An Initiative to Improve Cultural Competence among GYN/OB Providers

Healthcare cultural competence is defined as a process of delivering care by meeting the social, cultural, and linguistic needs of diverse populations, and should be optimized at all organizational levels to reduce racial disparities and poor patient outcomes. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) recognizes the importance of cultural competence and states that research should be conducted to identify and combat barriers that impede equitable care. In this prospective, pre- and post-intervention study design, we used the Healthcare Provider Cultural Competence Instrument (HPCCI) to measure five dimensions of cultural competence within the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics in a large academic medical center. The intervention was a single Grand Rounds educational presentation on cultural diversity. Baseline survey response rate was 64%. Post-intervention survey response rate was 30%. Post-intervention survey results showed that cultural competence increased by statistically significant amounts across all five dimensions. Our results show an effective and feasible method to assess baseline cultural competency in a large interprofessional clinical department. Our results also indicate that a single intervention may have some positive impact on levels of cultural competence for a diverse interprofessional health care team

The Iowa Homemaker vol.32, no.1

See Europe on Your Own Two Wheels, Mary Odegard, page 5 Let’s Face It, Ruth Frantz, page 6 Textile Originals from a Barn, Virginia Wilcox, page 7 Rats Diet Too, Robin Coon, page 8 In Africa, Kathryn Bain, page 9 Betsy Harris of the Hot Shoppes, Marcia Holt, page 10 Your Hair’s in the Headlines, Salli Hearst, page 11 What’s New, Evelyn Toulouse and Dorothy Will, page 12 Information Please, Susan Brown and Mary Doherty, page 15 Double Dip Bargain, Patricia Stiff, page 16 Trends, Ruth Anderson, page 1

The Iowa Homemaker vol.32, no.2

To a Bride, Salli Hearst, page 9 Happily Ever After, Donald C. Charles, page 10 The Bride Wore, Marilyn Bergeson and Patricia Keast, page 11 Here Comes the Bride, Marilyn Wright, page 12 Marriage and College - Yes, Gloria Sheehe, page 13 It’s All In the Family, Floramae Gates, page 14 With This Ring, Jean McGhie, page 15 Veiled In Loveliness, Evelyn Toulouse, page 16 Pots ‘n Pans, Maryann Meldrum, page 17 Proper Thing To Do, Marian Skinner, page 18 For Remembering, Marian Anderson, page 19 Weddings Without Worries, Nancy Voss, page 20 Showers, Joanne Ryals, page 21 Your Highest Hopes, Gayle Dunn, page 22 Bouquet for You, Maryann Meldrum, page 23 Your Trip to the Moon, Alane Baird, page 24 What’s New, Evelyn Toulouse and Dorothy Will, page 28 Information Please, Susan Brown and Mary Doherty, page 32 She Doesn’t Like Surprises and Neither Does He, Ruth Anderson, page 34 Breaking In the Groom, Alice Irvine, page 37 Trends, Joanne Ryals, page 3

Mapping interactions between the RNA chaperone FinO and its RNA targets

Bacterial conjugation is regulated by two-component repression comprising the antisense RNA FinP, and its protein co-factor FinO. FinO mediates base-pairing of FinP to the 5′-untranslated region (UTR) of traJ mRNA, which leads to translational inhibition of the transcriptional activator TraJ and subsequent down regulation of conjugation genes. Yet, little is known about how FinO binds to its RNA targets or how this interaction facilitates FinP and traJ mRNA pairing. Here, we use solution methods to determine how FinO binds specifically to its minimal high affinity target, FinP stem–loop II (SLII), and its complement SLIIc from traJ mRNA. Ribonuclease footprinting reveals that FinO contacts the base of the stem and the 3′ single-stranded tails of these RNAs. The phosphorylation or oxidation of the 3′-nucleotide blocks FinO binding, suggesting FinO binds the 3′-hydroxyl of its RNA targets. The collective results allow the generation of an energy-minimized model of the FinO–SLII complex, consistent with small-angle X-ray scattering data. The repression complex model was constrained using previously reported cross-linking data and newly developed footprinting results. Together, these data lead us to propose a model of how FinO mediates FinP/traJ mRNA pairing to down regulate bacterial conjugation

The khmer software package: enabling efficient nucleotide sequence analysis

The khmer package is a freely available software library for working efficiently with fixed length DNA words, or k-mers. khmer provides implementations of a probabilistic k-mer counting data structure, a compressible De Bruijn graph representation, De Bruijn graph partitioning, and digital normalization. khmer is implemented in C++ and Python, and is freely available under the BSD license at https://github.com/dib-lab/khmer/

