Kids Playing For Keeps: A Feasibility Study of Coronary Heart Disease Intervention in a Rural African American Community

The prevalence of Coronary heart disease (CHD) and the associated modifiable risk factors, combined with the known health disparities that exist in the African American (AA) community, increases the significance of prevention exponentially. Theories involving genetic and environmental factors and their interaction are gaining popularity as relevant influences on both modifiable and fixed risk factors for CHD. Innovative and targeted strategies of health promotion and preventative measures are needed to combat the growing trend of modifiable risk factors for heart disease within the southern rural AA population. The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of an after school diet and exercise intervention and the results within the community. A quantitative, quasi-experimental, pre and post-test design was used to examine the feasibility in recruiting rural, school-age AAs participants (n=58), their parents (n= 21) and community members (n= 26) and the effectiveness of the intervention program. The findings of this pilot study features the significance of an intervention provided to meet specific aspects of southern rural AA communities with a high prevalence of CHD. This research describes the rationale and methods used in an individual level intervention, within a rural AA community, with children as the proponents for change. Continued research is needed to elucidate pathways by which promising strategies can be implemented to reduce the prevalence of modifiable risk factors and therefore close the gap of CHD disparities in southern, rural AA communities

Surviving Hurricane Michael - Helping Individuals with Serious and Persistent Mental Illness, Foster Families and Child Welfare Involved Families Prepare and Recover

During a natural disaster the preparation and recovery can be challenging, and is further complicated when working with individuals and families with histories of trauma, serious mental illness, and involvement in child welfare. In natural disaster the social service professionals and their families may also be impacted. This requires agencies and service professionals to provide support for those served while dealing with personal loss and helping their families adapt and recover. This is a perspectives from the field article describing the challenges of preparing for and recovering from Hurricane Michael, which struck the Florida panhandle on October 10, 2018. These perspectives are from three social service workers reflecting on their experiences in working with individuals with serious and persistent mental illnesses, foster families and children involved in child welfare

Reporting serendipity in biomedical research literature : a mixed-methods analysis

As serendipity is an unexpected, anomalous, or inconsistent observation that culminates in a valuable, positive outcome (McCay-Peet & Toms, 2018, pp. 4–6), it can be inferred that effectively supporting serendipity will result in a greater incidence of the desired positive outcomes (McCay-Peet & Toms, 2018, p. 22). In order to effectively support serendipity, however, we must first understand the overall process or experience of serendipity and the factors influencing its attainment. Currently, our understanding and models of the serendipitous experience are based almost exclusively on example collections, compilations of examples of serendipity that authors and researchers have collected as they encounter them (Gries, 2009, p. 9). Unfortunately, reliance on such collections can lead to an over-representation of more vivid and dramatic examples and possible underrepresentation of more common, but less noticeable, exemplars. By applying the principles of corpus research, which involves electronic compilation of examples in existing documents, we can alleviate this problem and obtain a more balanced and representative understanding of serendipitous experiences (Gries, 2009). This three-article dissertation describes the phenomenon of serendipity, as it is recorded in biomedical research articles indexed in the PubMed Central database, in a way that might inform the development of machine compilation systems for the support of serendipity. Within this study, serendipity is generally defined as a process or experience that begins with encountering some type of information. That information is subsequently analyzed and further pursued by an individual with related knowledge, skills, and understanding, and, finally, allows them to realize a valuable outcome. The information encounter that initiates the serendipity experience exhibits qualities of unexpectedness as well as value for the user. In this mixed method study, qualitative content analysis, supported by natural language processing, and concurrent with statistical analysis, is applied to gain a robust understanding of the phenomenon of serendipity that may reveal features of serendipitous experience useful to the development of recommender system algorithms.Includes bibliographical reference

Cognitive and affective components of challenge and threat states

We explored the cognitive and affective components of the Theory of Challenge and Threat States in Athletes (TCTSA) using a cross-sectional design. One hundred and seventy-seven collegiate athletes indicated how they typically approached an important competition on measures of self-efficacy, perceived control, achievement goals, emotional states and interpretation of emotional states. Participants also indicated to what extent they typically perceived the important competition as a challenge and/or a threat. The results suggest that a perception of challenge was not predicted by any of the cognitive components. A perception of threat was positively predicted by avoidance goals and negatively predicted by self-efficacy and approach goals. Both challenge and threat had a positive relationship with anxiety. Practical implications of this study are that an avoidance orientation appeared to be related to potentially negative constructs such as anxiety, threat and dejection. The findings may suggest that practitioners and researchers should focus on reducing an avoidance orientation, however the results should be treated with caution in applied settings, as this study did not examine how the combination of constructs exactly influences sport performance. The results provided partial support for the TCTSA with stronger support for proposed relationships with threat rather than challenge states

