Associations between Health and Academic Success at a Florida University: An Exploratory Cross-sectional Study

The aims of the study were to explore the associations between college students’ perception of their overall physical and psychological health and four measures of academic performance. College students (N = 265) completed a 65-item Web-based survey in a university’s student health services building during the spring 2015 semester. Poorer psychological health was associated with seriously considering dropping out of college and missing more classes during the current school year “due to physical or psychological health reasons.” Poorer physical health was associated with enrollment in more credit hours. Students who reported a grade point average (GPA) below 2.0 missed more classes “because of physical or psychological reasons” during the current school year than those with a 2.0 or higher GPA. A longitudinal study is needed to clarify whether better health leads to more successful academic performance or vice versa and which specific health indicators play the largest role

Banner News

https://openspace.dmacc.edu/banner_news/1295/thumbnail.jp

Community engagement in sexual health and uptake of HIV testing and syphilis testing among MSM in China: a cross-sectional online survey.

INTRODUCTION: HIV and syphilis testing rates remain low among men who have sex with men (MSM) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Community engagement has been increasingly used to promote HIV testing among key populations in high-income countries, often in settings with stronger civil society. This study aimed to assess socio-demographic, behavioural, and community engagement factors associated with HIV and syphilis testing among MSM in China. METHODS: MSM ≥16 years old who had condomless sex in the past three months were recruited nationwide to complete a cross-sectional online survey in November 2015. Data were collected on socio-demographics, sexual behaviours, HIV testing, syphilis testing, and community engagement in sexual health. We defined community engagement in sexual health using six items assessing awareness and advocacy of sexual health programmes. The underlying factor structure of a 6-item community engagement scale was determined through exploratory factor analysis. Univariate and multivariable logistic regressions identified correlates of HIV and syphilis testing. RESULTS: 1189 MSM were recruited. 54% (647/1189) of men had ever tested for HIV and 30% (354/1189) had ever tested for syphilis. Factor analysis suggested three levels of community engagement (minimal, moderate, and substantial) and this model explained 79.5% of observed variance. A quarter (26%, 312/1189) reported none to minimal engagement, over one half (54%, 644/1189) reported moderate engagement, and a fifth (20%, 233/1189) reported substantial engagement. Multivariable logistic regression showed that MSM with greater community engagement in sexual health were more likely to have ever tested for HIV (substantial vs. no engagement: aOR 7.91, 95% CI 4.98-12.57) and for syphilis (substantial vs. no engagement: aOR 5.35, 95% CI 3.16-9.04). CONCLUSION: HIV and syphilis testing are suboptimal among MSM in China. Community engagement may be useful for promoting testing in China and should be considered in intervention development and delivery. Further research is needed to better understand the role of LMIC community engagement in HIV interventions

Analysis of shared heritability in common disorders of the brain

ience, this issue p. eaap8757 Structured Abstract INTRODUCTION Brain disorders may exhibit shared symptoms and substantial epidemiological comorbidity, inciting debate about their etiologic overlap. However, detailed study of phenotypes with different ages of onset, severity, and presentation poses a considerable challenge. Recently developed heritability methods allow us to accurately measure correlation of genome-wide common variant risk between two phenotypes from pools of different individuals and assess how connected they, or at least their genetic risks, are on the genomic level. We used genome-wide association data for 265,218 patients and 784,643 control participants, as well as 17 phenotypes from a total of 1,191,588 individuals, to quantify the degree of overlap for genetic risk factors of 25 common brain disorders. RATIONALE Over the past century, the classification of brain disorders has evolved to reflect the medical and scientific communities' assessments of the presumed root causes of clinical phenomena such as behavioral change, loss of motor function, or alterations of consciousness. Directly observable phenomena (such as the presence of emboli, protein tangles, or unusual electrical activity patterns) generally define and separate neurological disorders from psychiatric disorders. Understanding the genetic underpinnings and categorical distinctions for brain disorders and related phenotypes may inform the search for their biological mechanisms. RESULTS Common variant risk for psychiatric disorders was shown to correlate significantly, especially among attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder (MDD), and schizophrenia. By contrast, neurological disorders appear more distinct from one another and from the psychiatric disorders, except for migraine, which was significantly correlated to ADHD, MDD, and Tourette syndrome. We demonstrate that, in the general population, the personality trait neuroticism is significantly correlated with almost every psychiatric disorder and migraine. We also identify significant genetic sharing between disorders and early life cognitive measures (e.g., years of education and college attainment) in the general population, demonstrating positive correlation with several psychiatric disorders (e.g., anorexia nervosa and bipolar disorder) and negative correlation with several neurological phenotypes (e.g., Alzheimer's disease and ischemic stroke), even though the latter are considered to result from specific processes that occur later in life. Extensive simulations were also performed to inform how statistical power, diagnostic misclassification, and phenotypic heterogeneity influence genetic correlations. CONCLUSION The high degree of genetic correlation among many of the psychiatric disorders adds further evidence that their current clinical boundaries do not reflect distinct underlying pathogenic processes, at least on the genetic level. This suggests a deeply interconnected nature for psychiatric disorders, in contrast to neurological disorders, and underscores the need to refine psychiatric diagnostics. Genetically informed analyses may provide important "scaffolding" to support such restructuring of psychiatric nosology, which likely requires incorporating many levels of information. By contrast, we find limited evidence for widespread common genetic risk sharing among neurological disorders or across neurological and psychiatric disorders. We show that both psychiatric and neurological disorders have robust correlations with cognitive and personality measures. Further study is needed to evaluate whether overlapping genetic contributions to psychiatric pathology may influence treatment choices. Ultimately, such developments may pave the way toward reduced heterogeneity and improved diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders

