Deciphering the Grand Village of the Illinois: A Preliminary Assessment of the Grand Village Research Project

On April 24, 1987, Thomas Emerson at the State Historic Preservation Office received a telephone call from a Chicago lawyer who wanted an answer to a simple question: Are there any laws that protect old Indian villages and graves that are on the National Register? Unfortunately, the answer was a simple “no.” At the time, Emerson did not suspect that this question would initiate a more than four-year struggle to save one of the most important historic sites in the country. The site, known variously as the Zimmerman site, the Grand Village of the Kaskaskia, Old Kaskaskia Village, the Grand Village of the Illinois, or simply llLS13, was purchased by developers who planned to build vacation homes on it. Eventually, after a private and public campaign that reached an international level, Governor James Thompson authorized the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency (IHPA) to seek condemnation of the property to bring it into public ownership. In April 1991, a final settlement was reached and the site was purchased by the state. It is currently under the administration of the IHPA and has been renamed the Grand Village of the Illinois State Historic Site. The Grand Village is the most important surviving village and burial site of the seventeenth-century Illinois Confederacy. In addition, it is the location of the initial French-Illinois contact and of the first Catholic mission in the Illinois Country. The site also contains materials that represent an unbroken sequence of late prehistoric, protohistoric, and Historic Indian cultural development from the ninth to the last quarter of the eighteenth century

Bidirectional Exchanges of Medical Students Between Institutional Partners in Global Health Clinical Education Programs: Putting Ethical Principles into Practice

BackgroundOne-third of US medical students participate in global health (GH) education, and approximately one-quarter of US medical schools have structured programs that offer special recognition in GH. GH clinical electives (GHCEs) are opportunities for students to experience a medical system and culture different from their own. GHCEs are administered through institutional affiliation agreements, often between an institution in a high-income country (HIC) and one in a low- or middle-income country (LMIC). Although these agreements suggest the exchange of students in both directions, GHCEs are traditionally characterized by students from HICs traveling to LMICs.ObjectivesThe goal of this study was to investigate the availability of opportunities for students from LMICs participating in GHCEs at partner institutions in HICs and to describe the costs of these opportunities for students from LMICs.MethodsWe conducted a web-based search of 30 US institutions previously identified as having structured programs in GH. We determined which of these schools have programs that accept medical students from international schools for GHCEs, as well as the administrative requirements, types of fees, and other costs to the international student based on information available on the web. Descriptive statistics were employed for the quantitative analysis of costs.FindingsWe found that, although the majority of US institutions with structured GH programs sending students to sites abroad accept international students at their sites in the United States, nearly one-fifth of programs do not offer such opportunities for bidirectional exchange. We also characterized the substantial costs of such experiences, because this can represent a significant barrier for students from LMICs.ConclusionsAccess to GHCEs in US partner institutions should be an important underlying ethical principle in the establishment of institutional partnerships. The opportunities available to and experiences of students from LMIC partner institutions are important areas for future GH education research

BUMC Annual Report

Annual report of the Boston University Medical Center

BUMC Annual Report

Annual report of the Boston University Medical Center

Suicide in Brazilian indigenous communities: clustering of cases in children and adolescents by household

OBJECTIVE: To estimate age and sex-specific suicide rates, compare suicide rates between indigenous communities, and quantify the frequency of intrafamilial suicide clustering. METHODS: We performed a retrospective cohort study involving 14,666 indigenous individuals in reservations in Dourados, state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, from 2003 through 2013 using national and local census. RESULTS: The overall suicide rate was 73.4 per 100,000 person-years. Adolescent males aged 15–19 and girls aged 10–14 had the highest rates for each sex at 289.3 (95%CI 187.5–391.2) and 85.3 (95%CI 34.9–135.7), respectively. Comparing the largest reservations, Bororo had a higher suicide rate than Jaguapiru (RR = 4.83, 95%CI 2.85–8.16) and had significantly lower socioeconomic indicators including income and access to electricity. Nine of 19 suicides among children under 15 occurred in household clusters. Compared with adult suicides, a greater proportion of child (OR = 5.12, 95%CI 1.89–13.86, p = 0.001) and adolescent (OR = 3.48, 95%CI 1.29–9.44, p = 0.017) suicides occurred within household clusters. CONCLUSIONS: High rates of suicide occur among children and adolescents in these indigenous reservations, particularly in poor communities. Nearly half of child suicides occur within household clusters. These findings underscore the need for broad public health interventions and focused mental health interventions in households following a suicide

