How do Central American Parents in the United States View the Importance of and Obtain Information About Behaviors Associated with the Risk of Early Childhood Obesity?

Background: Data suggest that Latinx preschool-age children are at increased risk of obesity. The fastest-growing Latinx population in the United States originates from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, also known as the Northern Triangle countries. Purpose: To describe how Central American parents from the Northern Triangle countries perceive the importance of energy balance-related behaviors (EBRBs), their preferred sources to obtain information about EBRBs, and to assess whether these differ by parent's gender and country of the nativity. Methods: Cross-sectional survey. Results: Seventy-four parents with at least one child between 2 and 5 years of age participated in the study. More than half were immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras and were classified as having low acculturation. Mothers perceived consuming >5 fruits and vegetables daily, limiting sugar-sweetened beverages consumption, and having <2 hours daily screen time as extremely important, whereas fathers perceived these behaviors as being less important. Although a higher proportion of foreign-born than US-born parents perceived most of the assessed EBRBs (4 out of 6) as extremely important, these differences were not significant. Parents reported multiple sources to obtain EBRB-related information. Direct person-to-person interactions were the most commonly preferred sources, with pediatricians being the top source (97.3%), followed by other parents (86.5%), and WIC professionals (74.3%). Pediatricians were the preferred source to obtain information about EBRBs, irrespective of parent's gender and country of the nativity. A higher proportion of US-born than foreign-born parents reported a preference to obtain EBRB-related information from other parents. Conclusions: Findings suggest the significance of understanding how Central American parents perceive the importance of EBRBs and the sources they would prefer to obtain information for their children's EBRBs. Study findings have implications for health education and obesity prevention interventions designed to reach and deliver key evidence-based child health information to Central American parents from the Northern Triangle countries in the United States.

Lessons Learned From Recruiting Latino Fathers in Child Health Research.

Latinos are the largest minority population group in the United States, and Latino children currently account for one fourth of U.S. children under age 18. Family is a core value in the Latino culture, and fathers play a central role within the family, including making decisions that influence their children's health. Nonetheless, Latino fathers are often underrepresented in child health research. This study was designed to describe effective strategies to recruit Latino fathers into five child health research studies. Using a data recruitment log, we collected quantitative and qualitative data on recruitment strategies used to reach and enroll Latino fathers into five child health research studies from 2016 to 2020. Methods classified as direct recruitment strategies involved interaction between potential participants with research staff, whereas indirect methods involved no interaction with research staff and potential participants. In total 113 Latino fathers, majority low-income, immigrant, participated in the studies. Direct recruitment methods in combination with snowball sampling were the most successful strategies for recruiting Latino fathers, contributing to approximately 96% (n = 107) of the total participants. Indirect methods were much less effective, with social media contributing to only 3.6% (n = 4) of total participants. Not a single participant was recruited through printed materials (e.g., flyers posted or distributed). Furthermore, qualitative findings revealed the importance of culturally and linguistically relevant approaches in efforts to recruit and enroll Latino fathers. Future research should consider directly asking Latino fathers' preferences for recruitment and participation in child health research.

Characterizing early Canadian federal, provincial, territorial and municipal nonpharmaceutical interventions in response to COVID-19: a descriptive analysis.

