Yoxas/statistical_literacy huggingface dataset:
Although there is increasing interest in reporting results of environmental research efforts back to participants, evidence-based tools have not yet been applied to developed materials to ensure their accessibility in terms of literacy, numeracy, and data visualization demand. Additionally, there is not yet guidance as to how to formally assess the created materials to assure a match with the intended audience. Relying on formative qualitative research with participants of an indoor air quality study in Dorchester, Massachusetts, we identified means of enhancing accessibility of indoor air quality data report-back materials for participants. Participants (n = 20) engaged in semi-structured interviews in which they described challenges they encountered with scientific and medical materials and outlined written and verbal communication techniques that would help facilitate engagement with and accessibility of environmental health report-back materials. We coupled these insights from participants with best practice guidelines for written materials by operationalizing health literacy tools to produce accessible audience-informed data report-back materials. The resulting data report-back materials had a 7th -grade reading level, and between a 4th -8th grade level of overall document complexity. The numeracy skills required to engage with the material were of the lowest demand, and we incorporated best practices for risk communication and facilitating understanding and actionability of the materials. Use of a rigorous assessment tool provides evidence of accessibility and appropriateness of the material for the audience. We outline a process for developing and evaluating environmental health data reports that are tailored to inspire risk-reduction actions, and are demonstrably accessible in terms of their literacy, numeracy, and data visualization demand. Adapting health literacy tools to create and evaluate environmental data report-back materials is a novel and evidence-based means of ensuring their accessibility.
Although there may still be many challenges to its adoption, telemedicine is becoming more and more popular for helping elderly people preserve their independence and continue to live in their own homes. We intended to investigate the challenges and barriers (if any) experienced by the elderly population when using telemedicine services in Israel. Fourteen elderly people were recruited for the study and interviewed in person using a semistructured interview protocol, using a qualitative technique. Participants' replies were evaluated and analyzed thematically. The participants were questioned regarding their usage of telehealth services, the benefits they perceive in them, any potential difficulties or hurdles to use, and suggestions they had for making these services more readily available and simpler to use for the elderly. Most participants recognized the advantages of telehealth services, particularly for the elderly population during pandemics and normal times. However, most of them also expressed various challenges that face the elderly population in using these services. Many participants were concerned that the quality of telemedicine sessions may not be good enough compared to in-person sessions, and expressed a lack of confidence in telemedicine services, and frustration from the absence of in-person interaction and communication. Many participants highlighted the technological challenges in the use of computers and applications in general and in the context of healthcare, in particular, in addition to physiological and literacy difficulties. Finally, the participants suggested several ways to increase the accessibility and usage of telemedicine solutions by elderly people. A proactive approach to identifying and resolving telehealth barriers can maximize virtual interactions for the older population and alleviate care inequities. In addition to identifying barriers that impede older patients from using telemedicine, there is a need to increase awareness of the availability, benefits, and uses of each telehealth service in comparison to in-person consultations.
Although trauma is one of the leading causes of behaviour problems among children with disabilities, there has been limited scholarly interest in trauma management within the discourse of implementation of inclusive education. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) trauma management model was used to study teachers' awareness of trauma management among students with disabilities studying in regular classrooms. A total of 271 teachers were recruited from two municipalities in the central region of Ghana to complete the Teacher Trauma Management Scale developed for this study. The data were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis, mean scores, multivariate analysis of variances, and linear regression. The results showed teachers' uncertainty towards trauma management, and a positive correlation was also found between the tenets of the study framework. The study concluded with a recommendation for contextual development of the curriculum to guide teacher training in trauma management. Studies on trauma management within the discourse of implementation of inclusive education are scarce. This study extends the literature on inclusive education to teacher development to support trauma management among students with disabilities in regular schools.
