Developing a community facilitator-led participatory learning and action women's group intervention to improve infant feeding, care and dental hygiene practices in South Asian infants: NEON programme

INTRODUCTION: The Nurture Early for Optimal Nutrition (NEON) study is a multiphase project that aims to optimize feeding, care and dental hygiene practices in South Asian children <2 years in East London, United Kingdom. The multiphase project uses a participatory learning and action (PLA) approach facilitated by a multilingual community facilitator. In this paper, we elaborate on the process and results of the Intervention Development Phase in the context of the wider NEON programme. METHODS: Qualitative community-based participatory intervention codevelopment and adaptation. SETTING: Community centres in East London and online (Zoom) meetings and workshops. PARTICIPANTS: In total, 32 participants registered to participate in the Intervention Development Phase. Four Intervention Development workshops were held, attended by 25, 17, 20 and 20 participants, respectively. RESULTS: Collaboratively, a culturally sensitive NEON intervention package was developed consisting of (1) PLA group facilitator manual, (2) picture cards detailing recommended and nonrecommended feeding, care and dental hygiene practices with facilitators/barriers to uptake as well as solutions to address these, (3) healthy infant cultural recipes, (4) participatory Community Asset Maps and (5) list of resources and services supporting infant feeding, care and dental hygiene practices. CONCLUSION: The Intervention Development Phase of the NEON programme demonstrates the value of a collaborative approach between researchers, community facilitators and the target population when developing public health interventions. We recommend that interventions to promote infant feeding, care and dental hygiene practices should be codeveloped with communities. Recognizing and taking into account both social and cultural norms may be of particular value for infants from ethnically diverse communities to develop interventions that are both effective in and accepted by these communities. PATIENT AND PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT AND ENGAGEMENT: Considerable efforts were placed on Patient/Participant and Public Involvement and Engagement. Five community facilitators were identified, each of which represented one ethnic/language group: (i) Bangladeshi/Bengali and Sylheti, (ii) Pakistani/Urdu, (iii) Indian/Gujrati, (iv) Indian/Punjabi and (v) Sri Lankan/Tamil. The community facilitators were engaged in every step of the study, from the initial drafting of the protocol and study design to the Intervention Development and refinement of the NEON toolkit, as well as the publication and dissemination of the study findings. More specifically, their role in the Intervention Development Phase of the NEON programme was to: 1. Support the development of the study protocol, information sheets and ethics application. 2. Ensure any documents intended for community members are clear, appropriate and sensitively worded. 3. Develop strategies to troubleshoot any logistical challenges of project delivery, for example, recruitment shortfalls. 4. Contribute to the writing of academic papers, in particular reviewing and revising drafts. 5. Develop plain language summaries and assist in dissemination activities, for example, updates on relevant websites. 6. Contribute to the development of the NEON intervention toolkit and recruitment of the community members. 7. Attend and contribute to Intervention Development workshops, ensuring the participant's voices were the focus of the discussion and workshop outcomes

Online community engagement in response to COVID-19 pandemic.

This is the final version. Available on open access from Wiley via the DOI in this recordNational Institute for Health Research (NIHR)Barts Charit

Non-coding RNAs underlie genetic predisposition to breast cancer

Funder: National Breast Cancer Foundation; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001026Abstract: Background: Genetic variants identified through genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are predominantly non-coding and typically attributed to altered regulatory elements such as enhancers and promoters. However, the contribution of non-coding RNAs to complex traits is not clear. Results: Using targeted RNA sequencing, we systematically annotated multi-exonic non-coding RNA (mencRNA) genes transcribed from 1.5-Mb intervals surrounding 139 breast cancer GWAS signals and assessed their contribution to breast cancer risk. We identify more than 4000 mencRNA genes and show their expression distinguishes normal breast tissue from tumors and different breast cancer subtypes. Importantly, breast cancer risk variants, identified through genetic fine-mapping, are significantly enriched in mencRNA exons, but not the promoters or introns. eQTL analyses identify mencRNAs whose expression is associated with risk variants. Furthermore, chromatin interaction data identify hundreds of mencRNA promoters that loop to regions that contain breast cancer risk variants. Conclusions: We have compiled the largest catalog of breast cancer-associated mencRNAs to date and provide evidence that modulation of mencRNAs by GWAS variants may provide an alternative mechanism underlying complex traits

