Pharmacists' perspectives on school stock inhaler access for children.

Several states in the United States (U.S.) have laws permitting stock inhalers, including short-acting beta-agonist inhalers, such as albuterol, and spacers to be prescribed to, dispensed to, and stocked in schools for use in students in respiratory distress, based on a protocol. This survey study assessed Arizona pharmacists' (1) levels of comfort for dispensing a short-acting beta-agonist inhaler to an individual child versus a stock inhaler to a school, and (2) awareness of the related Arizona state law. Researchers surveyed pharmacists licensed in Arizona who self-reported practicing in an outpatient pharmacy setting. Among 251 pharmacist participants, 62% practiced in a chain community pharmacy. About 80.8% felt comfortable filling a prescription for an albuterol inhaler in a pediatric patient case, whereas only 26.7% felt comfortable filling a prescription for albuterol inhalers to be used as stock inhalers for a given school. Among those who would not fill the stock inhaler prescription, only 5.5% reported awareness of the state law compared to 42.6% of those who would fill it (p < 0.0001). This survey identified a lack of pharmacist awareness of state laws pertaining to stock inhalers for schools.

Scientific societies fostering inclusivity through speaker diversity in annual meeting programming: a call to action.

Scientific societies aiming to foster inclusion of scientists from underrepresented (UR) backgrounds among their membership often delegate primary responsibility for this goal to a diversity-focused committee. The National Science Foundation has funded the creation of the Alliance to Catalyze Change for Equity in STEM Success (ACCESS), a meta-organization bringing together representatives from several such STEM society committees to serve as a hub for a growing community of practice. Our goal is to coordinate efforts to advance inclusive practices by sharing experiences and making synergistic discoveries about what works. ACCESS has analyzed the approaches by which member societies have sought to ensure inclusivity through selection of annual meeting speakers. Here we discuss how inclusive speaker selection fosters better scientific environments for all and identify challenges and promising practices for societies striving to maximize inclusivity of speakers in their scientific programming.

Thermodynamic Contribution of Water in Cryptophane Host-Guest Binding Reaction.

A detailed examination of binding thermodynamics is undertaken for the interaction between rubidium ion and a water-soluble cryptophane molecule using isothermal titration calorimetry. The equilibrium-binding quotient for this host-guest pair decreases with increasing product formation. When analyzed with a thermodynamic framework that considers water explicitly in the governing equation, the shift in equilibrium is ascribed to an unfavorable change in the free energy of solvation upon formation of the inclusion complex. A van't Hoff analysis of the binding data, as well as an observation of aggregation between inclusion complexes, suggests that charge-charge interactions between rubidium ion and the phenolate groups of the cryptophane host provide the driving force for association in water that overcomes a large and unfavorable change in solvent enthalpy.

Scientific Societies Fostering Inclusive Scientific Environments through Travel Awards: Current Practices and Recommendations.

Diversity-focused committees continue to play essential roles in the efforts of professional scientific societies to foster inclusion and facilitate the professional development of underrepresented minority (URM) young scientists in their respective scientific disciplines. Until recently, the efforts of these committees have remained independent and disconnected from one another. Funding from the National Science Foundation has allowed several of these committees to come together and form the Alliance to Catalyze Change for Equity in STEM Success, herein referred to as ACCESS. The overall goal of this meta-organization is to create a community in which diversity-focused committees can interact, synergize, share their collective experiences, and have a unified voice on behalf of URM trainees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. In this Essay, we compare and contrast the broad approaches that scientific societies in ACCESS use to implement and assess their travel award programs for URM trainees. We also report a set of recommendations, including both short- and long-term outcomes assessment in populations of interest and specialized programmatic activities coupled to travel award programs.