Aiming High: Monitoring Population Level Indicators of Child Wellbeing as a Goal of Community-Academic Partnerships

Community-academic partnerships (CAPs) aim to improve neighborhood population health. Though measuring the impact of partnership activities at a population level can be difficult, evaluating indicators of wellbeing may increase understanding of how communities benefit from CAPs. This study examined child health indicators over time in two low-income, predominantly Black/African American and Hispanic communities where partnerships between an academic child development center and community coalitions were formed with the intention of improving child well-being. Trends in three child wellbeing indicators (graduation rates, kindergarten readiness, and proportion of youth in school and/or employed) were compared between two CAP communities and several neighboring comparison communities. Data between 2011 and 2017 were analyzed to calculate percent change from baseline and mapped using ArcGIS to visualize trends by zip code. Proportions of youth meeting benchmarks were also determined. Kindergarten readiness and high-school graduation rates improved in CAP communities but not in geographically proximal and socioeconomically similar comparison communities. No improvements were found in the proportion of youth in school or employed. This study revealed population-level indicators improved over time in CAP communities. Because community-level child health and wellbeing are influenced by many factors, this correlation is not proof of a causal relationship. Assessing population level indicators can nonetheless provide insight into the benefit of CAPs, and the commitment to monitoring such outcomes can itself advance how academic and community partners plan activities and set long-term goals

Impact of pre-angiogenic factors on the treatment effect of bevacizumab in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer

Endothelin-1 (ET-1) and asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) play a major role in tumor growth and metastasis. Our aim was to determine whether there is any association between these endothelial parameters and tumor markers with the clinical outcome of bevacizumab-treated metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) patients in terms of response and survival. Pretreatment serum levels of ET-1, ADMA, carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), and carbohydrate antigen (CA) 19-9 were measured in 36 chemotherapy-naive mCRC patients treated with first-line bevacizumab-based therapy. Additionally, after first cycle of treatment, serum levels of these parameters were reanalyzed. Lower baseline serum ET-1 and ADMA levels were observed in patients responding to bevacizumab-based treatment (respectively, p = 0.037, p = 0.034). Median progression-free survival (PFS) (11 vs. 6 months, p = 0.012) and overall survival (OS) (28 vs 9 months; p = 0.007) were significantly shorter in patients with high pretreatment ET-1 levels. There was a significant decrease in ET-1 and CEA levels after first treatment (p = 0.020, p = 0.012), while ADMA and CA 19-9 levels were not significantly changed. Patients with decreased posttreatment ET-1 levels were shown to have inferior PFS (6 vs 11 months, p = 0.022), but no statistically significant difference was shown with respect to OS (p = 0.141). The effect of bevacizumab on endothelin axis including the biologic basis of decreasing ET-1 levels due to bevacizumab treatment and its association with inferior outcome has to be clarified in prospective trials

Search for new resonances decaying to a WW or ZZ boson and a Higgs boson in the ℓ+ℓ−bbˉ\ell^+ \ell^- b\bar b, ℓνbbˉ\ell \nu b\bar b, and ννˉbbˉ\nu\bar{\nu} b\bar b channels with pppp collisions at s=13\sqrt s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

See paper for full list of authors, 18 pages (plus author list + cover pages: 36 pages total), 13 figures, 1 table. Submitted to PLB. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/EXOT-2015-18/International audienceA search is presented for new resonances decaying to a $W$ or $Z$ boson and a Higgs boson in the $\ell^+ \ell^- b\bar b$, $\ell\nu b\bar b$, and $\nu\bar{\nu} b\bar b$ channels in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt s = 13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider using a total integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb$^{-1}$. The search is conducted by looking for a localized excess in the $WH$/$ZH$ invariant or transverse mass distribution. No significant excess is observed, and the results are interpreted in terms of constraints on a simplified model based on a phenomenological Lagrangian of heavy vector triplets