Communities organizing to promote equity: engaging local communities in public health responses to health inequities exacerbated by COVID-19-protocol paper.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted rural and under-resourced urban communities in Kansas. The state's response to COVID-19 has relied on a highly decentralized and underfunded public health system, with 100 local health departments in the state, few of which had prior experience engaging local community coalitions in a coordinated response to a public health crisis.

Methods: To improve the capacity for local community-driven responses to COVID-19 and other public health needs, the University of Kansas Medical Center, in partnership with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, will launch Communities Organizing to Promote Equity (COPE) in 20 counties across Kansas.

Obesity.

Obesity is a common condition and a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Fortunately, weight loss treatment can reduce obesity-related complications. This review summarizes the evidence-based strategies physicians can employ to identify, prevent, and treat obesity, including best practices to diagnose and counsel patients, to assess and address the burden of weight-related disease including weight stigma, to address secondary causes of weight gain, and to help patients set individualized and realistic weight loss goals and an effective treatment plan.

The use of accelerometers to improve estimation of the thermic effect of food in whole room calorimetry studies.

We tested whether spontaneous physical activity (SPA) from accelerometers could be used in a whole room calorimeter to estimate thermic effect of food (TEF). Eleven healthy participants ( = 7 females; age: 27 ± 4 yr; body mass index: 22.8 ± 2.

Linking Cardiac Psychology and Cardiovascular Medicine via Self-Determination Theory and Shared Decision-Making.

Despite considerable progress in recent years, research in cardiac psychology is not widely translated into routine practice by clinical cardiologists or clinical health psychologists. Self-determination theory (SDT), which addresses how basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness contribute to the internalization of motivation, may help bridge this research-practice gap through its application to shared decision-making (SDM). This narrative review discusses the following: (a) brief background information on SDT and SDM, (b) the application of SDT to health behavior change and cardiology interventions, and (c) how SDT and SDM may be merged using a dissemination and implementation (D&I) framework.

Alienation in the Teaching Hospital: How Physician Non-Greeting Behaviour Impacts Medical Students' Learning and Professional Identity Formation.

Introduction: Clinical workplaces offer unrivalled learning opportunities if students get pedagogic and affective support that enables them to confidently participate and learn from clinical activities. If physicians do not greet new students, the learners are deprived of signals of social respect and inclusion. This study explored how physicians' non-greeting behaviour may impact medical students' participation, learning, and professional identity formation in clinical placements.

Quality of life improvements in women with uterine fibroids treated with relugolix combination therapy during the LIBERTY long-term extension study: A descriptive subgroup analysis in women with anemia at baseline.

Objective: To investigate the effects of 52 weeks of treatment with relugolix combination therapy (relugolix 40 mg, estradiol 1 mg, norethindrone acetate 0.5 mg) on symptoms of uterine fibroids (UF) and quality of life (QoL) in women with heavy menstrual bleeding associated with UF and anemia (hemoglobin ≤10.5 g/dL) at baseline.

A Novel Electronic Record System for Documentation and Efficient Workflow for Community Health Workers: Development and Usability Study.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic added to the decades of evidence that public health institutions are routinely stretched beyond their capacity. Community health workers (CHWs) can be a crucial extension of public health resources to address health inequities, but systems to document CHW efforts are often fragmented and prone to unneeded redundancy, errors, and inefficiency.

Objective: We sought to develop a more efficient data collection system for recording the wide range of community-based efforts performed by CHWs.

Six-week postoperative opioid use and pain following a randomized controlled trial evaluating multimodal analgesia for head and neck free flap patients.

Introduction: Head and neck malignancy treatment often involves invasive surgeries, necessitating effective postoperative pain control. However, chronic reliance on opioid medications remains a challenge for many patients after surgery. Multimodal analgesia (MMA) within enhanced recovery after surgery protocols has shown success in limiting narcotic pain medications for other cancer types.

Brown adipose tissue metabolism in women is dependent on ovarian status.

In rodents, loss of estradiol (E) reduces brown adipose tissue (BAT) metabolic activity. Whether E impacts BAT activity in women is not known. BAT oxidative metabolism was measured in premenopausal ( = 27; 35 ± 9 yr; body mass index = 26.

A randomized double-blind pilot study to evaluate the efficacy, safety, and tolerability of intravenous iron versus oral iron for the treatment of restless legs syndrome in patients with iron deficiency anemia.

Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a neurological disorder that can have a profound effect on sleep and quality of life. Idiopathic RLS is associated with brain iron insufficiency despite normal peripheral iron stores. There is, however, a five- to six-fold increase in prevalence of RLS in patients with iron deficiency anemia (IDA).

Treatment of unilateral cervical facet fractures without evidence of dislocation or subluxation: a narrative review and proposed treatment algorithm.

Isolated cervical spine facet fractures are often overlooked. The primary imaging modality for diagnosing these injuries is a computed tomography scan. Treatment of unilateral cervical facet fractures without evidence of dislocation or subluxation remains controversial.

