sample (N = 1191) derived from 3 recent developmental cohorts (2003-2015) with state-of-the-art substance use measures. We examined differential associations by infant sex, and multiplicative effects associated with co-use of MJ and TOB.

Maternal personality traits associated with patterns of prenatal smoking and exposure: Implications for etiologic and prevention research.

Background: Little is known about the characteristics of women who smoke during pregnancy beyond demographic factors. We examined the relationship between novelty seeking, harm avoidance, and self-directedness and (a) abstinence from smoking during pregnancy and (b) average daily cigarette consumption during pregnancy.

Methods: Participants were 826 birth mothers who made adoption placements in the Early Growth and Development Study and completed the Temperament and Character Inventory - Short Form, and interview-based smoking assessments 3-6 months postpartum.