Although tummy time is recommended as a form of physical activity for non-movable infants worldwide, little is known regarding the current status of tummy time practices among Chinese infants. Early childhood education (ECE) institutions provide children with rich learning experiences; however, tummy time practices among infants in these ECE institutions were unclear. This study aimed to investigate the status of tummy time among infants within the context of ECE institutions. We conducted a cross-sectional survey with primary caregivers of infants aged 0-11 months across 31 provinces of China from 1 March to 30 April 2023. To recruit participants, we collaborated with Gymboree Play & Music, an ECE institution with over 500 centres in nearly 200 cities in urban China. Our survey instrument was developed based on the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines and literature to collect data on infants' tummy time practices, caregivers' tummy time knowledge and information sources. We used self-administered questionnaires through WeChat, in which participants scanned a quick response (QR) code to complete the questionnaire. We included 1040 infants and their primary caregivers, with 504 infants aged 0-5 and 536 infants aged 6-11 months old. Less than half of infants (48.2%) started tummy time in the neonatal period, with 20.5% starting within two weeks after birth. Only 27.2% of infants engaged in at least 30 minutes of tummy time during the last 24 hours, with infants aged 0-5 months significantly lower than those aged 6-11 months (21.6 vs 32.5%, P < 0.0001). No significant difference was found between attending ECE class and non-attending ECE class groups for the proportion of infants with tummy time ≥30 minutes per day (28.9 vs 23.4%, P = 0.0625); however, infants aged 0-5 months in the attending group engaged in longer duration of tummy time than those in the non-attending group (P = 0.0005). The compliance with the tummy time guidelines in infants receiving long-nurturing care was significantly higher than those receiving short-nurturing care (30.4 vs 22.1%, P = 0.0036). Only 42.7% of caregivers knew that at least 30 minutes daily tummy time was necessary for infant, and more primary caregivers in the attending group knew that, compared to the non-attending group (45.3 vs 36.8%, P = 0.0098). The current status of infants' tummy time practices and caregivers' knowledge are generally suboptimal within the context of ECE institutions in urban China. Longer nurturing time contributes to higher compliance with tummy time guidelines. Effectively promoting tummy time practices through multiple channels in China is crucial.
Although vegan and vegetarian diets and lifestyles differ significantly from each other, among other things, notably in their respective consequences regarding animal welfare and their ecological impact, vegans and vegetarians are often grouped together and usually compared to omnivores in psychological research. Considering that vegans and vegetarians often share similar motives for their lifestyle choices, namely animal and environmental issues, the question arises why similar motives lead to different conclusions and correspondingly different behaviors, most notably, of course, that vegetarians consume animal-derived foods such as cheese or milk while vegans do not consume animal-derived products (e.g., food, cosmetic products). This is why this study explored the psychological differences between vegans, vegetarians, and prospective vegans - the latter group being located in an intermediate, transitionary position. Focusing on the motivational, affective and cognitive components of dietary transition and participants' adherence to eating patterns, reasons for said patterns, possible hinderances to becoming vegan, the role of participants' social environments, and the impact of various misconceptions regarding the feasibility of a vegan diet in everyday life were all explored. An observational study was conducted via online questionnaire (1420 participants). Significant differences were found between vegans, prospective vegans, and vegetarians, especially concerning their knowledge of issues pertaining to their respective lifestyles. The critical role of knowledge is invoked as an explanation as to why vegans and vegetarians display different behaviors although they share a similar motivation. Thus, in this study the concept of vegan literacy is introduced. Additionally, the distinctive role of cheese is explored, discussing possible indications of its potentially addictive nature and, consequently, the importance of cheese as a hindering factor for pursuing a vegan diet.
Although women comprise the majority of medical students, gender disparities emerge early and remain at the highest levels of academia. Most leadership courses focus on faculty or students rather than women graduate medical education (GME) trainees. To promote the leadership development of women GME trainees through empowerment, community building, networking and mentorship, and concrete leadership skills development. University of California, San Francisco. 359 women residents and fellows from 41 specialties. A longitudinal curriculum of monthly workshops designed to support leadership development for women trainees. Sessions and learning objectives were designed via needs assessments and literature review. A mixed-methods evaluation was performed for 3 years of WILD programming. Quantitative surveys assessed participant satisfaction and fulfillment of learning objectives. Structured interview questions were asked in focus groups and analyzed qualitatively. 23% of invited participants attended at least one session from 2018 to 2021, despite challenging trainee schedules. Surveys demonstrated acceptability and satisfaction of all sessions, and learning objectives were met at 100% of matched sessions. Focus groups highlighted positive impact in domains of community-building, leadership skills, mentorship, and empowerment. This program has demonstrated WILD's longitudinal sustainability and impact for women trainees.
