The role of medical group practice administrators in the adoption and implementation of Medicare's physician quality reporting system.

Background: Although there are numerous studies of the factors influencing the adoption of quality assurance (QA) programs by medical group practices, few have focused on the role of group practice administrators.

Purpose: To gain insights into the role these administrators play in QA programs, we analyzed how medical practices adopted and implemented the Medicare Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), the largest physician quality reporting system in the United States.

Methodology: We conducted focus group interviews in 2011 with a national convenience sample of 76 medical group practice administrators.

Dietary patterns and risk of hip fractures in postmenopausal women and men over 50 years.

Unlabelled: We followed 74,540 postmenopausal women and 35,451 men above age 50 for up to 30 years. Neither the prudent pattern, characterized by higher intakes of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, nor the Western pattern, characterized by higher intakes of red/processed meats, and refined grains were associated with hip fracture risk.

Introduction: We examined the association between predominant dietary patterns and risk of hip fractures in postmenopausal women and men over 50 years.

Using Data to Strengthen Ambulatory Oncology Nursing Practice.

Background: Efforts to measure quality of care do not capture the unique aspects of ambulatory oncology settings. To retain nurses, ensure a safe practice environment, and encourage behaviors that support high-quality care, there is a need to identify factors associated with job satisfaction and turnover with measures that reflect the ambulatory setting.

Objective: The objective of this study was to examine the patterns and correlates of the work environment for nurses and nurse practitioners working in a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 and risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease among US women and men: prospective study.

Objective: To investigate the association between the Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 (AHEI-2010)--a measure of diet quality--and the risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Setting: Participants in the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, United States.

Use of a nursing checklist to facilitate implementation of therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest.

Therapeutic hypothermia has become a widely accepted intervention that is improving neurological outcomes following return of spontaneous circulation after cardiac arrest. This intervention is highly complex but infrequently used, and prompt implementation of the many steps involved, especially achieving the target body temperature, can be difficult. A checklist was introduced to guide nurses in implementing the therapeutic hypothermia protocol during the different phases of the intervention (initiation, maintenance, rewarming, and normothermia) in an intensive care unit.

Conditional Tat protein brain expression in the GT-tg bigenic mouse induces cerebral fractional anisotropy abnormalities.

Cerebral white matter changes including tissue water diffusion abnormalities detected with diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DTI) are commonly found in humans with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection, as well as in animal models of the disorder. The severities of some of these abnormalities have been reported to correlate with measures of disease progression or severity, or with the degree of cognitive dysfunction. Accordingly, DTI may be a useful translational biomarker.

The relationship between psychosocial factors and breast cancer screening behaviors of older Hispanic women.

Guided by the theory of planned behavior, this study utilized data from the 2008 wave of the Health and Retirement Study to investigate psychosocial factors associated with older Hispanic women's participation in breast cancer screening services. Hierarchical logistic regression models were used to assess the odds of breast cancer screening participation. Findings indicate that satisfaction with aging and constraints were associated with a reduced likelihood of participating in breast cancer screening.

COIL: a methodology for evaluating malarial complexity of infection using likelihood from single nucleotide polymorphism data.

Background: Complex malaria infections are defined as those containing more than one genetically distinct lineage of Plasmodium parasite. Complexity of infection (COI) is a useful parameter to estimate from patient blood samples because it is associated with clinical outcome, epidemiology and disease transmission rate. This manuscript describes a method for estimating COI using likelihood, called COIL, from a panel of bi-allelic genotyping assays.

"I have lost everything": Trade-offs of seeking safety from intimate partner violence.

A primary aim of mainstream domestic violence (DV) programs is to help survivors and their children achieve safety from intimate partner violence. That goal, however, is neither simple nor straightforward. Instead, research demonstrates that the very actions survivors take to achieve safety may trigger a wide range of negative consequences.

Child and Parent Perceptions of Interparental Relationship Conflict Predict Preschool Children's Adjustment.

Interparental relationship conflict has consistently been linked to child adjustment problems, with children's perceptions of such conflict particularly predictive of their outcomes. Despite mounting evidence that preschool children can provide reliable and valid accounts of family functioning, little research has examined preschool children's perceptions of interparental conflict. The present study employed a multi-informant design for both reports of interparental conflict (preschool children and their mothers and fathers) and reports of child adjustment (preschool children, their mothers and fathers, and their preschool teachers).

Lessons learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake: The need for disaster preparedness in the area of disaster mental health for children.

The Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011 brought unprecedented challenges to individuals, families, and communities of the Tohoku region in Japan. Children are especially vulnerable to the postdisaster risk factors that impact their ability to heal. The destruction of the infrastructure by the disasters made it more challenging to reach out to children in an area where the stigma against mental illness is persistent.

Post diagnosis diet quality and colorectal cancer survival in women.

Background: Dietary factors are known to influence colorectal cancer (CRC) risk, however, their association with CRC survival is unclear. Therefore, we prospectively examined the association between diet quality scores, dietary patterns and colorectal cancer (CRC) survival.

Methods: 1201 women diagnosed with stage I-III CRC between 1986 and 2008, were followed through 2010.

Effectiveness of narrative pedagogy in developing student nurses' advocacy role.

