Delivery of maternal health care in Indigenous primary care services: baseline data for an ongoing quality improvement initiative

Extent: 10p.BACKGROUND: Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) populations have disproportionately high rates of adverse perinatal outcomes relative to other Australians. Poorer access to good quality maternal health care is a key driver of this disparity. The aim of this study was to describe patterns of delivery of maternity care and service gaps in primary care services in Australian Indigenous communities. METHODS: We undertook a cross-sectional baseline audit for a quality improvement intervention. Medical records of 535 women from 34 Indigenous community health centres in five regions (Top End of Northern Territory 13, Central Australia 2, Far West New South Wales 6, Western Australia 9, and North Queensland 4) were audited. The main outcome measures included: adherence to recommended protocols and procedures in the antenatal and postnatal periods including: clinical, laboratory and ultrasound investigations; screening for gestational diabetes and Group B Streptococcus; brief intervention/advice on health-related behaviours and risks; and follow up of identified health problems. RESULTS: The proportion of women presenting for their first antenatal visit in the first trimester ranged from 34% to 49% between regions; consequently, documentation of care early in pregnancy was poor. Overall, documentation of routine antenatal investigations and brief interventions/advice regarding health behaviours varied, and generally indicated that these services were underutilised. For example, 46% of known smokers received smoking cessation advice/counselling; 52% of all women received antenatal education and 51% had investigation for gestational diabetes. Overall, there was relatively good documentation of follow up of identified problems related to hypertension or diabetes, with over 70% of identified women being referred to a GP/Obstetrician. CONCLUSION: Participating services had both strengths and weaknesses in the delivery of maternal health care. Increasing access to evidence-based screening and health information (most notably around smoking cessation) were consistently identified as opportunities for improvement across services.Alice R. Rumbold, Ross S. Bailie, Damin Si, Michelle C. Dowden, Catherine M. Kennedy, Rhonda J. Cox, Lynette O’Donoghue, Helen E. Liddle, Ru K. Kwedza, Sandra C. Thompson, Hugh P. Burke, Alex D. H. Brown, Tarun Weeramanthri and Christine M. Connor

Dissecting the Shared Genetic Architecture of Suicide Attempt, Psychiatric Disorders, and Known Risk Factors

BACKGROUND: Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide, and nonfatal suicide attempts, which occur far more frequently, are a major source of disability and social and economic burden. Both have substantial genetic etiology, which is partially shared and partially distinct from that of related psychiatric disorders. METHODS: We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 29,782 suicide attempt (SA) cases and 519,961 controls in the International Suicide Genetics Consortium (ISGC). The GWAS of SA was conditioned on psychiatric disorders using GWAS summary statistics via multitrait-based conditional and joint analysis, to remove genetic effects on SA mediated by psychiatric disorders. We investigated the shared and divergent genetic architectures of SA, psychiatric disorders, and other known risk factors. RESULTS: Two loci reached genome-wide significance for SA: the major histocompatibility complex and an intergenic locus on chromosome 7, the latter of which remained associated with SA after conditioning on psychiatric disorders and replicated in an independent cohort from the Million Veteran Program. This locus has been implicated in risk-taking behavior, smoking, and insomnia. SA showed strong genetic correlation with psychiatric disorders, particularly major depression, and also with smoking, pain, risk-taking behavior, sleep disturbances, lower educational attainment, reproductive traits, lower socioeconomic status, and poorer general health. After conditioning on psychiatric disorders, the genetic correlations between SA and psychiatric disorders decreased, whereas those with nonpsychiatric traits remained largely unchanged. CONCLUSIONS: Our results identify a risk locus that contributes more strongly to SA than other phenotypes and suggest a shared underlying biology between SA and known risk factors that is not mediated by psychiatric disorders

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Diamond High Assurance Security Program: Trusted Computing Exemplar

this document describes the project and its goal

An Examination of the Association between Altitude and Suicide Deaths, Suicide Attempts, and Suicidal Ideation among Veterans at both the Patient and Geospatial Level

Suicide is a major public health problem affecting US Veterans and the US in general. Many variables (e.g., demographic, clinical, biological, geographic) have been associated with risk for suicide and suicidal behavior, including altitude; however, the exact nature of the relationship between altitude and suicide remains unclear in part due to the fact that previous studies have used either geospatial data or individual-level data, but not both. Prior research has also failed to consider the full range of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, ranging from suicidal ideation to suicide deaths. Accordingly, the objective of the present research was to use both geospatial data (county and zip codes) and individual-level data to comprehensively assess the association between altitude and suicide mortality, suicide attempts, and suicidal ideation. Taken together, our results demonstrate that there is a strong correlation between altitude and suicide rates at all the levels investigated and using different statistical analyses and even after controlling for significant covariates such as percent of age >50yr, percent male, percent white, percent non-Hispanic, median household income, and population density. We show that there is a positive correlation between altitude and suicide attempts especially when controlling by the covariates and a weak correlation between altitude and suicide ideation and the combination of suicide, suicide attempts and suicide ideation