International collaboration in medical radiation science

Introduction: International collaboration is recognised for enhancing the ability to approach complex problems from a variety of perspectives, increasing development of a wider range of research skills and techniques and improving publication and acceptance rates. The aim of this paper is to describe the current status of international collaboration in medical radiation science and compare this to other allied health occupations. Methods: This study utilised a content analysis approach where co-authorship of a journal article was used as a proxy for research collaboration and the papers were assigned to countries based on the corporate address given in the by-line of the publication. A convenience sample method was employed and articles published in the professional medical radiation science journals in the countries represented within our research team – Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA) were sampled. Physiotherapy, speech pathology, occupational therapy and nursing were chosen for comparison. Results: Rates of international collaboration in medical radiation science journals from Australia, the UK and the USA have steadily increased over the 3-year period sampled. Medical radiation science demonstrated lower average rates of international collaboration than the other allied health occupations sampled. The average rate of international collaboration in nursing was far below that of the allied health occupations sampled. Overall, the UK had the highest average rate of international collaboration, followed by Australia and the USA, the lowest. Conclusion: Overall, medical radiation science is lagging in international collaboration in comparison to other allied health fields

Why Does the US Pay So Much for the Defense of Its Allies?: 5 Questions Answered

Since the start of Donald Trump’s run for the U.S. presidency in 2015, he has been critical of the amount of money U.S. allies contribute to their own defense. Now, the Trump administration is demanding that Japan and South Korea pay more for hosting U.S. troops stationed in those countries. The media also reported that U.S. military leadership in South Korea discussed the possibility of withdrawing up to 4,000 troops from South Korea if it does not increase its contributions. The Pentagon has since denied having such plans. We have each studied overseas deployments of U.S. military personnel for nearly a decade and have recently come together to research the costs and benefits of such deployments

Global oral health status of athletes with intellectual disabilities

Background: The aim of this study is to identify the oral health status and treatment needs of Special Olympics athletes with intellectual disabilities from 181 countries by the assessment of oral health parameters and differences between world regions. Materials and methods: Data were collected through interview and oral examinations within the Healthy Athletes Screening. These data were analysed with descriptive statistics of oral health parameters of athletes from Africa, Asia Pacific, East Asia, Europe/Eurasia, Latin America, Middle East North Africa (MENA) and North America. Mean differences of untreated visible dental caries, gingival signs and missing teeth were tested between regions by one-way ANOVA test and between age groups (8-11, 12-18, 19-39 and 40+) by chi-square tests for multiple comparisons with Hochberg-adjusted p value. The level of significance for all tests was set at a p value < 0.05. Results: A total of 149,272 athletes with intellectual disabilities were screened. More than 80% of the athletes reported that they cleaned their mouths at least once a day. Athletes in Europe/Eurasia, Latin America, and MENA presented higher rates of signs of gingival disease than other regions. The prevalence of untreated dental caries was significantly higher in Latin America and the group of 8-11-year-olds from Latin America, Europe/Eurasia and Asia Pacific. Conclusions: The data provided by this study demonstrate that continuous efforts for preventive and restorative oral health care are needed for the oral health of these athletes with ID especially in Latin America, MENA and Europe/Eurasia regions

Outside the Wire: U.S. Military Deployments and Public Opinion in Host States

How do citizens within countries hosting U.S. military personnel view that presence? Using new cross-national survey data from 14 countries, we examine how different forms of exposure to a U.S. military presence in a country affect attitudes towards the U.S. military, government, and people. We find that contact with U.S. military personnel or the receipt of economic benefits from the U.S. presence correlates with stronger support for the U.S. presence, people, and government. This study has profound implications for the role that U.S. installations play in affecting the social fabric of host nations, and policy implications for the conduct of U.S. military activities outside the United States