Cognitive and Structural Correlates of Conversational Speech Timing in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Mild-to-Moderate Alzheimer’s Disease : Relevance for Early Detection Approaches.

FUNDING This study was supported by a Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland (CARDI) Leadership Fellowship (grant number 13533).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Improving Diabetes Management for School Health Workers using a Live, Virtual Training Course

Background: Type 1 diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases in childhood. Optimal school nurse and staff education is critical to creating a safe learning environment and influencing long term outcomes of students with type 1 diabetes. The purpose of this project was to develop a virtual continuing education diabetes management course for school health workers to improve their knowledge of diabetes management and evaluate the effectiveness of the learning platform. Methods: A total of 199 participants completed the live, virtual continuing education course. Participants completed a pre and post-test to assess improvements in the key learning objectives of the course content which included diabetes pathophysiology and delivery of appropriate diabetes care in the school setting. Results: There was an improvement in knowledge in all questions from the baseline pre-test scores to the post-test scores. 99% of participants responded that they would use what they learned from the course in their professional practice, and 97% reported that they were able to list at least one concept learned from the conference. 60% reported that the diabetes management course was exceptionally better when compared to other virtual events, and the overall rating of the course was 4.82 on a 5-point Likert scale. Conclusions: The live virtual diabetes management course for school healthcare workers was successful, with an improvement in participants’ knowledge of key diabetic management skills. The benefit of the virtual platform was the ability to expand beyond our local region to a larger audience outside of the state and could be adapted for other institutions to utilize. Appropriate and accessible training for school health workers is critical to ensuring safe practices for children with diabetes to attend and thrive at school

Preparing for Cooking Matters

This toolkit was created by Indy Hunger Network (IHN) to be a supplement to the provided guidelines from Cooking Matters. The toolkit specifically focuses on ways IHN has successfully implemented and expanded the Cooking Matters program. IHN has been a partner with Cooking Matters since 2015. Throughout the time working with Cooking Matters, IHN has found ways to adapt the Cooking Matters program to best fit the needs of the IHN community while still adhering to Cooking Matters’ standards. All entities offering Cooking Matters programming through their organization must be approved by Cooking Matters at a national level before implementing any programming

Taking balance measurement out of the laboratory and into the home: discriminatory capability of novel centre of pressure measurement in fallers and non-fallers

We investigated three methods for estimating centre of pressure excursions, as measured using a portable pressure sensor matrix, in order to deploy similar technology into the homes of older adults for longitudinal monitoring of postural control and falls risk. We explored the utility of these three methods as markers of falls risk in a cohort of 120 community dwelling older adults with and without a history of falls (65 fallers, 55 non-fallers). A number of standard quantitative balance parameters were derived using each centre of pressure estimation method. Rank sum tests were used to test for significant differences between fallers and non-fallers while intra-class correlation coefficients were also calculated to determine the reliability of each method. A method based on estimating the changes in the magnitude of pressure exerted on the pressure sensor matrix was found to be the most reliable and discriminative. Our future work will implement this method for home-based balance measurement

Towards condom skills: a cross-sectional study of the association between condom proficiency, condom problems and STI risk amongst MSM

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Condom use problems are common amongst Scotland’s men who have sex with men (MSM). To date condom errors have been associated with the likelihood of sexually transmitted infections in heterosexual sexually transmitted infection (STI) clinic attendees but not in MSM and direct evidence of a link between condom problems and STI acquisition in MSM have been lacking. This study investigated the possibility of an independent association between condom proficiency, condom problems and STI acquisition in MSM in Scotland.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>An exploratory observational design employed cross-sectional surveys in both STI clinic and community settings. Respondents completed self-report measures of socio-demographic variables, scales of condom proficiency and condom problems and numbers of different partners with whom men have had unprotected anal intercourse (UAI partners) in the preceding year. Self-report data was corroborated with clinical STI diagnosis where possible. Analysis included chi-squared and Mann–Whitney tests and multiple logistic regression.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>792 respondents provided data with an overall response rate of 70% (n = 459 clinic sample, n = 333 community sample). Number of UAI partners was the strongest predictor of self-reported STI acquisition over the previous 12 months (p < 0.001 in both clinic and community samples). Demographic characteristics were not associated with self-reported STI diagnosis. However, condom proficiency score was associated with self-reported STI acquisition (p < 0.05 in both samples). Condom problem score was also associated with self-reported STI diagnosis in the clinic (p = 0.001) but not the community sample. Condom problem score remained associated with self-reported STI diagnosis in the clinic sample after adjusting for number of UAI partners with logistic regression.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This exploratory study highlights the potential importance of targeted condom use skills interventions amongst MSM. It demands further research examining the utility of condom problem measures in wider populations, across prospective and experimental research designs, and a programme of research exploring their feasibility as a tool determining candidacy for brief interventions.</p

Estimation of gestational age from fundal height: a solution for resource-poor settings

Many women in resource-poor settings lack access to reliable gestational age assessment because they do not know their last menstrual period; there is no ultrasound (US) and methods of newborn gestational age dating are not practised by birth attendants. A bespoke multiple-measures model was developed to predict the expected date of delivery determined by US. The results are compared with both a linear and a nonlinear model. Prospectively collected early US and serial symphysis-pubis fundal height (SFH) data were used in the models. The data were collected from Karen and Burmese women attending antenatal care on the Thai–Burmese border. The multiple-measures model performed best, resulting in a range of accuracy depending on the number of SFH measures recorded per mother (for example six SFH measurements resulted in a prediction accuracy of ±2 weeks). SFH remains the proxy for gestational age in much of the resource-poor world. While more accurate measures should be encouraged, we demonstrate that a formula that incorporates at least three SFH measures from an individual mother and the slopes between them provide a significant increase in the accuracy of prediction compared with the linear and nonlinear formulae also using multiple SFH measures

Hard exercise, affect lability, and personality among individuals with bulimia nervosa

The current study explores the personality traits of compulsivity (e.g., sense of orderliness and duty to perform tasks completely) and restricted expression (e.g., emotion expression difficulties) as potential moderators of the relation between affect lability and frequency of hard exercise episodes in a sample of individuals with bulimic pathology. Participants were 204 adult females recruited in five Midwestern cities who met criteria for threshold or subthreshold bulimia nervosa (BN). Compulsivity was found to significantly moderate the relation between affect lability and number of hard exercise episodes over the past 28 days, such that among those with high compulsivity, level of affect lability was associated with the number of hard exercise episodes; whereas, among those with low compulsivity, affect lability was not associated with the number of hard exercise episodes. The same pattern of findings emerged for restricted expression; however, this finding approached, but did not reach statistical significance. As such, it appears that affect lability is differentially related to hard exercise among individuals with BN depending upon the level of compulsivity and, to a more limited extent, restricted expression. These results suggest that, for individuals with BN with either compulsivity or restricted expression, focusing treatment on increasing flexibility and/or verbal expression of emotions may help them in the context of intense, fluctuating affect

Subjective and objective binge eating in relation to eating disorder symptomatology, negative affect, and personality dimensions

The current study explored the clinical meaningfulness of distinguishing subjective (SBE) from objective binge eating (OBE) among individuals with threshold/subthreshold bulimia nervosa (BN). We examined relations between OBEs and SBEs and eating disorder symptoms, negative affect, and personality dimensions using both a group comparison and a continuous approach