Effectiveness of Teacher-Led Nutritional Lessons in Altering Dietary Habits and Nutritional Status in Preschool Children: Adoption of a NASA Mission X-Based Program.

The preschool years are a sensitive period for the development of food preferences that will affect physical growth and life-long health. The promotion of healthy eating and nutritional status was achieved by adapting the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Mission X (MX) Program among young children in South Korea. The intervention program was delivered by nutritional experts and class teachers over 10 weeks. Children from 37 school classes (n = 534) from 7 daycares and kindergartens were randomized into a control group (CG, n = 280) and an intervention group (IG, n = 254). Parents were surveyed for their children's characteristics and nutrition quotient (NQ) at baseline and at the 10-week follow-up. At baseline, 18.8% (boys: 18.9%; girls: 18.8%) of the subjects were overweight or obese (body mass index ≥ 85th percentile). After the intervention, the mean differences in various anthropometric measures did not differ significantly between the groups in a linear regression model adjusted for age, sex, and type of school. The NQ grades were significantly higher in the IG than the CG after the intervention (p = 0.000). In summary, the 10-week South Korean MX program improved the eating behaviors and nutrition status of young children. A further multisector prevention program is needed to prevent childhood obesity in young children.

Working at the boundary: Making space for innovation in a NASA megaproject.

This study shows how occupational, organizational and institutional boundaries can be reworked to enable innovation. Based on an historical case study of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which spanned three decades and two dozen organizations, I show how megaproject members made boundaries a target of strategic action. Megaprojects, in particular, require us to think about boundaries at multiple levels as they commonly draw on expertise and resources from different disciplines, organizations, and institutional domains. This case reveals several mechanisms by which boundaries can be modified to coordinate diverse innovation partners, from reconfiguring the ways members relate to one another (splicing, fitting and channeling) to reshaping the environment they work in (softening, fusing and corralling). Overall, this study contributes to our understanding of how actors make room for new ideas and cause institutional change as part of innovation processes. By treating boundaries as malleable and multiplex, I extend organizational theory, which tends to view boundaries as given and things to be spanned. I extend the STS literature that takes boundaries as fluid, identifying several mechanisms of making and unmaking them. A more dynamic treatment of boundaries is called for in both innovation research and practice, and this study opens a path for research that looks not only at boundary objects but also boundary actions, and moves from boundary organizations to boundary organizing.

The NASA Task Load Index as a measure of overall workload among neonatal, paediatric and adult intensive care nurses.

INTRODUCTION: The NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) is a subjective workload assessment scale developed for use in aviation and increasingly applied to healthcare. The scale purports to measure overall workload as a single variable calculated by summing responses to six items. Since no data address the validity of this scoring approach in health care, we evaluated the single factor structure of the NASA-TLX as a measure of overall workload among intenisive care nurses. METHODS: Confirmatory factor analysis of data from two studies of nurse workload in neonatal, paediatric, and adult intensive care units. Study 1 data were obtained from 136 nurses in one neonatal intensive care unit. Study 2 data were collected from 300 nurses in 17 adult, paediatric and neonatal units. Nurses rated their workload using the NASA-TLX's paper version. RESULTS: A single factor model testing whether all six items measured a single overall workload variable fit least well (RMSEA = 0.14; CFI = 0.91; TLI = 0.85). A second model that specified two items as outcomes of overall workload had acceptable fit (RMSEA = 0.08; CFI = 0.97; TLI = 0.95) while a third model of four items fit best (RMSEA = 0.06; CFI > 0.99; TLI = 0.99). CONCLUSION: A summed score from four of six NASA-TLX items appears to most reliably measure a single overall workload variable among intensive care nurses.

Using the NASA Task Load Index to Assess Workload in Electronic Medical Records.

Electronic medical records (EMRs) has been expected to decrease health professional workload. The NASA Task Load Index has become an important tool for assessing workload in many domains. However, its application in assessing the impact of an EMR on nurse's workload has remained to be explored. In this paper we report the results of a study of workload and we explore the utility of applying the NASA Task Load Index to assess impact of an EMR at the end of its lifecycle on nurses' workload. It was found that mental and temporal demands were the most responsible for the workload. Further work along these lines is recommended.