The impact of health literacy on cardiovascular disease

Richard S Safeer1, Catherine E Cooke2, Jann Keenan31CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, Baltimore, MD, USA 2Pfizer, Inc., Ellicott City, MD, USA; 3Staying Healthy Media, Pikesville, MD, USAAbstract: One’s ability to read, listen, and comprehend health information is a vital element of maintaining and improving health. However, 90 million people in the United States exhibit less than adequate health literacy skills. Given that more than 70 million Americans suffer from cardiovascular diseases, it is certain that every physician’s practice is affected by health literacy issues. Those with language and cultural issues tend to be the most affected. Yet numerous studies find physicians do a poor job of assessing their patients’ health literacy skills. Patients are also unaware of the steps they should take, and how to take them, to improve their health and prevent complications. Numerous studies find, however, that outcomes can be improved with targeted patient education and improved physician communication skills that take into account patients’ health literacy levels. Unfortunately, the health care system is only beginning to recognize this problem and take action to overcome its negative impact. By improving the communication process with patients, physicians may be able to improve cardiovascular outcomes. Keywords: health literacy, cardiovascular disease, adherence

Damping signatures at JUNO, a medium-baseline reactor neutrino oscillation experiment

Abstract We study damping signatures at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), a medium-baseline reactor neutrino oscillation experiment. These damping signatures are motivated by various new physics models, including quantum decoherence, nu(3) decay, neutrino absorption, and wave packet decoherence. The phenomenological effects of these models can be characterized by exponential damping factors at the probability level. We assess how well JUNO can constrain these damping parameters and how to disentangle these different damping signatures at JUNO. Compared to current experimental limits, JUNO can significantly improve the limits on tau(3)/m(3) in the nu(3) decay model, the width of the neutrino wave packet sigma(x), and the intrinsic relative dispersion of neutrino momentum sigma(rel)

JUNO sensitivity to the annihilation of MeV dark matter in the galactic halo

International audienceWe discuss JUNO sensitivity to the annihilation of MeV dark matter in the galactic halo via detecting inverse beta decay reactions of electron anti-neutrinos resulting from the annihilation. We study possible backgrounds to the signature, including the reactor neutrinos, diffuse supernova neutrino background, charged- and neutral-current interactions of atmospheric neutrinos, backgrounds from muon-induced fast neutrons and cosmogenic isotopes. A fiducial volume cut, as well as the pulse shape discrimination and the muon veto are applied to suppress the above backgrounds. It is shown that JUNO sensitivity to the thermally averaged dark matter annihilation rate in 10 years of exposure would be significantly better than the present-day best limit set by Super-Kamiokande and would be comparable to that expected by Hyper-Kamiokande