Black and White Adults' Racial and Gender Stereotypes of Psychopathology Symptoms in Black and White Children.

Adults' judgments of children's behaviors play a critical role in assessment and treatment of childhood psychopathology. Judgments of children's psychiatric symptoms are likely influenced by racial biases, but little is known about the specific racial biases adults hold about children's psychiatric symptoms, which could play a critical role in childhood mental health disparities. This study examined one form of such biases, racial stereotypes, to determine if White and Black adults hold implicit and explicit racial stereotypes about common childhood psychopathology symptoms, and if these stereotypes vary by child gender and disorder type. Participants included 82 self-identified Black men, 84 Black woman, 1 Black transgender individual, 1 Black genderfluid individual, 81 White men, and 85 White women. Analyses of implicit stereotypes revealed that White adults associated psychopathology symptoms more strongly with Black children than did Black adults (p < .001). All adults held stronger implicit racial stereotypes for oppositional defiant disorder, anxiety, and depression than for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (p < .001). For explicit stereotypes, White adults generally associated psychopathology symptoms more with Black children than did Black adults but effects varied across child gender and disorder type. As the first study to examine racial and gender stereotypes across common childhood psychopathology symptoms, these findings point to a need for further investigation of the presence and impact of racial biases in the mental healthcare system for Black youth and to identify interventions to mitigate the impacts of racial biases to inform racial equity in mental healthcare in the United States.

Health Equity and Policy Considerations for Pediatric and Adult Congenital Heart Disease Care among Minoritized Populations in the United States.

Achieving health equity in populations with congenital heart disease (CHD) requires recognizing existing disparities throughout the lifespan that negatively and disproportionately impact specific groups of individuals. These disparities occur at individual, institutional, or system levels and often result in increased morbidity and mortality for marginalized or racially minoritized populations (population subgroups (e.g., ethnic, racial, social, religious) with differential power compared to those deemed to hold the majority power in the population). Creating actionable strategies and solutions to address these health disparities in patients with CHD requires critically examining multilevel factors and health policies that continue to drive health inequities, including varying social determinants of health (SDOH), systemic inequities, and structural racism. In this comprehensive review article, we focus on health equity solutions and health policy considerations for minoritized and marginalized populations with CHD throughout their lifespan in the United States. We review unique challenges that these populations may face and strategies for mitigating disparities in lifelong CHD care. We assess ways to deliver culturally competent CHD care and to help lower-health-literacy populations navigate CHD care. Finally, we review system-level health policies that impact reimbursement and research funding, as well as institutional policies that impact leadership diversity and representation in the workforce.

Embedding lifestyle interventions into cancer care: has telehealth narrowed the equity gap?

Lifestyle interventions targeting energy balance (ie, diet, exercise) are critical for optimizing the health and well-being of cancer survivors. Despite their benefits, access to these interventions is limited, especially in underserved populations, including older people, minority populations and those living in rural and remote areas. Telehealth has the potential to improve equity and increase access. This article outlines the advantages and challenges of using telehealth to support the integration of lifestyle interventions into cancer care. We describe 2 recent studies, GO-EXCAP and weSurvive, as examples of telehealth lifestyle intervention in underserved populations (older people and rural cancer survivors) and offer practical recommendations for future implementation. Innovative approaches to the use of telehealth-delivered lifestyle intervention during cancer survivorship offer great potential to reduce cancer burden.

Culturally responsive psychological assessment with racially and ethnically diverse older adults.

The older adult population in the United States (U.S.) is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, whereas most practicing neuropsychologists are white. Psychologists hold social privilege of which they may not be aware and work in health care systems that benefit the racial majority. System-level change is necessary to create a more equitable and accessible health care system for racially and ethnically diverse older adults. It is vital for the field of psychology to understand how oppression, power, and privilege impact the accessibility, reliability, and effectiveness of psychological assessment. The aim of this article is to address how historical medical injustices, poor education quality, barriers to communication, biases, and intersectionality influence psychological evaluations. Via a selective literature review, we illustrate how these issues apply to working with racially and ethnically diverse older adults. We discuss the historical context of the multicultural approach to assessment; system- and interpersonal-level manifestations of oppression; and age-cohort-related considerations. A clinical vignette illustrates how oppression, power, and privilege can manifest in the context of an evaluation. We issue a commentary and call to action, charging psychologists to implement individual- and system-level change. We provide recommendations for culturally responsive psychological assessments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Socially responsible leadership and the social change model.