Although, strengthening patient safety competencies in nursing has been emphasized for enhancing quality care and patient safety. However, little is known about the association of nurses' perceptions of patient safety competency with adverse nurse outcomes in Iranian hospitals. This study aimed to measure nurses' levels of patient safety competency in the hospitals of Iran and examines the relationship between patient safety competency with the occurrence and reporting of adverse events (AEs). This cross-sectional research was applied in eight teaching hospitals in Tehran, Iran, between August and December 2021. A sample of 511 nurses was randomly selected using the table of random numbers. The validated Patient Safety Competency Self-Evaluation questionnaire was used. Furthermore, two questions were used to measure the incidence and reporting of AEs. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics, independent t-tests, and two binary logistic regression models through SPSS version 24.0. The mean patient safety competency score was 3.34 (SD = 0.74) out of 5.0; 41.5% of nurses rated their patient safety competency as less than 3. Among subscales, "skills of patient safety" scores were the highest, and "knowledge of patient safety" scores were the lowest. Nurses with higher Knowledge and Attitude scores were less likely to experience the occurrence of AEs (OR = 1.50 and OR = 0.58, respectively). Regarding AEs reporting, nurses with higher Skill and Attitude scores were 2.84 and 1.67 times, respectively, more likely to report AEs (OR = 2.84 and OR = 3.44, respectively). Our results provide evidence that enhancing PSC leads to reduced incidence of AEs and increased nurses' performance in reporting. Therefore, it is recommended that managers of hospitals should enhance the patient safety competency of nurses in incidents and reporting of patient safety adverse outcomes through quality expansion and training. Additionally, researchers should carry out further research to confirm the findings of the current study and identify interventions that would strengthen patient safety competencies and reduce the occurrence of AEs, and rise their reporting among nurses.
Alzheimer disease is a degenerative neurological condition that requires long-term care. The cost of these responsibilities is often borne by informal caregivers, who experience an elevated risk of negative physical and psychological outcomes. Previously, we designed a positive emotion regulation intervention that was shown to improve well-being among dementia caregivers when delivered through one-on-one videoconferencing lessons with a trained facilitator. However, the format required significant resources in terms of logistics and facilitator time. To broaden the reach of the intervention, we aimed to develop the Social Augmentation of Self-Guided Electronic Delivery of the Life Enhancing Activities for Family Caregivers (SAGE LEAF) program, an iteration of the intervention in a self-guided, web-based format with enhanced opportunities for social connection. The aim of this study was to gather feedback to inform the design of social features for the SAGE LEAF intervention. In the absence of a facilitator, our goal with the self-guided SAGE LEAF intervention was to integrate various social features (eg, discussion board, automated support, and profiles) to maximize engagement among participants. Qualitative data were collected from 26 individuals through (1) interviews with participants who completed a previous version of the intervention via videoconferencing with a facilitator, (2) focus groups with dementia caregivers who had not previously experienced the intervention, and (3) focus groups with Alzheimer disease clinical care providers. We conducted a qualitative thematic analysis to identify which social features would be the most helpful and how they could be implemented in a way that would be best received by caregivers. Interview and focus group feedback indicated that participants generally liked the potential features suggested, including the discussion boards, multimedia content, and informational support. They had valuable suggestions for optimal implementation. For example, participants liked the idea of a buddy system where they would be matched up with another caregiver for the duration of the study. However, they expressed concern about differing expectations among caregivers and the possibility of matched caregivers not getting along. Participants also expressed interest in giving caregivers access to a podcast on the skills, which would allow them to review additional content when they wished. Taken together, the discussions with caregivers and providers offered unique insights into the types of social features that may be integrated into the SAGE LEAF intervention, as well as implementation suggestions to improve the acceptability of the features among caregivers. These insights will allow us to design social features for the intervention that are optimally engaging and helpful for caregivers.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a chronic, progressive, degenerative disease characterized by cognitive dysfunction, including verbal memory loss. Studies were lacking in examining the longitudinal effect of polygenic hazard score on the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test-Delayed Total (AVDELTOT) score (a common measure of verbal memory). A key step in analyzing longitudinal changes in cognitive measures using a linear mixed model (LMM) is choosing a suitable covariance structure. The study aims to determine the association between the polygenic hazard score and the AVDELTOT score accounting for repeated measures (the covariance structure). The AVDELTOT scores were collected at baseline, 12 months, 24 months, 36 months, and 48 months from 283 participants with AD, 347 with cognitive normal, and 846 with mild cognitive impairment in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. The Bayesian information criterion statistic was used to select the best covariance structure from 10 covariance