BMC Proceedings最新文献

Background: Precision public health is an emergent field that requires transdisciplinary collaborations and leverages innovative approaches to improve population health. These opportunities have inspired a new generation of precision public health researchers. Despite burgeoning interest in precision public health, there are limited opportunities for researchers to convene and continue the momentum of this field.

Methods: The Transdisciplinary Conference for Future Leaders in Precision Public Health was the among the first events to bring together international researchers and practitioners to learn, network, and agenda set for the future of the field. The conference took place virtually on October 14 and 15, 2021.

Results: The conference spanned two days and featured a keynote address, speakers from public health disciplines who are international leaders in precision-based research, networking opportunities, a poster session, and research agenda setting activities.

Conclusion: The conference was a critical first step to creating a shared international conversation about precision public health, especially among early-stage investigators. This allowed attendees to continue building their individual skills and international collaborations to support the growth of the field of precision public health.

Patient navigation (PN) represents a branch of service delivery traditionally aimed at coordinating disjointed care services for patients with particular health conditions (e.g., cancer, HIV, diabetes). Over time, this approach has been extended to various social and health contexts, including most recently to children with neurodisability and their families. In this context, PN involves the provision of information, advice, education, and emotional support, coordination of services both within and across sectors, and the work is guided by person- and family-centred principles of practice. This manuscript documents the proceedings of the BC Summit on Navigation for Children and Youth with Neurodevelopmental Differences, Disabilities, and Special Needs, which took place on January 18 and 19, 2021 and was developed in collaboration with a Provincial Advisory Group. Our Summit brought together over 120 individuals, including researchers, government personnel, service providers, educators, healthcare workers, and family advocates. As part of the event, attendees learned from families with lived experience navigating the British Columbian (BC) service system, from BC Children's Hospital Research Institute investigators, and from exemplar providers who deliver navigation services in various contexts (e.g., locally, regionally, and provincially). Attendees also participated in various engagement opportunities, and collaboratively identified directions for developing a future community of navigation and related services in BC.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death globally. An effective strategy to mitigate the burden of CVDs has been to monitor patients' biomedical variables during daily activities with wearable technology. Nowadays, technological advance has contributed to wearables technology by reducing the size of the devices, improving the accuracy of sensing biomedical variables to be devices with relatively low energy consumption that can manage security and privacy of the patient's medical information, have adaptability to any data storage system, and have reasonable costs with regard to the traditional scheme where the patient must go to a hospital for an electrocardiogram, thus contributing a serious option in diagnosis and treatment of CVDs. In this work, we review commercial and noncommercial wearable devices used to monitor CVD biomedical variables. Our main findings revealed that commercial wearables usually include smart wristbands, patches, and smartwatches, and they generally monitor variables such as heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, and electrocardiogram data. Noncommercial wearables focus on monitoring electrocardiogram and photoplethysmography data, and they mostly include accelerometers and smartwatches for detecting atrial fibrillation and heart failure. However, using wearable devices without healthy personal habits will cause disappointing results in the patient's health.

Background: Social immaturity and impaired social functioning are topical issues in recent research in the field of prematurity. Social-cognitive skills and emotional processing, the neuropsychological correlates underlying social behavior, are key aspects of these issues.

Methods: We examined 48 Italian primary school children who had been born preterm with a very low birthweight (26 males; mean age 9 years; SD 1.2). All had shown a normal neonatal cerebral ultrasound at term age, and showed a normal neurological examination and average IQ at the time of the study. Social skills and executive functions (EFs) and their correlations with a set of neonatal, sociodemographic, cognitive and adaptive parameters were investigated using standardized scales and questionnaires.

Results: Emotion recognition (ER) was impaired in 48% and Theory of Mind (ToM) in 8% of the children. These deficits showed no relationship with EFs or IQ, or with gestational age, birthweight, age or gender. Correlations between ER and socioeconomic status and between ToM and adaptive functioning were documented.

Conclusions: We suggest that adaptive and behavioral problems in preterm children may be linked to neurocognitive dysfunction characterized by deficits in social skills, which may be driven by socioeconomic, family and environmental factors, socioeconomic status in particular. Possible neural circuitry impairments underlying these deficits are discussed.