What Are the Barriers Which Discourage 15-16 Year-Old Girls from Participating in Team Sports and How Can We Overcome Them?

Given the clear benefits of regular physical activity (such as reduced risks of cardiovascular disease and obesity, as well as other benefits including those related to mental health), exploration of the reasons that adolescent girls give for not taking part in team sports may be particularly valuable for enhancing later rates of participation. We combined questionnaires and semistructured interviews to assess the barriers that prevent 15-16-year-old girls from participating in extracurricular team games and what can be done to overcome these barriers and improve physical activity levels. Four barriers became prominent as to why girls in this sample do not participate: Internal Factors, Existing Stereotypes, Other Hobbies and Teachers. Methods to overcome these barriers were identified; changing teachers’ attitudes and shifting the media’s focus away from male sport. Following the successful summer Olympics and Paralympics in the UK, and the resulting positive focus on some of the nation’s female athletes, a shift in focus may be possible. However, this needs to be maintained to allow girls more opportunities, role models and motivation to participate in sport

Parental health in the context of public family care proceedings: A scoping review of evidence and interventions

Background Child protective services (CPS), or their equivalent, have statutory power to remove children from birth parents in instances of child abuse, neglect, or concerns around parenting capacity via public family care proceedings. Parents who have children subject to proceedings, ‘birth parents’, often have complex health and social care needs. Objective We aimed to review what is known about the health needs of birth parents and the interventions implemented to support these health needs. Methods We searched PubMed, Scopus, and grey literature using a systematic strategy of key concepts “health”, “care proceedings”, and “parents”. We included all publications in English that reported parental health in the context of care proceedings from the 1st of January 2000 to the 1st of March 2021. Results Included studies (n = 61) reported on maternal health (57 %) or the health of both parents (40 %), with only one study reporting on fathers alone. We conceptually categorised parental health need (n = 41) into i) mental health, ii) physical health, iii) substance misuse, iv) developmental disorders, and v) reproductive health. Health inequities and poor access to services were described across all categories, with longstanding issues often pre-dating proceedings or the child's birth. All interventions supporting parental health (n = 20) were targeted at mothers, with some supporting fathers (n = 8), formally or informally. We grouped similar interventions into three types: alternative family courts, wrap-around services, and specialist advocacy/peer support. Conclusions Parents who have children subject to care proceedings have complex health needs that pre-date CPS concerns. The studies included in our review strongly suggest that health issues are exacerbated by child removal, triggering deteriorations in mental health, poor antenatal health for subsequent pregnancies, and avoidable mortality. Findings highlight the need for targeted and timely intervention for parents to improve whole-family outcomes. There are models that have been designed, implemented, and tested using relationship-based, trauma-informed, multidisciplinary, family-focused, and long-term approaches

Parental health in the context of public family care proceedings: A scoping review of evidence and interventions

Background: Child protective services (CPS), or their equivalent, have statutory power to remove children from birth parents in instances of child abuse, neglect, or concerns around parenting capacity via public family care proceedings. Parents who have children subject to proceedings, ‘birth parents’, often have complex health and social care needs. Objective: We aimed to review what is known about the health needs of birth parents and the interventions implemented to support these health needs. Methods: We searched PubMed, Scopus, and grey literature using a systematic strategy of key concepts “health”, “care proceedings”, and “parents”. We included all publications in English that reported parental health in the context of care proceedings from the 1st of January 2000 to the 1st of March 2021. Results: Included studies (n = 61) reported on maternal health (57 %) or the health of both parents (40 %), with only one study reporting on fathers alone. We conceptually categorised parental health need (n = 41) into i) mental health, ii) physical health, iii) substance misuse, iv) developmental disorders, and v) reproductive health. Health inequities and poor access to services were described across all categories, with longstanding issues often pre-dating proceedings or the child’s birth. All interventions supporting parental health (n = 20) were targeted at mothers, with some supporting fathers (n = 8), formally or informally. We grouped similar interventions into three types: alternative family courts, wrap-around services, and specialist advocacy/peer support. Conclusions: Parents who have children subject to care proceedings have complex health needs that pre-date CPS concerns. The studies included in our review strongly suggest that health issues are exacerbated by child removal, triggering deteriorations in mental health, poor antenatal health for subsequent pregnancies, and avoidable mortality. Findings highlight the need for targeted and timely intervention for parents to improve whole-family outcomes. There are models that have been designed, implemented, and tested using relationship-based, trauma-informed, multidisciplinary, family-focused, and long-term approaches