Impact of Adjuvant Radiotherapy Setting on Quality-of-Life in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma.

Objective: To determine differences in post-treatment QoL across treatment settings in patients receiving adjuvant radiation therapy for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC).

Methods: This was a prospective observational cohort study of patients with HNSCC initially evaluated in a head and neck surgical oncologic and reconstructive clinic at an academic medical center (AMC). Participants were enrolled prior to treatment in a prospective registry collecting demographic, social, and clinical data.

Psychometric validation of four-item exercise identity and healthy-eater identity scales and applications in weight loss maintenance.

Background: Identifying as someone who engages in health promoting behaviors like healthy eating and exercising may be associated with sustained engagement in those behaviors, but reliable and valid instruments are needed to improve the rigor of this research. Two studies were conducted to (1) examine the psychometric properties of a four-item exerciser identity measure (4-EI) and an adapted healthy-eater identity measure (4-HEI) and (2) examine differences in identity strengths across categories of weight loss success.

Methods: Data from 1,709 community dwelling adults in the International Weight Control Registry (IWCR) were used.

Oral Health-related Quality of Life Assessed by Child: Oral Impacts on Daily Performances Index and Their Association with Dental Caries Prevalence and Gingival Bleeding Status of 12-year-old School Children in Bhubaneswar City.

Aim And Objective: To assess the association, if any, between oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) measured using child oral impact on daily performances (C-OIDP) index and dental caries and gingival bleeding status among 12-year-old school children of Bhubaneswar city.

Materials And Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted, and the data were collected using child oral impacts on daily performances index, a closed-ended questionnaire among the 12-year-old school children of Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, to find out the association between dental caries prevalence among gingival bleeding status. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and Chi-squared tests were used to determine the significant differences in the variable of interest.

Multimodal Analgesia With Extended-Release Dinalbuphine Sebacate for Perioperative Management: Expert Opinion and Consensus.

Background: The insufficient treatment of postoperative pain is considered a major barrier to enhanced patient recovery following surgery. Opioids remain the standard therapy for postoperative pain; however, the epidemic crisis of opioid abuse in the US has resulted in opioid-sparing multimodal analgesia (MMA) strategies in anesthesia practice. Complete perioperative pain management, particularly after discharge, may be undermined, resulting in chronic postsurgical pain.

Loss-of-Function Variant in the SMPD1 Gene in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy-Richardson Syndrome Patients of Chinese Ancestry.

Lysosomal dysfunction plays an important role in neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's disease (PD) and possibly Parkinson-plus syndromes such as progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). This role is exemplified by the involvement of variants in the GBA1 gene, which results in a deficiency of the lysosomal enzyme glucocerebrosidase and is the most frequently identified genetic factor underlying PD worldwide. Pathogenic variants in the SMPD1 gene are a recessive cause of Niemann-Pick disease types A and B.

Sex modulates the diet-induced changes to the plasma lipidome in a rat model of cardiorespiratory fitness.

Objective: Individuals with higher intrinsic cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) experience decreased rates of cardiometabolic disease and mortality, and high CRF is associated with increased utilization of fatty acids (FAs) for energy. Studies suggest a complex relationship between CRF, diet, and sex with health outcomes, but this interaction is understudied. We hypothesized that FA utilization differences by fitness and sex could be detected in the plasma metabolome when rats or humans were fed a high carbohydrate (HC) or high fat (HF) diet.

Lower-Extremity Energetic Distribution During Rate-Controlled Ballet Jumps (Sautés) in Healthy Dancers.

Dancers frequently perform jumps in the context of a prolonged, continuous dance piece. The purpose of this study is to explore the lower-extremity energetics in healthy dancers performing repetitive dance jumps (sautés) before and after typical dance-specific choreography. Lower-extremity kinetic data were collected from 14 healthy female dancers during a series of sautés performed before and after 3 minutes of dance.

Factors contributing to U.S. parents' decisions to administer melatonin to children.

Objective: Pediatric melatonin use is increasingly prevalent in the U.S. despite limited research on its efficacy and long-term safety.

Best Practices for Communicating a Diagnosis of Dementia: Results of a Multi-Stakeholder Modified Delphi Consensus Process.

Background And Objectives: Many individuals with dementia and their families report not receiving a dementia diagnosis. Previously published standards for delivering a dementia diagnosis are now more than 10 years old and were developed without patient and caregiver input. The objective of this study was to identify best practices for delivering a diagnosis of dementia using existing literature, involvement of diverse stakeholders, and consensus building through a formal modified Delphi approach.

Infant massage as a stress management technique for parents of hospitalized extremely preterm infants.

Mothers of infants born extremely preterm requiring prolonged medical intervention in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) are at high risk of developing stress. Parent-administered infant massage is a well-established, safe intervention for preterm infants with many developmental benefits, but the published literature has mostly examined its impact on infants and parents through self-reported or observational measures of stress. The aim of this study was to measure salivary cortisol, a biomarker for stress, in extremely preterm infants and their mothers immediately pre and post parent-administered infant massage in order to detect potential changes in physiologic stress.