BUMC Annual Report

Annual report of the Boston University Medical Center

BUMC Annual Report

Annual report of the Boston University Medical Center

Ethical Criteria for the Admission and Management of Patients in the ICU Under Conditions of Limited Medical Resources: A Shared International Proposal in View of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction The present pandemic has exposed us to unprecedented challenges that need to be addressed not just for the current state, but also for possible future similar occurrences. It is worth pointing out that discussions on the allocation of medical resources may not necessarily refer to an exception, but, unfortunately, to a regular condition for a large part of humanity (1). The criteria for admission to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) setting generally take into account multiple factors. There must be a diagnostic and prognostic basis for the decisions made, considering both biological factors and patient values and wishes. Furthermore, the decision-making process should, whenever possible, respect the patient's advance directives as well as the relationship with the patient's family or attorney. Therapeutic neglect should be avoided. Having applied standard clinical evaluation criteria for the appropriate treatment of patients with COVID-19, including consideration of prognosis, if a hospital then finds itself unable to provide optimal treatment (e.g., due to a disproportion between the number of patients and the availability of beds, healthcare providers, ventilators, and drugs in the ICU), it becomes necessary to evaluate, case by case, how to achieve justice and the best possible good for the greatest number of patients. It is therefore mandatory to explore alternative solutions; these include increasing available beds and healthcare providers, implementing alternative, though suboptimal, approaches (where appropriate), transferring patients to other clinical units, etc. Making these decisions properly also involves the recovery of the political role of medicine and science (2). If the imbalance between needs and resources reaches a critical level, an emergency triage protocol, following the operational and ethical indications of “disaster medicine,” should be activated. These have been deployed in major and serious natural (earthquakes or tsunamis for example) and technological (factory explosions, public transport accidents for example) disasters, as well as following terrorist attacks (3, 4). The question of the feasibility of developing a clinical evaluation algorithm to support the decision-making of the triage team remains open, though many such protocols have been written. According to the above, we propose the following five ethical criteria for the triage of patients in conditions of limited resources, such as the COVID pandemic. They are the result of an interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue between specialists from different disciplines. Several of the authors are working in the main epicenters of the crisis and currently are playing a central role in the bioethical, clinical, social and legal aspects of the management of the COVID-19 pandemic

Associations Among Suicidal Ideation, White Matter Integrity and Cognitive Deficit in First-Episode Schizophrenia

Objective: The study was aimed to investigate the possible associations among suicidal ideation, brain white matter (WM) integrity and cognitive deficit in first-episode schizophrenia (FES) using diffusion tensor imaging.Methods: The sample contained 18 FES patients with suicidal ideation (SI+), 45 FES patients without suicidal ideation (SI–) and 44 healthy controls. The Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia was used to measure the suicidal ideation and depression symptoms. The whole brain WM integrity and three domains of cognitive function: working memory, verbal comprehension as well as processing speed were compared between the three groups.Results: Compared with SI–, SI+ showed preserved WM integrity as indicated by significantly higher factional anisotropy (FA) or lower mean diffusivity (MD) in multiple WM tracts, and higher FA coupled with lower MD in bilateral posterior corona radiata. Compared with SI−, SI+ were more depressed and had less cognitive deficit in working memory and verbal comprehension. The fiber tracts in bilateral posterior corona radiata connect to the precuneus as shown by probabilistic tractography, and their WM integrity disruptions were found to be positively associated with the cognitive deficits in the FES patients.Discussion: Preserved WM integrity may be a risk factor for suicidal ideation in FES patients. One possible explanation is that it contributes to preserved cognitive function, especially in working memory and verbal comprehension, which may be associated with greater insight and could lead to increased depression and suicidal ideation. The posterior corona radiata and the precuneus may be linked to the related biological processes