The CentriMag Centrifugal Blood Pump as a Benchmark for In Vitro Testing of Hemocompatibility in Implantable Ventricular Assist Devices

Abstract: Implantable ventricular assist devices (VADs) have proven efficient in advanced heart failure patients as a bridge-to-transplant or destination therapy. However, VAD usage often leads to infection, bleeding, and throm-bosis, side effects attributable to the damage to blood cells and plasma proteins. Measuring hemolysis alone does not provide sufficient information to understand total blood damage, and research exploring the impact of cur-rently available pumps on a wider range of blood cell types and plasma proteins such as von Willebrand factor (vWF) is required to further our understanding of safer pump design. The extracorporeal CentriMag (Thoratec Corporation, Pleasanton, CA, USA) has a hemolysis profile within published standards of normalized index of hemolysis levels of less than 0.01 g/100 L at 100 mm Hg bu

word~river literary review (2011)

wordriver is a literary journal dedicated to the poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction of adjuncts and part-time instructors teaching in our universities, colleges, and community colleges. Our premier issue was published in Spring 2009. We are always looking for work that demonstrates the creativity and craft of adjunct/part-time instructors in English and other disciplines. We reserve first publication rights and onetime anthology publication rights for all work published. We define adjunct instructors as anyone teaching part-time or full-time under a semester or yearly contract, nationwide and in any discipline. Graduate students teaching under part-time contracts during the summer or who have used up their teaching assistant time and are teaching with adjunct contracts for the remainder of their graduate program also are eligible.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/word_river/1001/thumbnail.jp

‘Hearing Their Voice’: The Experiences of Physical Education with Pupils Diagnosed with Severe Learning Disabilities

The number of children educated within maintained Special Educational Needs (SEN) Schools, known as special schools, in England has continued to rise since 2006, yet the ‘pupil voice’ of children and young people with severe learning difficulties and those attending special schools remains limited in current research. Drawing on Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony (see Jones, 2006), this study aimed to provide an under-represented group with the opportunity to express attitudes and opinions towards their physical education (PE) lessons. The research adopted a participant-focused methodology and used a task-based approach, where participants could complete a series of activities suitable to individual needs. The tasks included a drawing activity, a PE likes and dislikes activity and a storyboard with the following sentence starters: ‘I like’, ‘I don’t like’, ‘I feel’, ‘I want to’, and ‘I think’. PE took on multiple forms, including therapy sessions and team games, thus suggesting that PE was not narrowly defined as one specific form of education for the pupils. Participants were able to express strong opinions towards the type of activities they liked and disliked and were able to demonstrate a basic understanding of the benefits of PE in relation to health. Results indicate that team-based sports were popular and culturally valued. However, participants were often bored of repetitive PE lessons and well-liked therapy-related exercise often replaced PE classes. Older participants (16 years +) attending sixth form were frustrated that PE or the ability to be physically active during the school day was no longer part of their education, suggesting that perhaps PE lessons were not always culturally valued within the school. Finally, due to the lack of opportunities for adults with special education needs in the wider community, participants no longer had access to the types of physical activity they had enjoyed in school

Development and validation of the Adolescent Asthma Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (AASEQ)

Perceived self-efficacy is the belief that one can manage prospective situations. Good asthma self-management self-efficacy is associated with better asthma outcomes. However, a well-developed and validated tool to measure adolescent asthma self-management self-efficacy is lacking. Our objective was to develop and validate an Adolescent Asthma Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (AASEQ). The first stage of the study included a review of the literature, interviews with adolescents with asthma and consultations with parents and relevant healthcare professionals to develop a prototype scale. To assess reliability and validity, a further group of adolescents completed the prototype scale, the General Self-Efficacy Scale and KidCOPE (measures coping styles). Retesting was undertaken to assess longitudinal validity. Interviews with 28 adolescents and consultations with other stakeholders resulted in a 38-item prototype scale. Key themes were medication, symptom management, triggers, knowledge, attitude and beliefs around asthma, supportive relationships, schools and healthcare professionals. The prototype scale was completed by 243 adolescents. Factor and reliability analysis reduced it to a 27-item scale with four subsections: symptom management; medication; friends, family and school; and asthma beliefs. The 27-item scale had respectable to excellent internal consistency (α’s 0.78–0.91) with results that were stable over time (intra-class correlation=0.82) in 63 subjects who completed it twice. Better adolescent asthma self-efficacy was associated with better general self-efficacy and indices of better asthma management. The AASEQ is a reliable and valid tool that is likely to aid future research and practice focused on adolescent asthma self-management and could be a useful intermediate outcome measure to assess the impact of behavioural interventions