From Seed to Harvest: A Toolkit for Collaborative Racial Equity Strategies

This tool is meant to guide racial equity practices in the creation and assessment of sustainability and renewable energy policies and programs. It offers a framework and systematic process to build cultures of accountability and work towards racial equity outcomes in decision-making. Lastly, it provides a tangible pathway for an ecosystem approach to operationalizing collective racial equity values.

Successful embolization of a enterocutaneous fistula tract with Onyx 34 following low anterior resection for rectal cancer.

Enterocutaneous fistulas (ECFs) can be one of the complications found after surgical intervention for rectal cancer. Interventional modalities consisting of surgical, endoscopic, and radiological methods are often implemented to treat postoperative symptomatic complications. We present the case of 61-year-old Caucasian man who presented to us with a recent diagnosis of rectal cancer that had invaded the levators as well as anteriorly into the prostate, and who underwent low anterior resection with a diverting loop ileostomy. The patient was found to have a persistent presacral abscess due to an ECF tract. This case highlights the off-label use of ethylene-vinyl alcohol copolymer dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide (Onyx 34) to seal an ECF

Doing the Work that Makes All Work Possible: A Research Narrative of Filipino Domestic Workers in the Tri-state Area - Executive Summary

DAMAYAN Migrant Workers Association, in partnership with the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center, engaged in this multi-year study to understand the plight of Filipino domestic workers living in the tri-state area. The study utilized a community-based participatory action research approach (CBPAR). From inception to release, domestic workers, their children, staff members and volunteers have been involved in multiple levels of this research. Domestic workers were purposefully involved in the analyzing, writing and designing of the report. While there are volumes of literature written about the conditions of Filipino domestic workers worldwide, few studies focus on the migration and labor of Filipino domestic workers in the US; and none have made Filipino domestic workers comprehensively integral to the CBPAR process such as this one

AIDS-related Kaposis sarcoma pathogenesis

Paper presented at the 5th Strathmore International Mathematics Conference (SIMC 2019), 12 - 16 August 2019, Strathmore University, Nairobi, KenyaKaposis sarcoma (KS), the most common tumor associated with human immunodeficiency virus- I (HIV-I) and human herpesvirus-8 (HHV-8) (also referred to as Kaposis associated herpesvirus (KSHV) infection, develops in approximately 20 percent of patients infected with HIV-I. The lesions of this multicentric vascular neoplasm are purplish patches, plaques, or nodules. Although highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) can prolong the time to treatment failure in patients with KS, nearly every patient with AIDS-related (or epidemic) KS eventually develops disseminated disease. Progression usually occurs in an orderly fashion from new localized or widespread mucocutaneous lesions to more numerous lesions and generalized skin disease with involvement of lyrnph nodes, gastrointestinal tract (GIT), lungs and other organs. Studies have shown that KS cells themselves are not infected with HIV-I; therefore, it is widely accepted than HIV-I does not play a direct oncogenic role in AIDS-KS. However, the precise role of HIV-I in AIDS-KS is still not completely understood, and there is considerable debate over whether HIVI plays a passive role (through the induction of immunosuppression) or a more direct role in the pathogenesis of this disease. We formulate a mathematical model to study the dynamics of HIVI related KS pathogenesis. In this model, it is assumed that HIV-I infects only the CD4 + T cells and HHV-8 infects the B- cells, which largely remain latently infected and only become reactivated after exposure to inflammatory cytokines and other growth factors secreted from HIV-I infected cells. The Infection free and Infection persistent equilibria have been found and their stability established. It is found that the disease can exist even if both sub-group reproduction numbers, relating to HIV-I and HHV-8, are less than unity.Botswana International University of Science and Technology Palapye, Botswana

Effect of innate and adaptive immune mechanisms on treatment regimens in an AIDS-related Kaposi's Sarcoma model

Kaposi Sarcoma (KS) is the most common AIDS-defining cancer, even as HIV-positive people live longer. Like other herpesviruses, human herpesvirus-8 (HHV-8) establishes a lifelong infection of the host that in association with HIV infection may develop at any time during the illness. With the increasing global incidence of KS, there is an urgent need of designing optimal therapeutic strategies for HHV-8-related infections. Here we formulate two models with innate and adaptive immune mechanisms, relevant for non-AIDS KS (NAKS) and AIDS-KS, where the initial condition of the second model is given by the equilibrium state of the first one. For the model with innate mechanism (MIM), we define an infectivity resistance threshold that will determine whether the primary HHV-8 infection of B-cells will progress to secondary infection of progenitor cells, a concept relevant for viral carriers in the asymptomatic phase. The optimal control strategy has been employed to obtain treatment efficacy in case of a combined antiretroviral therapy (cART). For the MIM we have shown that KS therapy alone is capable of reducing the HHV-8 load. In the model with adaptive mechanism (MAM), we show that if cART is administered at optimal levels, that is, 0.48 for protease inhibitors, 0.79 for reverse transcriptase inhibitors and 0.25 for KS therapy, both HIV-1 and HHV-8 can be reduced. The predictions of these mathematical models have the potential to offer more effective therapeutic interventions in the treatment of NAKS and AIDS-KS

A mathematical model of contact tracing during the 2014-2016 west African ebola outbreak

The 2014-2016 West African outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) was the largest and most deadly to date. Contact tracing, following up those who may have been infected through contact with an infected individual to prevent secondary spread, plays a vital role in controlling such outbreaks. Our aim in this work was to mechanistically represent the contact tracing process to illustrate potential areas of improvement in managing contact tracing efforts. We also explored the role contact tracing played in eventually ending the outbreak. We present a system of ordinary differential equations to model contact tracing in Sierra Leonne during the outbreak. Using data on cumulative cases and deaths we estimate most of the parameters in our model. We include the novel features of counting the total number of people being traced and tying this directly to the number of tracers doing this work. Our work highlights the importance of incorporatingchanging behavior into one’s model as needed when indicated by the data and reported trends. Our results show that a larger contact tracing program would have reduced the death toll of the outbreak. Counting the total number of people being traced and including changes in behavior in our model led to better understanding of disease management