The social change model is one of the most used leadership models at colleges and universities around the globe. With this article, we explore the social change model (SCM) as a framework for socially responsible leadership program design. We discuss the SCM, its history, and the evolution of this approach. Furthermore, we highlight critiques of the SCM, which are important considerations in program design. The Aspen Young Leaders Fellowship is featured in this article and serves as an example of a holistic program designed for impact grounded in socially responsible leadership. We conclude with a summary of relevant research as well as resources to learn more about the SCM and socially responsible leadership.

Low-cost electronic circuitry for photoacoustic gas sensing.

The circuitry comprises a sine wave generator based on direct digital synthesis, a laser diode driver module, a band-pass frequency filter, a synchronous detector with phase adjustment circuitry and a low pass filter to form an analog lock-in amplifier, and an analog-to-digital converter. A 32-bit ARM microcontroller programmed with the open source Mecrisp dialect of the Forth interpreter language is used to set the frequency, and read the data from the analog-to-digital converter. The circuitry is tethered via a serial interface to a personal computer. A graphical user interface written in Phython allows easy interaction with the microcontroller by sending the appropriate Forth commands. The data acquired is visualized and stored on the personal computer for further processing. The circuitry is easy to build as it is based on through-hole devices, except for two necessary surface mount items, which, however, still can be soldered with a fine tipped soldering iron. The performance of the circuitry was demonstrated by the photoacoustic detection of NO2 using a laser diode with a wavelength of 450 nm.

Using Objective Structured Clinical Examination as a Teaching Tool in a Hybrid Advanced Health Assessment Course.

BACKGROUND: Advanced health assessment is a required course in advanced practice RN (APRN) education, essential to providing the foundation for differential diagnosis (DD) skills and the ability to formulate a plan of care. PROBLEM: Feedback from clinical preceptors revealed that our doctor of nursing practice (DNP) students struggled to make a DD. APPROACH: This educational quality improvement project collected data from 7 cohorts of DNP students in either the Family Nurse Practitioner or Adult Gerontology Nurse Practitioner program to evaluate their readiness for clinical practicums and to inform necessary curriculum revisions. OUTCOMES: Data revealed that students' ability to identify 3 DDs correctly during the summative health assessment objective structured clinical examination was inconsistent. Qualitative data revealed students lacked understanding on how to use results from the physical assessment to formulate a DD. CONCLUSION: The findings of this project corroborate those from the literature that suggest we should teach APRN students DD skills explicitly.

Low-cost automated capillary electrophoresis instrument assembled from commercially available parts.

A CE instrument that can be assembled from commercially available components with minimal construction effort is described. Except for the electronic control circuitry no specially made parts are required. It is based on a flexible design of microfluidic, electropneumatic, and electronic sections and different configurations can easily be implemented. Automated injection into the capillary is performed hydrodynamically by the application of a pressure for a controlled length of time. The performance of the device was tested with a contactless conductivity detector by separating different metal ions. In addition, nine metal cations related to the quality of honey were separated in 2.3 min and four honey samples were analysed quantitatively to demonstrate the applicability of the method.

Clinical evaluation of brief cognitive assessment measures for patients with severe dementia.

