"When I came out": coming out and personal experience narratives of LGBTQ persons in Newfoundland and Labrador

This thesis examines narratives that LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) persons in Newfoundland and Labrador tell, and looks at how these narratives fit into broader patterns of narratology, context, and performance. Within the discipline of folkloristics, it examines narratives collected from thirty-two participants to show what types of narratives are most important to LGBTQ persons, with a focus on the coming-out story as a core narrative to their repertoires. The coming-out story is a recognizable and traditional narrative among this folk group, and is compared to both the memorate and fabulate. The story itself is a personal experience narrative, and is performed with specific markers of teller ownership and group membership. Various themes are highlighted in its telling, and these themes speak to issues faced by LGBTQs while coming out. This corpus of narratives, highlighted using such concepts as legend, disclosure, and untellability, gives folklorists a new way of looking at traditional narratives by a contemporary folk group and allows scholars to examine how disclosure narratives of this sort are performed for various audience contexts and for various reasons. By looking at the stories that LGBTQs tell, readers can move toward a better understanding of LGBTQs in Newfoundland and Labrador and other regions, and how they narrate their lives

Adolescent Overweight and Obesity in Ireland—Trends and Sociodemographic Associations Between 1990 and 2020

Background: Overweight and obesity in adolescence is a growing issue and can have a range of both short- and long-term consequences on health. Objectives: To analyse trends in adolescent weight status in Ireland across a 30-year period and to examine the influence of sociodemographic factors on overweight/obesity in Irish adolescents over time. Methods: Body composition and body mass index weight status of Irish adolescents were compared using data from three nationally representative, cross-sectional Irish national food consumption surveys from 1990, 2006 and 2020. Adjusted analysis of associations between socio-demographic factors with the risk of adolescent overweight/obesity at each time point were examined. Results: The prevalence of Irish adolescents with overweight/obesity has increased significantly in recent years, with 24% of adolescents living with overweight/obesity in 2020 compared to 18% in 2006 and 13% in 1990 (p \u3c 0.001). Of note is a substantial increase in the prevalence of obesity, with 8% of adolescents living with obesity in 2020 compared to 3% in 2006 and 0.5% in 1990 (p \u3c 0.001). A lower affluence social class was associated with 3.95 increased odds of adolescent overweight/obesity (95%CI 2.06-7.61) (p \u3c 0.001) in 2020 only, with 41% of adolescents from the lowest affluence social class affected by overweight/obesity. Parental education level was inversely associated with the risk of adolescent overweight/obesity in 2006 and 2020, with a stronger effect in 2020. Conclusion: There is an increasing prevalence of adolescents living with overweight/obesity in Ireland, with evidence of a growing socioeconomic gradient of overweight/obesity where adolescents affected by socioeconomic disadvantage are most at risk

A large genome-wide association study of age-related macular degeneration highlights contributions of rare and common variants.

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng.3448Advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness in the elderly, with limited therapeutic options. Here we report on a study of >12 million variants, including 163,714 directly genotyped, mostly rare, protein-altering variants. Analyzing 16,144 patients and 17,832 controls, we identify 52 independently associated common and rare variants (P < 5 × 10(-8)) distributed across 34 loci. Although wet and dry AMD subtypes exhibit predominantly shared genetics, we identify the first genetic association signal specific to wet AMD, near MMP9 (difference P value = 4.1 × 10(-10)). Very rare coding variants (frequency <0.1%) in CFH, CFI and TIMP3 suggest causal roles for these genes, as does a splice variant in SLC16A8. Our results support the hypothesis that rare coding variants can pinpoint causal genes within known genetic loci and illustrate that applying the approach systematically to detect new loci requires extremely large sample sizes.We thank all participants of all the studies included for enabling this research by their participation in these studies. Computer resources for this project have been provided by the high-performance computing centers of the University of Michigan and the University of Regensburg. Group-specific acknowledgments can be found in the Supplementary Note. The Center for Inherited Diseases Research (CIDR) Program contract number is HHSN268201200008I. This and the main consortium work were predominantly funded by 1X01HG006934-01 to G.R.A. and R01 EY022310 to J.L.H