Background: The literature and research on nursing ethics and advocacy has shown that generally very few nurses and other clinicians will speak up about an issue they have witnessed regarding a patient advocacy concern and that often advocacy in nursing is not learned until after students have graduated and begun working.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of narrative pedagogy on the development of advocacy in student nurses, as measured by the Protective Nursing Advocacy Scale.

Design: We tested the hypothesis that use of a narrative pedagogy assignment related to ethics would improve student nurse's perception of their advocacy role as measured by the Protective Nursing Advocacy Scale using a quasi-experimental nonrandomized study using a pre-test, intervention, post-test design.

Preventing Opioid Misuse and Potential Abuse: The Nurse's Role in Patient Education.

Nurses play a vital role in providing patient education for proper use of opioids. This descriptive study was designed to explore nurses' knowledge of opioids. Nurses in two large urban East Coast medical centers in the United States were invited to participate in the study, and 133 nurses completed the survey in its entirety.

A prospective cohort study of dietary indices and incidence of epithelial ovarian cancer.

Background: Several dietary indices have been developed to measure overall diet quality, including the Healthy Eating Index-2005 (HEI-2005), which measures adherence to the 2005 Dietary Guidelines from the USDA; the Alternative Healthy Eating Index-2010 (AHEI-2010), which is based on foods and nutrients predictive of chronic disease risk; and the Alternate Mediterranean Diet Score (aMDS), which is an index that characterizes traditional food patterns of Mediterranean countries. Few studies have evaluated diet quality and ovarian cancer risk.

Methods: We assessed the associations of the HEI-2005, AHEI-2010, and aMDS with risk of epithelial ovarian cancer prospectively among women in the Nurses' Health Study.

Mediterranean diet and telomere length in Nurses' Health Study: population based cohort study.

Objective: To examine whether adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with longer telomere length, a biomarker of aging.

Design: Population based cohort study.

Setting: Nurses' Health Study, an ongoing prospective cohort study of 121,700 nurses enrolled in 1976; in 1989-90 a subset of 32,825 women provided blood samples.

A central support system can facilitate implementation and sustainability of a Classroom-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) in Genomics.

In their 2012 report, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology advocated "replacing standard science laboratory courses with discovery-based research courses"-a challenging proposition that presents practical and pedagogical difficulties. In this paper, we describe our collective experiences working with the Genomics Education Partnership, a nationwide faculty consortium that aims to provide undergraduates with a research experience in genomics through a scheduled course (a classroom-based undergraduate research experience, or CURE). We examine the common barriers encountered in implementing a CURE, program elements of most value to faculty, ways in which a shared core support system can help, and the incentives for and rewards of establishing a CURE on our diverse campuses.

Food intake does not differ between obese women who are metabolically healthy or abnormal.

Background: Metabolically healthy obesity may confer lower risk of adverse health outcomes compared with abnormal obesity. Diet and race are postulated to influence the phenotype, but their roles and their interrelations on healthy obesity are unclear.

Objective: We evaluated food intakes of metabolically healthy obese women in comparison to intakes of their metabolically healthy normal-weight and metabolically abnormal obese counterparts.

Survivor-Defined Practice in Domestic Violence Work: Measure Development and Preliminary Evidence of Link to Empowerment.

Survivor-defined practice, characterized by an emphasis on client choice, partnership, and sensitivity to the unique needs, contexts, and coping strategies of individual survivors, is an aspirational goal of the domestic violence (DV) movement, assumed to be a key contributor to empowerment and other positive outcomes among survivors. Despite its central role in DV program philosophy, training, and practice, however, our ability to assess its presence and its presumed link to well-being has been hampered by the absence of a way to measure it from survivors' perspectives. As part of a larger university-community collaboration, this study had two aims: (a) to develop a measure of survivor-defined practice from the perspective of participants, and (b) to assess its relationship to safety-related empowerment after controlling for other contributors to survivor well-being (e.

Immune characterization of Plasmodium falciparum parasites with a shared genetic signature in a region of decreasing transmission.

As the intensity of malaria transmission has declined, Plasmodium falciparum parasite populations have displayed decreased clonal diversity resulting from the emergence of many parasites with common genetic signatures (CGS). We have monitored such CGS parasite clusters from 2006 to 2013 in Thiès, Senegal, using the molecular barcode. The first, and one of the largest observed clusters of CGS parasites, was present in 24% of clinical isolates in 2008, declined to 3.

Clonal outbreak of Plasmodium falciparum infection in eastern Panama.

Identifying the source of resurgent parasites is paramount to a strategic, successful intervention for malaria elimination. Although the malaria incidence in Panama is low, a recent outbreak resulted in a 6-fold increase in reported cases. We hypothesized that parasites sampled from this epidemic might be related and exhibit a clonal population structure.

Factors associated with repetitive strain, and strategies to reduce injury among breast-imaging radiologists.

Purpose: To investigate the prevalence of repetitive strain injury (RSI) among breast-imaging radiologists, the factors associated with such symptoms, and strategies to reduce injury.

Methods: In 2012, an anonymous survey regarding RSI and work habits was administered to 2,618 physician members of the Society of Breast Imaging via e-mail. Analysis of 727 (27.