BACKGROUND: Nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are the primary tools to mitigate early spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic; however, such policies are implemented variably at the federal, provincial or territorial, and municipal levels without centralized documentation. We describe the development of the comprehensive open Canadian Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention (CAN-NPI) data set, which identifies and classifies all NPIs implemented in regions across Canada in response to COVID-19, and provides an accompanying description of geographic and temporal heterogeneity. METHODS: We performed an environmental scan of government websites, news media and verified government social media accounts to identify NPIs implemented in Canada between Jan. 1 and Apr. 19, 2020. The CAN-NPI data set contains information about each intervention's timing, location, type, target population and alignment with a response stringency measure. We conducted descriptive analyses to characterize the temporal and geographic variation in early NPI implementation. RESULTS: We recorded 2517 NPIs grouped in 63 distinct categories during this period. The median date of NPI implementation in Canada was Mar. 24, 2020. Most jurisdictions heightened the stringency of their response following the World Health Organization's global pandemic declaration on Mar. 11, 2020. However, there was variation among provinces or territories in the timing and stringency of NPI implementation, with 8 out of 13 provinces or territories declaring a state of emergency by Mar. 18, and all by Mar. 22, 2020. INTERPRETATION: There was substantial geographic and temporal heterogeneity in NPI implementation across Canada, highlighting the importance of a subnational lens in evaluating the COVID-19 pandemic response. Our comprehensive open-access data set will enable researchers to conduct robust interjurisdictional analyses of NPI impact in curtailing COVID-19 transmission.

Sharing is Caring: Exploring machine learning-enabled methods for regional medical imaging exchange using procedure metadata.

Seamless sharing between imaging facilities of medical images obtained on the same patient is crucial in providing accurate and efficient care to patients. However, the terminology used to describe semantically similar examinations can vary widely between facilities. Current practice is manual table-based mapping to a standard terminology, which has substantial potential for mislabelled and missing examinations. In this work, we establish several baseline methods for automating the mapping of radiology imaging procedure descriptions to a SNOMED CT based standard terminology. Our best performing baseline, consisting of a bag of words representation and shallow neural network, achieved 96.3% accuracy. In addition, we explore an unsupervised clustering method that explores relevancy matching without the need for an intervening standard. Lastly, we make the procedure name dataset used in this work available to encourage extension of this application.

Central American Immigrant Parents' Awareness, Acceptability, and Willingness to Vaccinate Their Adolescent Children Against Human Papillomavirus: A Pilot Cross-Sectional Study.

Despite increasing interest in understanding the factors influencing awareness and acceptability of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine among Latino parents, to date limited information is available specific to Central American parents living in the United States (US). Therefore, this pilot cross-sectional study was designed to explore and assess Central American immigrant parents' awareness, acceptability, and willingness to vaccinate their children against HPV, and interest in participating in future HPV-associated cancer prevention study. Fifty-six Central American parents, majority immigrant (96.4%; n = 54) from four countries, El Salvador-50% (n = 27); Guatemala-25.9% (n = 14); Honduras-22.2% (n = 12); and Panama-1.9% (n = 1) participated in this study. Participants completed an interviewer-administered questionnaire survey in their preferred language (i.e., Spanish or English). A little over half of the participants were mothers (57.1%; n = 32) and parents' mean age was 43.2 years (SD = 6.4). The majority was married or cohabitating (76.8%, n = 43), and 39.3% (n = 22) reported having two children. Seventy-five percent (n = 42) of parents reported they had heard of the HPV vaccine. Fewer fathers were aware of the HPV vaccine (58.3%; n = 14 vs.87.5%, n = 28; p = 0.01) than mothers. Among parents who had heard of the HPV vaccine (n = 42), 85.7% (n = 36) reported their children had received at least one dose of the HPV vaccine. Fewer fathers reported their child had been vaccinated against HPV (64.3%, n = 9 vs. 96.4%, n = 27; p = 0.06) than mothers. Moreover, 90% of parents (n = 18) whose children were unvaccinated reported willingness to vaccinate their adolescent children against HPV if recommended by their child's physician. Findings indicate parents' low to moderate awareness of the HPV vaccine, and high willingness to vaccinate their adolescent children if recommended by their child's physician. Findings also demonstrate fathers' lower awareness and acceptability of the HPV vaccine than mothers. Despite limitations and the need for more research, findings of this pilot study serve as a valuable first step toward building a knowledge foundation that is needed for developing future studies and interventions targeting Central American immigrant parents living in the US. Future studies can build on the findings of this exploratory study with other research designs and address its limitations by having a larger sample size and accounting for additional factors associated with Central American immigrant parents' HPV awareness, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and vaccine acceptability from other communities across the US.