BACKGROUND: Alzheimer's disease has become an important public health burden for older adults. Clinicians face a challenging task to efficiently evaluate cognition in dementia in clinical settings. We sought to assess the validity and inter-correlations of brief cognitive assessments in a cohort of severely demented patients. METHODS: In total, 49 individual patients (N = 49) ranging in age from 62 to 97 years old were included in this performance improvement project. Over the course of two-three sessions, five cognitive instruments were administered to each patient: Severe Impairment Battery (SIB), Severe Impairment Battery-8 (SIB-8), Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), Severe Mini Mental State Examination (sMMSE) and Brief Interview of Mental Status (BIMS). We sought to assess patient factors that might have been barriers to optimal performance on cognitive/functional tests. Researchers assessed her impression of the participants' difficulty comprehending instructions, distractibility, apparent fatigue, and frustration, which were the four barriers rated. RESULTS: Data were analyzed for 49 patients from the inpatient dementia unit with a total of 51 samples. All of the inter-correlations between the five cognitive instruments had Spearman coefficients of (rs) > 0.7 and were statistically significant with p < 0.001. The SIB-8 and sMMSE were positively correlated with the SIB. The perceived barrier scores ranged from 0- no issue to 1-mild issue on all five cognitive instruments. CONCLUSION: Brief cognitive tests designed for severe dementia such as the SIB-8 and sMMSE have been evaluated in this project to be shorter in administration duration and highly correlated with gold standard instruments: the SIB and MMSE.

Iodine and Selenium Intakes of Postmenopausal Women in New Zealand.

Iodine and selenium are required for thyroid function. This study investigated iodine and selenium intakes in healthy, women aged 50-70 years (n = 97) from three cities in the North Island of New Zealand, after mandatory fortification of bread with iodised salt. Iodine and selenium concentrations were determined in 24-h urine samples; daily intakes were extrapolated from amounts in urine (90% and 55% of daily intake, respectively). Three day diet diaries (3DDD) also estimated selenium and iodine (excluding iodised salt) intake. Median urinary iodine concentration (UIC) was 57 (41, 78) µg/L, indicating mild iodine deficiency. Estimated median iodine intake based on urine was 138 (100, 172) µg/day, below Recommended Dietary Intake (RDI) (150 µg/day) with 25% below Estimated Average Requirement (EAR) (100 µg/day). Estimated median selenium intake was 50 (36, 71) µg/day based on urine and 45 (36, 68) µg/day using 3DDD, below RDI (60 µg/day) with 49%-55% below EAR (50 µg/day). Median bread intakes were low at 1.8 (1.1, 2.7) serves/day; 25% consumed ≤1 serve/day. Although population iodine intakes improved following mandatory fortification, some had low intakes. Selenium intakes remain low. Further research should investigate thyroid function of low consumers of iodine fortified bread and/or selenium in New Zealand.

Performance of clinical scoring systems in acute organophosphate poisoning.

INTRODUCTION: Clinical scoring systems are used to predict mortality rate in hospitalized patients. Their utility in organophosphate (OP) poisoning has not been well studied. METHODS: In this retrospective study of 396 patients, we evaluated the performance of the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II score, the Simplified Acute Physiology Score (SAPS) II, Mortality Prediction Model (MPM) II, and the Poisoning Severity Score (PSS). Demographic, laboratory, and survival data were recorded. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were generated, and the area under the curve (AUC) was calculated to study the relationship between individual scores and mortality rate. RESULTS: The mean (standard deviation) age of the patients was 31.4 (12.7) years, and at admission, their pseudocholinesterase (median, interquartile) level was 317 (222-635) U/L. Mechanical ventilation was required in 65.7% of the patients and the overall mortality rate was 13.1%. The mean (95% confidence interval) scores were as follows: APACHE-II score, 16.4 (15.5-17.3); SAPS-II, 34.4 (32.5-36.2); MPM-II score, 28.6 (25.7-31.5); and PSS, 2.4 (2.3-2.5). Overall, the AUC for mortality was significantly higher for APACHE-II (0.77) and SAPS-II (0.77) than the PSS (0.67). When patients were categorized, the AUCs were better for WHO Class II (0.71-0.82) than that for Class I compounds (0.60-0.66). For individual compounds, the AUC for APACHE-II was highest in quinalphos (0.93, n = 46) and chlorpyrifos (0.86, n = 38) and lowest in monocrotophos (0.60, n = 63). AUCs for SAPS-II and MPM-II were marginally but not significantly lower than those for APACHE-II. The PSS was generally a poorer discriminator compared to the other scoring systems across all categories. CONCLUSIONS: In acute OP poisoning, the generic scoring systems APACHE-II and SAPS-II outperform the PSS. These tools may be used to predict the mortality rate in OP poisoning.