Effect of remote ischaemic conditioning on clinical outcomes in patients with acute myocardial infarction (CONDI-2/ERIC-PPCI): a single-blind randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Remote ischaemic conditioning with transient ischaemia and reperfusion applied to the arm has been shown to reduce myocardial infarct size in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI). We investigated whether remote ischaemic conditioning could reduce the incidence of cardiac death and hospitalisation for heart failure at 12 months. METHODS: We did an international investigator-initiated, prospective, single-blind, randomised controlled trial (CONDI-2/ERIC-PPCI) at 33 centres across the UK, Denmark, Spain, and Serbia. Patients (age >18 years) with suspected STEMI and who were eligible for PPCI were randomly allocated (1:1, stratified by centre with a permuted block method) to receive standard treatment (including a sham simulated remote ischaemic conditioning intervention at UK sites only) or remote ischaemic conditioning treatment (intermittent ischaemia and reperfusion applied to the arm through four cycles of 5-min inflation and 5-min deflation of an automated cuff device) before PPCI. Investigators responsible for data collection and outcome assessment were masked to treatment allocation. The primary combined endpoint was cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure at 12 months in the intention-to-treat population. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02342522) and is completed. FINDINGS: Between Nov 6, 2013, and March 31, 2018, 5401 patients were randomly allocated to either the control group (n=2701) or the remote ischaemic conditioning group (n=2700). After exclusion of patients upon hospital arrival or loss to follow-up, 2569 patients in the control group and 2546 in the intervention group were included in the intention-to-treat analysis. At 12 months post-PPCI, the Kaplan-Meier-estimated frequencies of cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure (the primary endpoint) were 220 (8·6%) patients in the control group and 239 (9·4%) in the remote ischaemic conditioning group (hazard ratio 1·10 [95% CI 0·91-1·32], p=0·32 for intervention versus control). No important unexpected adverse events or side effects of remote ischaemic conditioning were observed. INTERPRETATION: Remote ischaemic conditioning does not improve clinical outcomes (cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure) at 12 months in patients with STEMI undergoing PPCI. FUNDING: British Heart Foundation, University College London Hospitals/University College London Biomedical Research Centre, Danish Innovation Foundation, Novo Nordisk Foundation, TrygFonden

Obsessive-compulsive symptom dimensions in young adolescent twins

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Using spatially explicit supply/demand and local participants’ perspectives to integrate urban agriculture with community planning

Community gardens boast many attractive features, from appearance to opportunity for healthy food production to encouragement of citizen engagement. This project looked at the potential for community gardens to enhance their reach and successes.</p

Advancing social capital interventions from a network and population health perspective

Understanding the causal pathways linking social capital to health and health behaviors has been a key challenge within social epidemiological research over the past 15 years. Most studies on social capital have been cross sectional and observational, which has limited their capacity to identify causal pathways and draw conclusive inferences (Kawachi, Subramanian, and Kim, 2008; see Chap. 4). The relative shortage of published social capital and health intervention studies would seem to testify to the fact that social capital theory has yet to be successfully translated into intervention research. Besides lacking causal guarantees, there is also an identity crisis when it comes to social capital interventions. What is a social capital intervention? How would a social capital intervention differ from more familiar interventions seeking to improve such factors as social support or community capacity? Without a clear identity, the concept of a social capital intervention risks being essentially all things to all people. This chapter seeks to address the identity crisis facing research and practice on social capital interventions. The chapter takes a network approach to social capital to advance a defi nition of social capital interventions and a set of guiding principles for developing social capital interventions

Beyond the “I” in the Obesity Epidemic: A Review of Social Relational and Network Interventions on Obesity

Background. Recent research has shown the importance of networks in the spread of obesity. Yet, the translation of research on social networks and obesity into health promotion practice has been slow. Objectives. To review the types of obesity interventions targeting social relational factors. Methods. Six databases were searched in January 2013. A Boolean search was employed with the following sets of terms: (1) social dimensions: social capital, cohesion, collective efficacy, support, social networks, or trust; (2) intervention type: intervention, experiment, program, trial, or policy; and (3) obesity in the title or abstract. Titles and abstracts were reviewed. Articles were included if they described an obesity intervention with the social relational component central. Articles were assessed on the social relational factor(s) addressed, social ecological level(s) targeted, the intervention’s theoretical approach, and the conceptual placement of the social relational component in the intervention. Results. Database searches and final article screening yielded 30 articles. Findings suggested that (1) social support was most often targeted; (2) few interventions were beyond the individual level; (3) most interventions were framed on behaviour change theories; and (4) the social relational component tended to be conceptually ancillary to the intervention. Conclusions. Theoretically and practically, social networks remain marginal to current interventions addressing obesity