National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research Submission for the NIH Comprehensive Strategic Plan and Budget To Reduce and Ultimately Eliminate Health Disparities

The NIDCR health disparities plan recognizes that eliminating oral health disparities requires a comprehensive and systematic approach to understand and address the multiple and often complex factors that may determine oral health. While the research challenges relate to understanding the causes of health disparities, elucidating risk factors, facilitating means of risk reduction, and enhancing care delivery and health promotion, attention also must be paid to addressing the lack of diversity in the scientific workforce and to improving educational and outreach activities to transfer health information to the communities of interest. Thus, the plan emphasizes three major areas: research, research training, and health communication. The plan builds on the investments of NIDCR since the early 1990’s to enhance research opportunities for underrepresented minorities and on more than 50 years of research to understand, treat and prevent oral diseases. Recognizing the complexity and wealth of factors that may contribute to disparities in oral health, and the considerable diversity between and within the affected communities, the NIDCR strategy to eliminate health disparities is viewed as an incremental long-term approach that involves collaborations with many organizations and institutions that constitute the oral health community – researchers, educators, clinicians, academic institutions, patient advocates, and professional and voluntary groups

Health information quality of websites on periodontology

Aim: This study aimed to assess the quality of the information available on the Web on gum disease. Methods: The term ‘gum disease’ was searched in Google and in MedlinePlus. The first 200 websites were analysed by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) criteria and the Health On the Net Foundation (HONCode) certification, instruments for assessing quality of health information. Data was analysed through the Mann-Whitney test or KruskalWallis test, followed by the Dunn’s test, using the GraphPad Prism Software version 6. Results: MedlinePlus presented a significantly higher JAMA score than Google. Google’s first ten results had a higher JAMA score than the remaining websites. Journalism and health portals are the most reliable affiliations, while commercial and dental practices had low JAMA scores. JAMA score was significantly higher in websites with the HONCode certification compared to the ones without it. Conclusion: There are current concerns regarding patients’ use of the Internet for accessing health information. However, the conclusion we can make is that Google seems to favour websites with high quality information, at least in terms of JAMA score or HONCode accreditation. The JAMA score of dental practices’ websites could be improved by providing basic information such as authorship and date

Healthy people 2010: oral health toolkit

ch. 1. Overview of the oral health toolkit and history of healthy people initiatives and HP 2010 -- ch. 2. Building the foundation : leasdership and structure -- ch. 3. Setting health priorities, establishing oral health objectives, and obtaining baselines -- ch. 4. Identifying and leveraging resources -- ch. 5. Promoting HP 2010 oral health plans activities -- ch. 6. Implementing strategies, managing and sustaining the process and measuring progress.by Beverly Isman ... [et al.]Title from title screen (viewed Feb. 11, 2008)On cover: logos for CDC, Indian Health Service, HRSA.Mode of access: World Wide Web.Includes bibliographical references

Expanding circle of inhibition: small-molecule inhibitors of bcl-2 as anticancer cell and antiangiogenic agents

The specific targeting of diseases, particularly cancer, is a primary aim in drug development, as specificity reduces unwelcome effects on healthy tissue and increases drug efficacy at the target site. Drug specificity can be increased by improving the delivery system or by selecting drugs with affinity for a molecular ligand specific to the disease state. The role of the prosurvival Bcl-2 protein in maintaining the normal balance between apoptosis and cellular survival has been recognized for more than a decade. Bcl-2 is vital during development, much less so in adults. It has also been noted that some cancers evade apoptosis and obtain a survival advantage through aberrant expression of Bcl-2. The new and remarkably diverse class of drugs, small-molecule inhibitors of Bcl-2 (molecular weight approximately 400 to 800 Daltons), is examined herein. We present the activities of these compounds along with clinical observations, where available. The effects of Bcl-2 inhibition on attenuation of tumor cell growth are discussed, as are studies revealing the potential for Bcl-2 inhibitors as antiangiogenic agents. Despite an enormous body of work published for the Bcl-2 family of proteins, we are still learning exactly how this group of molecules interacts and indeed what they do. The small-molecule inhibitors of Bcl-2, in addition to their therapeutic potential, are proving to be an important investigative tool for understanding the function of Bcl-2. (Abstract from: http://jco.ascopubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/26/25/4180

Collaboratories: Leveraging information technology for cooperative research

Economic, organizational, and societal pressures, as well as the desire to reach shared goals more efficiently and effectively, are driving an increase in collaborative research. Research collaborations frequently occur among participants separated by temporal, geographical, organizational, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries. Increasingly complex collaborative projects focus attention on the question of how to facilitate working together. Through so-called collaboratories, information technology can play an important role in addressing this question. A collaboratory can be defined as an information technology infrastructure that supports cooperation among individuals, groups, or organizations in pursuit of a shared goal by facilitating interaction, communication, and knowledge-sharing. Tools such as Web-based collaborative workspaces, Internet discussion lists/newsgroups/real-time chat, screen- and application-sharing, Web-based conferencing, online Web page mark-up, automatic notification, and videoconferencing can be used to implement collaboratories. Collaboratories have significant potential to facilitate cooperative research, but should be evaluated carefully to determine best practices