The Potential of Real-Time Behavior and Well-Being Assessments to Improve Medical Student Wellness.

PROBLEM: Medical students experience psychological distress more frequently than age-matched peers. Tracking medical student well-being has typically been limited to once- or twice-per-year questionnaires. Ongoing, real-time assessment of student behavior and well-being could facilitate individualized, timely interventions. APPROACH: Faculty at the University of Vermont, in conjunction with the Larner College of Medicine Office of Medical Education, developed a novel smartphone app in 2021 called WE MD to track and support medical student wellness. The app included the following features: (1) nightly surveys assessing wellness-related behaviors (e.g., social interaction, sleep, exercise) and outcomes (i.e., mood, focus, stress, overall well-being); (2) health reports that enabled users to graph various combinations of their own behaviors and outcomes, allowing them to visualize trends and understand possible correlations between behaviors and outcomes; (3) a resource library with articles and educational videos related to specific wellness behaviors or outcomes; and (4) research-based "insights" or brief tips intended to promote healthy habits. Participants also received virtual "coins" for interacting with the app that could be exchanged for various items in an online store. OUTCOMES: The WE MD program enrolled a substantial portion of the medical school population (43%); most of the students used the app on a regular basis. Students found the app to be acceptable and appreciated many features and also provided feedback on how to improve the app. Information from the nightly survey data converged with established measures but also identified variability over time in wellness behaviors and outcomes. NEXT STEPS: Data from the WE MD program suggest that app-based daily tracking of wellness behaviors and outcomes is a feasible, promising approach to promote student wellness and identify real-time patterns and risk periods for medical students. The app will be revised based on student feedback and adapted for use by students, residents, and faculty.

The substance use behaviors change of first-year college students before and during COVID-19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: This article tests the substance use behaviors of college students before and during COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: In-depth assessment and nightly survey data was used from a longitudinal study (n = 675) which examined student substance use during the 2019-2020 academic year, both before and during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Changes in beer/wine, tobacco, liquor, and marijuana use before versus during the pandemic, in addition to the interaction of COVID-19, were tested with gender and subjective social status. RESULTS: Marijuana use significantly decreased from a weekly prevalence of 9.9% before COVID-19 to 6.4% during COVID-19 (p = 0.002). A similar decrease was seen in liquor use (10.6% before COVID to 6.4% during COVID, p = 0.01). There was no significant change observed for beer/wine use or for tobacco use. CONCLUSION: In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, liquor, and marijuana use decreased for college students, while other substance use stayed the same.

Zebrafish sin3b mutants are viable but have size, skeletal, and locomotor defects.

BACKGROUND: The transcriptional co-repressor Sin3 is highly conserved from yeast to vertebrates and has multiple roles controlling cell fate, cell cycle progression, and senescence programming. Sin3 proteins recruit histone deacetylases and other chromatin modifying factors to specific loci through interactions with transcription factors including Myc, Rest, p53 and E2F. Most vertebrates have two Sin3 family members (sin3a and sin3b), but zebrafish have a second sin3a paralogue. In mice, sin3a and sin3b are essential for embryonic development. Sin3b knockout mice show defects in growth as well as bone and blood differentiation. RESULTS: To study the requirement for Sin3b during development, we disrupted zebrafish sin3b using CRISPR-Cas9, and studied the effects on early development and locomotor behavior. CONCLUSIONS: Surprisingly, Sin3b is not essential in zebrafish. sin3b mutants show a decrease in fitness, small size, changes to locomotor behavior, and delayed bone development. We did not detect a role for Sin3b in cell proliferation. Our analysis of the sin3b mutant revealed a more nuanced requirement for zebrafish Sin3b than would be predicted from analysis of mutants in other species. Developmental Dynamics 246:946-955, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.