The politics and implementation of U.S. refugee resettlement policy: A street-level analysis

Refugees arriving in the United States are assisted by local refugee resettlement organizations, which are contracted to implement federal resettlement policy. While scholarly research has investigated the formation of refugee resettlement policies, analyzed select outcomes of these policies, and to some extent examined the role that resettlement organizations might play in the resettlement process, little is known about what local refugee resettlement agencies actually do; refugee resettlement research lacks a street-level understanding of the work being done at the service-delivery level. This dissertation investigates how refugee resettlement policy works in street-level practice. The street-level perspective offers a systematic way to understand what happens in refugee resettlement agencies, what they do, and how resettlement policy is delivered. By extending street-level theory to a new empirical case, this dissertation shows what shapes resettlement policy on the ground and what the consequences are for policy as produced. This study also looks beyond the explanations of street-level theory, and raises questions about what other factors might help explain the practice choices that resettlement caseworkers make. This study weaves together three analytic threads. The first, a historiographic analysis of federal refugee resettlement policy, explains that debates around responsiveness versus equity, the appropriate scope and duration of benefits, and the extent to which work should be required of resettled refugees, are revisited throughout the history of US refugee policy formation. The Refugee Act of 1980 was intended to resolve these debates, and standardize refugee policy for all eligible groups. The second, an analysis of the institutional structure of resettlement, explains that the institutional system in which refugee resettlement policy is implemented is inherently unstable. There are often dramatic fluctuations in the numbers of refugees that arrive; the federal and state contract structures tie funding to the number of refugee arrivals; and the financial instability that results most heavily impacts local implementing organizations. The third step in this analysis provides an explanation for how workers in two local implementing resettlement organizations in Chicago negotiate service delivery within this political and institutional structure. This organizational ethnography was conducted over an 18-month period and included over 600 hours of observation and interviews with 75 study participants. This dissertation tells a story of a refugee resettlement policy still in flux. In spite of the intentions of The Refugee Act to standardize, the workers in this study continued to reformulate policy with their everyday practice choices. This study finds that: 1) the complex refugee admissions, allocations, and funding structures drive inconsistency and unreliability down the organizational chain, so that the consequences are felt at the point of service delivery; 2) local resettlement organizations cope with the inconsistent and unreliable flow of clients and associated funds in different ways that, in turn, differentially impact the services provided to refugee clients; 3) refugee resettlement organizations and their caseworkers are influenced by the performance measures associated with their grant contracts, and 4) refugee resettlement policy implementation differs across agencies, depending on the levels of resources at the workers' disposal, worker identity and the culture of the agencies, and the extent to which workers engaged in capacity building behaviors such as establishing and maintaining good relationships with partner organizations and companies

Trends in utilization of FDA expedited drug development and approval programs, 1987-2014: cohort study

Objective: To evaluate the use of special expedited development and review pathways at the US Food and Drug Administration over the past two decades. Design: Cohort study. Setting: FDA approved novel therapeutics between 1987 and 2014. Population Publicly available sources provided each drug’s year of approval, their innovativeness (first in class versus not first in class), World Health Organization Anatomic Therapeutic Classification, and which (if any) of the FDA’s four primary expedited development and review programs or designations were associated with each drug: orphan drug, fast track, accelerated approval, and priority review. Main outcome measures Logistic regression models evaluated trends in the proportion of drugs associated with each of the four expedited development and review programs. To evaluate the number of programs associated with each approved drug over time, Poisson models were employed, with the number of programs as the dependent variable and a linear term for year of approval. The difference in trends was compared between drugs that were first in class and those that were not. Results: The FDA approved 774 drugs during the study period, with one third representing first in class agents. Priority review (43%) was the most prevalent of the four programs, with accelerated approval (9%) the least common. There was a significant increase of 2.6% per year in the number of expedited review and approval programs granted to each newly approved agent (incidence rate ratio 1.026, 95% confidence interval 1.017 to 1.035, P<0.001), and a 2.4% increase in the proportion of drugs associated with at least one such program (odds ratio 1.024, 95% confidence interval 1.006 to 1.043, P=0.009). Driving this trend was an increase in the proportion of approved, non-first in class drugs associated with at least one program for drugs (P=0.03 for interaction). Conclusions: In the past two decades, drugs newly approved by the FDA have been associated with an increasing number of expedited development or review programs. Though expedited programs should be strictly limited to drugs providing noticeable clinical advances, this trend is being driven by drugs that are not first in class and thus potentially less innovative

Bay Scallops: The High Resolution Canary in the Highly-Fertilized Coal Mine

As human populations increase in watersheds, the Peconic Bay estuary (NY) has experienced increased nitrogen (N) loads, resulting in eutrophication. Stable isotopes can be used as indicators of anthropogenic N sources such as wastewater and fertilizer, and potentially be used to track source-specific N inputs through time. We hypothesized that Peconic Bay scallops (Argopecten irridians) could be proxies for these environmental changes through assimilation of organic matter from surrounding water into their soft tissue and shells. We examined nitrogen stable isotopes (δ15N) from whole soft tissue and shell of scallops collected throughout the Peconic. A strong correlation was found between shell and soft tissue δ15N values, suggesting that scallop shells are reliable proxies for soft tissue. Scallops from sites with higher percentages of N from wastewater had enriched δ15N values, whereas sites with higher percentages of fertilizer N inputs had depleted δ15N values in scallop shells and tissues. Thus, no significant relationship was found among sites between total watershed N yield and shell or soft tissue δ15N. This study is among the first to demonstrate fertilizer-derived N being incorporated into bivalve shell, which has implications for tracking long-term fertilizer inputs to watersheds on an annual time scale using archival shells