Bedside Manner Techniques During The Black Death and the COVID-19 Pandemic

From 1346 to 1353, a bacteria now known as yersinia pestis caused millions of deaths all over the world, resulting in the time period to often be referred to as “The Black Death.” The Black Death called for the development of medical techniques and patient care, such as bedside manner. With the escalating death tolls and no known cause, medical professionals were left confused and in disarray as to what the best course of treatment was and how to protect themselves from illness. One might be under the impression that bedside manner techniques used today have no relation to the techniques used during pre-modern times. However, with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, one can see that these techniques have served as the foundation for modern medical treatment and patient care. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that bedside manner techniques have developed from pre-modern times and have supported patients who have become ill due to coronavirus. In an analysis of the techniques used during the Black Death and the COVID-19 pandemic, this study will identify parallels in the methods of communication with patients, courses of treatment, and methods of protection from disease.https://orb.binghamton.edu/research_days_posters_2022/1021/thumbnail.jp

Sociocultural Impact of AIDS Understanding on Prevention Education and Treatment Accessibility

The first fifteen years of the AIDS Crisis (1981-1996) were characterized by an immense need by those impacted both for legitimization of diagnoses and access to treatments which targeted both the HIV virus itself and resulting opportunistic infections (OIs). However, early epidemiological trends and the social perception that AIDS was a disease of white gay men resulted in much of the initial focus to center this population and their experience of the disease. This contributed to an incomplete understanding of the natural history of the virus, a failure to identify OIs more common in women and IV drug users (IVDUs), and barriers to vital services. In addition, most clinical trials, which were the only legal avenue to experimental treatments before 1989, excluded or limited the participation of diverse populations. Among those who did have access to clinical trials, as well as many others whose lives were directly affected by the epidemic, the cycles of hope (as treatments emerged) and despair (as their ineffectiveness and toxicities were revealed) was mentally and physically taxing, and in many cases fatal due to the limits of the therapy. The current investigation involves archival materials related to Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) available in the NYPL Special Collections and other historical archives. In addition, oral history interviews with GMHC staff and volunteers were analyzed from the archives or conducted as part of this project. Together these materials help shed light on the difficulties surrounding education, diagnosis and treatment access by differing demographics of people with AIDS (PWAs).https://orb.binghamton.edu/research_days_posters_2022/1035/thumbnail.jp

A review of the Caregiver\u27s Feeding Style Questionnaire (CFSQ): Differences in parent-child feeding styles across geographic location, caregiver roles, and Head Start samples

Introduction: The Caregiver’s Feeding Style Questionnaire (CFSQ) is a measure of parent feeding styles developed for low-income minority families. It is made up of four main categories which are associated with different child outcomes including childhood obesity. This review sought to describe the differences in child outcomes among international populations, maternal caregivers, and Head Start samples. Method: This review examined 683 publications that cited the 2005 Hughes article introducing the CFSQ measure. Of these, only 44 were relevant to our review because they met the inclusion criteria of 1) using the CFSQ measure and 2) providing a categorical breakdown of feeding styles. Results: A handful of these studies (k=5) were made up of international populations including England, Sri Lanka, and Mexico. The categorical breakdown for these studies was as follows (Authoritative=14.34%, Authoritarian=40.73%, Indulgent=30.01%, Uninvolved=14.94%). Studies including mothers (k=11) were categorized into different parent-feeding styles: (Michigan mothers: Authoritative=25%,American Indian mothers: Indulgent=52.2%). For studies involving populations of Head Start children there was a clear polarization where participants mainly fell into the categories of Authoritarian (30.8%) and Indulgent (32.5%). Discussion: The authoritative feeding style is associated with the most positive outcomes and Indulgent parenting styles are most consequential in terms of obesity risk. For many studies included in this review, parents less often fell into the category of authoritative, thus pointing to the importance in working with these populations to develop more effective and healthy feeding patterns

Monsters don\u27t eat broccoli--a pilot and feasibility study on play and food acceptance in preschoolers

