Third Annual Summer Research Summit on Health Equity Organized by the Center of Excellence in Health Equity, Training and Research, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77030, USA on June 9, 2020

This year’s summit was unique given the COVID-19 pandemic: a major global outbreak that has imposed severe restrictions in all aspects of our life. At the outset, we were faced with three mutually exclusive options. First option was to cancel the summit in its entirety: this was the easiest and most obvious choice once the COVID-19 pandemic forced a near total lockdown all over the country with unprecedented disruptions of normal daily activities as the disease announced its thunderous touchdown on United States (US) soil. It was also the most-logical response faced with uncertainty regarding summit logistics and expected poor attendance due to the raging pandemic. Second option was to conduct a digital summit restricted to local audiences at Baylor College of Medicine: this option entailed implementing a virtual summit with attendance restricted to participants from our institution only. It sounded like a reasonable choice but that would impede the presence of diversity of topics, perspectives, insights and experiential learning opportunities, which are what render the summit exciting and worth attending. And finally, the last option was to conduct a digital unrestricted summit open to all interested audiences throughout the US. The conduct of a virtual summit open to all participants from around the country was initially considered daunting given the likelihood of amplified technical problems associated with an array of internet access differentials around the country, which would require a strong Information Technology (IT) presence throughout the sessions. Nonetheless, the attractiveness of going national with a virtual summit, despite the pandemic and logistical challenges, slowly gained converts and became the dominant choice. The response and level of participation in this first virtual summit showed an unanticipated surge despite the increase in registration fees to cover IT costs. This year, we had attendees from all regions of the US as well as from the United Kingdom. The range of topics was quite diverse encompassing health disparities in relation to cancers, nutrition, musculo-skeletal disorders, amputation rates, vaccination uptakes and COVID-19 infections. Various solutions were passionately presented to address these disparities including novel health technologies, community engagement and partnerships, improvement in health literacy and alternative therapeutics. There were no hitches despite the complex breakout sessions, and above all, attendees were satisfied and offered outstanding evaluation scores. This was definitely a summit that metamorphosed from pessimism to a triumphant success!   Copyright © 2020 Salihu et al. Published by Global Health and Education Projects, Inc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0)which permits unre-stricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in this journal, is properly cited

Social Determinants of Overweight and Obesity Among Children in the United States

Background: Childhood obesity is one of the foremost threats to population health in the United States (U.S.) leading to the emergence of co-morbidities and increased healthcare cost. We explore the influence of selected social determinants of health (SDOH) on overweight and obesity among U.S. children. Methods: We utilized the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) 2016-17 dataset for this analysis. Overweight was defined as Body Mass Index (BMI) ? 85th to<95th, while obesity was defined as BMI ? 95th percentile for age and sex. Based on the literature and pathway plausibility, we examined several SDOH variables as predictors of childhood overweight or obesity in the US. Survey log-binomial regression models were built to generate prevalence ratio (PR) estimates to capture the associations between SDOH and overweight or obesity. Results: About 30.6 million children were surveyed of which 9.5 million (31.0%) were either overweight or obese. The likelihood of obesity was elevated among non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic children (PR = 1.53; 95% CI = 1.01-2.31) and (PR = 1.50; 95% CI = 1.18-1.90) respectively. Overweight was more frequent in younger children, children of single parents, and children who lived in a neighborhood with no amenities. Parental attainment of college education, health insurance coverage, female gender, and language spoken in home other than Spanish were protective against overweight or obesity. Conclusions and Global Health Implications: SDOH represent markers of overweight or obesity in children. We recommend the development of innovative interventions using SDOH risk and protective pathways as guide to address the current epidemic of childhood overweight and obesity. Key words: • Social determinants • Obesity • Overweight • SDOH • Children • United States   Copyright © 2020 Yusuf et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Book of Abstracts: 2019 Health Equity Summer Research Summit Organized by the Center of Excellence in Health Equity, Training and Research, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77030, USA on June 18th, 2019

Copyright © 2020 Harris. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Essential Role of the NH2-Terminal Region of Cdc24 Guanine Nucleotide Exchange Factor in Its Initial Polarized Localization in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The cortical recruitment and accumulation of the small GTPase Cdc42 are crucial steps in the establishment of polarity, but this process remains obscure. Cdc24 is an upstream regulator of budding yeast Cdc42 that accelerates the exchange of GDP for GTP in Cdc42 via its Dbl homology (DH) domain. Here, we isolated five novel temperature-sensitive (ts) cdc24 mutants, the green fluorescent protein (GFP)-fused proteins of which lose their polarized localization at the nonpermissive temperature. All amino acid substitutions in the mutants were mapped to the NH2-terminal region of Cdc24, including the calponin homology (CH) domain. These Cdc24-ts mutant proteins did not interact with Bem1 at the COOH-terminal PB1 domain, suggesting a lack of exposure of the PB1 domain in the mutant proteins. The cdc24-ts mutants were also defective in polarization in the absence of Bem1. It was previously reported that a fusion protein containing Cdc24 and the p21-activated kinase (PAK)-like kinase Cla4 could bypass the requirement for Bem1 in polarity cue-independent budding (i.e., symmetry breaking). Cdc24-ts–Cla4 fusion proteins also showed ts localization at the polarity site. We propose that the NH2-terminal region unmasks the DH and PB1 domains, leading to the activation of Cdc42 and interaction with Bem1, respectively, to initiate cell polarization