The khmer software package: enabling efficient nucleotide sequence analysis [version 1; referees: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]

The khmer package is a freely available software library for working efficiently with fixed length DNA words, or k-mers. khmer provides implementations of a probabilistic k-mer counting data structure, a compressible De Bruijn graph representation, De Bruijn graph partitioning, and digital normalization. khmer is implemented in C++ and Python, and is freely available under the BSD license at https://github.com/dib-lab/khmer/

Identification of functional elements and regulatory circuits by Drosophila modENCODE

To gain insight into how genomic information is translated into cellular and developmental programs, the Drosophila model organism Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (modENCODE) project is comprehensively mapping transcripts, histone modifications, chromosomal proteins, transcription factors, replication proteins and intermediates, and nucleosome properties across a developmental time course and in multiple cell lines. We have generated more than 700 data sets and discovered protein-coding, noncoding, RNA regulatory, replication, and chromatin elements, more than tripling the annotated portion of the Drosophila genome. Correlated activity patterns of these elements reveal a functional regulatory network, which predicts putative new functions for genes, reveals stage- and tissue-specific regulators, and enables gene-expression prediction. Our results provide a foundation for directed experimental and computational studies in Drosophila and related species and also a model for systematic data integration toward comprehensive genomic and functional annotation

American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research

McDonald D, Hyde E, Debelius JW, et al. American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research. mSystems. 2018;3(3):e00031-18

Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research Consortium: Accelerating Evidence-Based Practice of Genomic Medicine

Despite rapid technical progress and demonstrable effectiveness for some types of diagnosis and therapy, much remains to be learned about clinical genome and exome sequencing (CGES) and its role within the practice of medicine. The Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research (CSER) consortium includes 18 extramural research projects, one National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) intramural project, and a coordinating center funded by the NHGRI and National Cancer Institute. The consortium is exploring analytic and clinical validity and utility, as well as the ethical, legal, and social implications of sequencing via multidisciplinary approaches; it has thus far recruited 5,577 participants across a spectrum of symptomatic and healthy children and adults by utilizing both germline and cancer sequencing. The CSER consortium is analyzing data and creating publically available procedures and tools related to participant preferences and consent, variant classification, disclosure and management of primary and secondary findings, health outcomes, and integration with electronic health records. Future research directions will refine measures of clinical utility of CGES in both germline and somatic testing, evaluate the use of CGES for screening in healthy individuals, explore the penetrance of pathogenic variants through extensive phenotyping, reduce discordances in public databases of genes and variants, examine social and ethnic disparities in the provision of genomics services, explore regulatory issues, and estimate the value and downstream costs of sequencing. The CSER consortium has established a shared community of research sites by using diverse approaches to pursue the evidence-based development of best practices in genomic medicine

Association of genetic variation with systolic and diastolic blood pressure among African Americans: the Candidate Gene Association Resource study

The prevalence of hypertension in African Americans (AAs) is higher than in other US groups; yet, few have performed genome-wide association studies (GWASs) in AA. Among people of European descent, GWASs have identified genetic variants at 13 loci that are associated with blood pressure. It is unknown if these variants confer susceptibility in people of African ancestry. Here, we examined genome-wide and candidate gene associations with systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) using the Candidate Gene Association Resource (CARe) consortium consisting of 8591 AAs. Genotypes included genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data utilizing the Affymetrix 6.0 array with imputation to 2.5 million HapMap SNPs and candidate gene SNP data utilizing a 50K cardiovascular gene-centric array (ITMAT-Broad-CARe [IBC] array). For Affymetrix data, the strongest signal for DBP was rs10474346 (P= 3.6 × 10−8) located near GPR98 and ARRDC3. For SBP, the strongest signal was rs2258119 in C21orf91 (P= 4.7 × 10−8). The top IBC association for SBP was rs2012318 (P= 6.4 × 10−6) near SLC25A42 and for DBP was rs2523586 (P= 1.3 × 10−6) near HLA-B. None of the top variants replicated in additional AA (n = 11 882) or European-American (n = 69 899) cohorts. We replicated previously reported European-American blood pressure SNPs in our AA samples (SH2B3, P= 0.009; TBX3-TBX5, P= 0.03; and CSK-ULK3, P= 0.0004). These genetic loci represent the best evidence of genetic influences on SBP and DBP in AAs to date. More broadly, this work supports that notion that blood pressure among AAs is a trait with genetic underpinnings but also with significant complexit