Prenatal Methamphetamine Exposure, Postnatal Maternal Depression, Perceived Child Behaviors and Academic Achievement

Background: Prenatal methamphetamine exposure and postnatal depression have significant impacts on child health outcomes and parenting skills. Postnatal depression increases health risks of the mother, that impacts herself and her child. Prenatal exposure to methamphetamine and postnatal depression may influence problematic behaviors in the child. Methods: The data analyzed was from a longitudinal research study that consisted of four sites within the United States. Four hundred twelve mother-children pairs were enrolled in the study. At the 7.5-year follow-up, 290 children with complete data were available for analysis. Measures included the Child Behavior Checklist, the Woodcock Johnson, and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. Results: Mothers of methamphetamine exposed children, with diagnosed postnatal depression, had children with increased problematic behaviors and lower academic achievement. They were more likely to exhibit externalizing and internalizing behaviors and had decreased scores for reading fluency and passage comprehension. Conclusion: Thorough and increased qualitative interventional and support services are critical in the development of the child and the mother-child relationship. Such services may reduce maternal depression and lead to improved child behavior and academic achievement

Price determinants and genre effects in the Korean art market: a partial linear analysis of size effect

Modified unit pricing system, Hedonic pricing, Partial linear approach,

Paintings and numbers: an econometric investigation of sales rates, prices, and returns in Latin American art auctions

This paper uses a unique data set of Latin American paintings auctioned by Sotheby's between 1995 and 2002 to investigate several puzzles from the recent auctions literature. Our results suggest that: (i) the reputation of an artist and the provenance of the artwork, often omitted variables in previous studies, seem to be more important determinants of the sale price of a painting than more standard factors, such as medium and size, (ii) the opinion of art experts seems to be of limited use in predicting whether or not an artwork sells at auction, (iii) there is little supporting evidence for the widespread notion that the best or more expensive artworks tend to generate above average returns (the masterpiece effect), although (iv) there is strong evidence in our data for the declining price anomaly or afternoon effect (that is, when heterogeneous products sold sequentially follow a decreasing pattern of prices.) Copyright 2009 , Oxford University Press.

Multiple independent variants at the tert locus are associated with telomere length and risks of breast and ovarian cancer

TERT-locus SNPs and leukocyte telomere measures are reportedly associated with risks of multiple cancers. Using the Illumina custom genotyping array iCOG, we analyzed similar to 480 SNPs at the TERT locus in breast (n = 103,991), ovarian (n = 39,774) and BRCA1 mutation carrier (n = 11,705) cancer cases and controls. Leukocyte telomere measurements were also available for 53,724 participants. Most associations cluster into three independent peaks. The minor allele at the peak 1 SNP rs2736108 associates with longer telomeres (P = 5.8 x 10(-7)), lower risks for estrogen receptor (ER)-negative (P = 1.0 x 10(-8)) and BRCA1 mutation carrier (P = 1.1 x 10(-5)) breast cancers and altered promoter assay signal. The minor allele at the peak 2 SNP rs7705526 associates with longer telomeres (P = 2.3 x 10(-14)), higher risk of low-malignant-potential ovarian cancer (P = 1.3 x 10(-15)) and greater promoter activity. The minor alleles at the peak 3 SNPs rs10069690 and rs2242652 increase ER-negative (P = 1.2 x 10(-12)) and BRCA1 mutation carrier (P = 1.6 x 10-14) breast and invasive ovarian (P = 1.3 x 10(-11)) cancer risks but not via altered telomere length. The cancer risk alleles of rs2242652 and rs10069690, respectively, increase silencing and generate a truncated TERT splice variant