Integrating US National Guard with Public Health Partners at COVID-19 Testing Sites in West Virginia Counties with High Rural and Minority Populations: Lessons Learned.

This article analyzes the decisionmaking, communication, and outcomes of collaboration between the West Virginia National Guard (WVNG) and state and county organizations in hosting state-prioritized COVID-19 testing site events from May 22 to December 30, 2020. The United States Census Bureau designated 34 of the 55 counties in West Virginia as rural. For this study, we classified 23 counties as rural-identified counties, 14 counties as minority-identified counties and 14 counties as both rural and minority-identified counties. This resulted in a total 51 of the 55 counties receiving a rural, minority, or both rural and minority-identified county designation. Through collaboration between the WVNG and public health partners, 98,846 COVID-19 tests were conducted between May 22 and December 30, 2020, making up 7% of the total of 1,414,373 COVID-19 tests conducted in the entire state of West Virginia during that time frame. A total of 349 (68.2%) of the 512 WVNG-supported testing sites occurred in either rural or minority-identified counties: 185 (36.1%) in rural counties, 134 (26.2%) in minority-identified counties, and 30 (5.9%) in counties designated as both rural and minority-identified. The novel use of the WVNG to support county health departments in rural and minority-identified counties allowed more COVID-19 testing site events to occur. This demonstrates the use of the National Guard as a force multiplier, helping to reach the state's most vulnerable and underserved populations.

Myosin-1a is critical for normal brush border structure and composition.

To develop our understanding of myosin-1a function in vivo, we have created a mouse line null for the myosin-1a gene. Myosin-1a knockout mice demonstrate no overt phenotypes at the whole animal level but exhibit significant perturbations and signs of stress at the cellular level. Among these are defects in microvillar membrane morphology, distinct changes in brush-border organization, loss of numerous cytoskeletal and membrane components from the brush border, and redistribution of intermediate filament proteins into the brush border. We also observed significant ectopic recruitment of another short-tailed class I motor, myosin-1c, into the brush border of knockout enterocytes. This latter finding, a clear demonstration of functional redundancy among vertebrate myosins-I, may account for the lack of a whole animal phenotype. Nevertheless, these results indicate that myosin-1a is a critical multifunctional component of the enterocyte, required for maintaining the normal composition and highly ordered structure of the brush border.

Omental Infarction: An Unusual Cause of Left-Sided Abdominal Pain.

Left-sided omental infarction (OI) is rare in both the adult and pediatric patients. To our knowledge, only 2 pediatric cases of a left-sided OI have been reported in the literature. We report a case of an obese 13-year-old male who presented with a 6-day history of intermittent, colicky, left upper quadrant abdominal pain.