It is common for preschool children to demonstrate neophobia, the fear of trying new foods, which can make them more reluctant to accept fruits and vegetables. As a result, many parents struggle to find adequate solutions to promote healthy eating. The aim of this pilot study was to assess the feasibility of using pretend play in preschool children to improve food acceptance. Children from the UNF preschool were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: the control group with no pretend play (n= 15), and the experimental group with pretend play (n=12). Each group first participated in a play session where they were exposed to their assigned conditions. Children were then offered broccoli. Their acceptance of the broccoli was evaluated by the amount eaten (by weight), behavior coding, and self-report. Preliminary results will be presented, and the feasibility of this work will be discussed. Data from this pilot study will be used to refine the pretend play manipulations and to design larger-scale studies. The goal of this line of research is to help parents establish healthy eating habits with their children through positive experiences in accepting new foods

The role of Neurochemicals, Stress Hormones and Immune System in the Positive Feedback Loops between Diabetes, Obesity and Depression

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and depression are significant public health and socioeconomic issues. They commonly co-occur, with T2DM occurring in 11.3% of the US population, while depression has a prevalence of about 9%, with higher rates among youths. Approximately 31% of patients with T2DM suffer from depressive symptoms, with 11.4% having major depressive disorders, which is twice as high as the prevalence of depression in patients without T2DM. Additionally, over 80% of people with T2DM are overweight or obese. This review describes how T2DM and depression can enhance one another, using the same molecular pathways, by synergistically altering the brain’s structure and function and reducing the reward obtained from eating. In this article, we reviewed the evidence that eating, especially high-caloric foods, stimulates the limbic system, initiating Reward Deficiency Syndrome. Analogous to other addictive behaviors, neurochemical changes in those with depression and/or T2DM are thought to cause individuals to increase their food intake to obtain the same reward leading to binge eating, weight gain and obesity. Treating the symptoms of T2DM, such as lowering HbA1c, without addressing the underlying pathways has little chance of eliminating the disease. Targeting the immune system, stress circuit, melatonin, and other alterations may be more effective

The role of Neurochemicals, Stress Hormones and Immune System in the Positive Feedback Loops between Diabetes, Obesity and Depression

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and depression are significant public health and socioeconomic issues. They commonly co-occur, with T2DM occurring in 11.3% of the US population, while depression has a prevalence of about 9%, with higher rates among youths. Approximately 31% of patients with T2DM suffer from depressive symptoms, with 11.4% having major depressive disorders, which is twice as high as the prevalence of depression in patients without T2DM. Additionally, over 80% of people with T2DM are overweight or obese. This review describes how T2DM and depression can enhance one another, using the same molecular pathways, by synergistically altering the brain's structure and function and reducing the reward obtained from eating. In this article, we reviewed the evidence that eating, especially high-caloric foods, stimulates the limbic system, initiating Reward Deficiency Syndrome. Analogous to other addictive behaviors, neurochemical changes in those with depression and/or T2DM are thought to cause individuals to increase their food intake to obtain the same reward leading to binge eating, weight gain and obesity. Treating the symptoms of T2DM, such as lowering HbA1c, without addressing the underlying pathways has little chance of eliminating the disease. Targeting the immune system, stress circuit, melatonin, and other alterations may be more effective

Review and meta-analysis for the caregiver\u27s feeding styles questionnaire administered to low-income families

The Caregiver\u27s Feeding Styles Questionnaire (CFSQ) is a well-established measure which uses scores along two dimensions of demandingness and responsiveness to classify low-income parents into one of four feeding style typologies (authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and uninvolved; Hughes, et al., 2005). The measure is widely used by researchers to explore the relationship between feeding style and child weight status but has not been evaluated comprehensively in a review or meta-analysis. The aims of this study were to 1) compare established median cutoffs for responsiveness and demandingness in parent feeding (k = 5; see Hughes et al., 2012) to current median splits along these two dimensions for a larger sample of articles (k = 19) and 2) evaluate the relation between children\u27s BMI, demandingness and responsiveness, and parent feeding style categories. Results indicated that the cutoffs for responsiveness and demandingness initially established based on five studies of low-income families did not differ significantly with the addition of 19 studies. Child BMI z-scores (k = 8) were above average for all four parent feeding style categories and highest for indulgent parents, which was consistent with the literature outlining low-income children at higher risk for obesity and children of indulgent parents being particularly at risk. While heterogeneity of samples should be considered, study results suggested that the CFSQ distribution for responsiveness and demandingness was relatively generalizable across low-income samples, though heterogeneity was higher among caregiver\u27s feeding style categories. Furthermore, the study confirmed that parent feeding styles were related to child weight status in a meaningful way, but all children in these low-income samples, on average, were heavier than their same-aged peers across all parent feeding styles