Positive Youth Development Sustainability Scale (PYDSS): The development of an assessment tool

Our study details the development of the Positive Youth Development Sustainability Scale, a self-reporting tool to assess the impacts of positive youth development (PYD) programs. The Positive Youth Development Sustainability Scale provides practitioners a tool in the field of PYD both domestically and internationally, addressing the concern of global application and sustainability criteria (e.g., resilience and happiness). First, we conducted a detailed literature review on existing PYD program assessment techniques. Next, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis, via SPSS and AMOS software, to establish the number of factors in the scale. The constructs of the five-Cs model (Lerner, 2005; competence, confidence, character, connection, and caring) along with the sixth C (contribution) and happiness were confirmed into six factors. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted using 2 samples from rural areas of Thailand and the Phoenix, Arizona, metro area (n = 580 and n = 407, respectively). Our analysis shows the factor structure was highly comparable with mean comparative fit indices of .930 (Thailand) and .933 (Phoenix metro) for Grades 9–12 and 3–6, respectively. Our study suggests that the tool can be used in different settings and demographics for PYD programs. Future studies should look at the impacts of PYD programs over long periods of time and in a wide range of grades, cultures, and countries to reaffirm multiple applications in various settings

Melioidosis in lower provincial Cambodia: A case series from a prospective study of sepsis in Takeo Province

<div><p>Melioidosis is a severe infectious disease caused by the gram-negative soil bacterium <i>Burkholderia pseudomallei</i>. Melioidosis is well known to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality in Southeast Asia, particularly in Thailand. However, melioidosis remains underreported in surrounding areas such as Cambodia. We report a case series of melioidosis in seven patients from Takeo Province, Cambodia. The patients, aged 24–65 years, were enrolled from May 2014 to May 2015 during a one year prospective study of sepsis at Takeo Provincial Hospital. They presented with fever, rigors, dyspnea, fatigue, diaphoresis, productive cough, and skin abscesses. Six of the seven patients were also hyponatremic. <i>B</i>. <i>pseudomallei</i> was cultured from the blood of six patients and the sputum of one patient. In this manuscript, we provide a detailed description of the clinical presentation, case management and laboratory confirmation of <i>B</i>. <i>pseudomallei</i>, as well as discuss the difficulties of identifying and treating melioidosis in low resource settings.</p></div

Study site.

<p>We used DIVA-GIS (<a href="http://diva-gis.org/" target="_blank">http://diva-gis.org/</a>) to create a map of Cambodia and surrounding areas. The red H indicates Takeo Provincial Hospital, the study site for this work. Dots indicate the location of the home village of seven melioidosis patients. Map is reflective of Cambodian Provincial borders during the time of patient enrollment.</p

Clinical isolate characteristics.

<p>Clinical isolate characteristics.</p

An Observational Study of Sepsis in Takeo Province Cambodia: An in-depth examination of pathogens causing severe infections.

The world's most consequential pathogens occur in regions with the fewest diagnostic resources, leaving the true burden of these diseases largely under-represented. During a prospective observational study of sepsis in Takeo Province Cambodia, we enrolled 200 patients over an 18-month period. By coupling traditional diagnostic methods such as culture, serology, and PCR to Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and advanced statistical analyses, we successfully identified a pathogenic cause in 46.5% of our cohort. In all, we detected 25 infectious agents in 93 patients, including severe threat pathogens such as Burkholderia pseudomallei and viral pathogens such as Dengue virus. Approximately half of our cohort remained undiagnosed; however, an independent panel of clinical adjudicators determined that 81% of those patients had infectious causes of their hospitalization, further underscoring the difficulty of diagnosing severe infections in resource-limited settings. We garnered greater insight as to the clinical features of severe infection in Cambodia through analysis of a robust set of clinical data