structures in longitudinal analysis of AVDELTOT scores. The multivariable LMM was used to investigate the effect of polygenic hazard score status (low vs. medium vs. high) on changes in AVDELTOT scores while adjusted for age, gender, education, APOE-ε4 genotype, and baseline Mini-Mental State Examination score. One-way analysis of variance revealed significant differences in AVDELTOT scores, Mini-Mental State Examination scores, and polygenic hazard scores among AD diagnoses at baseline. Bayesian information criterion favored the compound symmetry covariance structure in the LMM analysis. Using the multivariate LMM, the APOE-ε4 allele and high polygenic hazard score value was significantly associated with AVDELTOT declines. Significant polygenic hazard score status by follow-up visit interactions was discovered. Our findings provide the first evidence of the effect of polygenic hazard score status and APOE-ε4 allele on declines in verbal memory in people with AD.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a multifactorial neurodegenerative disease with a complex origin, thought to involve a combination of genetic, biological and environmental factors. Insulin dysfunction has emerged as a potential factor contributing to AD pathogenesis, particularly in individuals with diabetes, and among those with insulin deficiency or undergoing insulin therapy. The intraperitoneal administration of streptozotocin (STZ) is widely used in rodent models to explore the impact of insulin deficiency on AD pathology, although prior research predominantly focused on young animals, with no comparative analysis across different age groups. Our study aimed to fill this gap by analyzing the impact of insulin dysfunction in 7 and 23 months 3xTg-AD mice, that exhibit both amyloid and tau pathologies. Our objective was to elucidate the age-specific consequences of insulin deficiency on AD pathology. STZ administration led to insulin deficiency in the younger mice, resulting in an increase in cortical amyloid-β (Aβ) and tau aggregation, while tau phosphorylation was not significantly affected. Conversely, older mice displayed an unexpected resilience to the peripheral metabolic impact of STZ, while exhibiting an increase in both tau phosphorylation and aggregation without significantly affecting amyloid pathology. These changes were paralleled with alterations in signaling pathways involving tau kinases and phosphatases. Several markers of blood-brain barrier (BBB) integrity declined with age in 3xTg-AD mice, which might have facilitated a direct neurotoxic effect of STZ in older mice. Overall, our research confirms the influence of insulin signaling dysfunction on AD pathology, but also advises careful interpretation of data related to STZ-induced effects in older animals.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative condition, and early intervention can help slow its progression. However, integrating multi-dimensional information and deep convolutional networks increases the model parameters, affecting diagnosis accuracy and efficiency and hindering clinical diagnostic model deployment. Multi-modal neuroimaging can offer more precise diagnostic results, while multi-task modeling of classification and regression tasks can enhance the performance and stability of AD diagnosis. This study proposes a Hierarchical Attention-based Multi-task Multi-modal Fusion model (HAMMF) that leverages multi-modal neuroimaging data to concurrently learn AD classification tasks, cognitive score regression, and age regression tasks using attention-based techniques. Firstly, we preprocess MRI and PET image data to obtain two modal data, each containing distinct information. Next, we incorporate a novel Contextual Hierarchical Attention Module (CHAM) to aggregate multi-modal features. This module employs channel and spatial attention to extract fine-grained pathological features from unimodal image data across various dimensions. Using these attention mechanisms, the Transformer can effectively capture correlated features of multi-modal inputs. Lastly, we adopt multi-task learning in our model to investigate the influence of different variables on diagnosis, with a primary classification task and a secondary regression task for optimal multi-task prediction performance. Our experiments utilized MRI and PET images from 720 subjects in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) dataset. The results show that our proposed model achieves an overall accuracy of 93.15% for AD/NC recognition, and the visualization results demonstrate its strong pathological feature recognition performance.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is broadly characterized by neurodegeneration, pathology accumulation, and cognitive decline. There is considerable variation in the progression of clinical symptoms and pathology in humans, highlighting the importance of genetic diversity in the study of AD. To address this, we analyze cell composition and amyloid-beta deposition of 6- and 14-month-old AD-BXD mouse brains. We utilize the analytical QUINT workflow- a suite of software designed to support atlas-based quantification, which we expand to deliver a highly effective method for registering and quantifying cell and pathology changes in diverse disease models. In applying the expanded QUINT workflow, we quantify near-global age-related increases in microglia, astrocytes, and amyloid-beta, and we identify strain-specific regional variation in neuron load. To understand how individual differences in cell composition affect the interpretation of bulk gene expression in AD, we combine hippocampal immunohistochemistry analyses with bulk RNA-sequencing data. This approach allows us to categorize genes whose expression changes in response to AD in a cell and/or pathology load-dependent manner. Ultimately, our study demonstrates the use of the QUINT workflow to standardize the quantification of immunohistochemistry data in diverse mice, - providing valuable insights into regional variation in cellular load and amyloid deposition in the AD-BXD model.