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A cross-country study of mis-implementation in public health practice
Full text link© The Author(s). 2019
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Abstract
Background
Mis-implementation (i.e., the premature termination or inappropriate continuation of public health programs) contributes to the misallocation of limited public health resources and the sub-optimal response to the growing global burden of chronic disease. This study seeks to describe the occurrence of mis-implementation in four countries of differing sizes, wealth, and experience with evidence-based chronic disease prevention (EBCDP).
Methods
A cross-sectional study of 400 local public health practitioners in Australia, Brazil, China, and the United States was conducted from November 2015 to April 2016. Online survey questions focused on how often mis-termination and mis-continuation occur and the most common reasons programs end and continue.
Results
We found significant differences in knowledge of EBCDP across countries with upwards of 75% of participants from Australia (n = 91/121) and the United States (n = 83/101) reporting being moderately to extremely knowledgeable compared with roughly 60% (n = 47/76) from Brazil and 20% (n = 21/102) from China (p < 0.05). Far greater proportions of participants from China thought effective programs were never mis-terminated (12.2% (n = 12/102) vs. 1% (n = 2/121) in Australia, 2.6% (n = 2/76) in Brazil, and 1.0% (n = 1/101) in the United States; p < 0.05) or were unable to estimate how frequently this happened (45.9% (n = 47/102) vs. 7.1% (n = 7/101) in the United States, 10.5% (n = 8/76) in Brazil, and 1.7% (n = 2/121) in Australia; p < 0.05). The plurality of participants from Australia (58.0%, n = 70/121) and the United States (36.8%, n = 37/101) reported that programs often mis-continued whereas most participants from Brazil (60.5%, n = 46/76) and one third (n = 37/102) of participants from China believed this happened only sometimes (p < 0.05). The availability of funding and support from political authorities, agency leadership, and the general public were common reasons programs continued and ended across all countries. A program’s effectiveness or evidence-base—or lack thereof—were rarely reasons for program continuation and termination.
Conclusions
Decisions about continuing or ending a program were often seen as a function of program popularity and funding availability as opposed to effectiveness. Policies and practices pertaining to programmatic decision-making should be improved in light of these findings. Future studies are needed to understand and minimize the individual, organizational, and political-level drivers of mis-implementation
The efficacy of DNA mixture to mixture matching
Full text linkCrown Copyright © 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This author accepted manuscript is made available following 12 month embargo from date of publication (March 2019) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyStandard practice in forensic science is to compare a person of interest’s (POI) reference DNA profile with an evidence DNA profile and calculate a likelihood ratio that considers propositions including and excluding the POI as a DNA donor. A method has recently been published that provides the ability to compare two evidence profiles (of any number of contributors and of any level of resolution) comparing propositions that consider the profiles either have a common contributor, or do not have any common contributors. Using this method, forensic analysts can provide intelligence to law enforcement by linking crime scenes when no suspects may be available. The method could also be used as a quality assurance measure to identify potential sample to sample contamination. In this work we analyse a number of constructed mixtures, ranging from two to five contributors, and with known numbers of common contributors, in order to investigate the performance of using likelihood ratios for mixture to mixture comparisons. Our findings demonstrate the ability to identify common donors in DNA mixtures with the power of discrimination depending largely on the least informative mixture of the pair being considered. The ability to match mixtures to mixtures may provide intelligence information to investigators by identifying possible links between cases which otherwise may not have been considered connected
Case report: Identification of intra-laboratory blood culture contamination with Staphylococcus aureus by whole genome sequencing
Full text link© 2019 Elsevier Inc. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This author accepted manuscript is made available following 12 month embargo from date of publication (February 2019) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyStaphylococcus aureus in blood cultures is rarely considered a contaminant. We report a case of intra-laboratory contamination between blood culture bottles which was confirmed by whole genome sequencing, highlighting the importance of molecular analysis in the clinical laboratory setting
Analysis of the South Australian Aboriginal population using the Global AIMs Nano ancestry test
Full text link© 2019 Elsevier B.V. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/We investigate the ability of the 31 SNP loci in the Global AIMs Nano set to distinguish self-declared Australian Aboriginal individuals from European, Oceanic, African, Native American and East Asian populations. Human evolution suggests that Australian Aboriginal individuals came to Australia approximately 50 000 years ago, during the time it made up part of Sahul. Since then the colonisation of Australia by Europeans has meant significant admixture within the Australian Aboriginal population. These two events present themselves in our study with the Aboriginal population creating a continuous genetic cline between the Oceanic and European groups. We also assigned the Aboriginal individuals into their traditional regional groups to determine whether there was any ability to distinguish these from each other. We found similar results to studies using other markers, namely that the more remote regions (that have been less affected by admixture) diverged from the rest. Overall, we found the ability of the GNano system to differentiate self-declared Australian Aboriginal individuals was reasonable but had limitations that need to be recognised if these assignments are applied to unknown individuals
Current PTSD symptomatology distorts memory for past symptoms
Full text link© 2019 Elsevier B.V. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This author accepted manuscript is made available following 12 month embargo from date of publication (February 2019) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyClinicians often rely on clients’ retrospective reports of past symptoms to diagnose and treat Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). However, there is limited research investigating memory for past PTSD symptoms. We asked sexual assault survivors to report their PTSD symptoms and then recall them 6 months later. Overall, symptom recall was consistent with initial reports. However, after dividing participants into PTSD-positive and negative groups, we found that people who were PTSD-negative at follow-up underestimated past PTSD symptom severity while people who were PTSD-positive overestimated past symptoms. For example, 2.8% of PTSD-negative participants versus 15.9% of PTSD-positive participants recalled experiencing 20+ more points on the PCL-5 at follow-up than at initial assessment. Further, people who adjusted over time greatly underestimated past symptoms unlike those who remained PTSD-positive. Our findings have important theoretical and clinical implications because they show that current symptom severity may influence the memory reconstruction of prior levels of adjustment
Boundary condition nomenclature confusion in groundwater flow modelling
Full text link© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
This author accepted manuscript is made available following 12 month embargo from date of publication (April 2019) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyTo solve the partial differential equations of groundwater flow, the information about head (h) and/or head gradient (∇h) must be specified along the boundaries of a model domain. The descriptors of different boundary condition (BC) types are drawn from founding mathematicians mainly of the 19th century (Cheng and Cheng 2005). Mathematically, there are five different BC types, including: Dirichlet (Type 1), Neumann (Type 2), Robin (Type 3), Cauchy and Mixed (Liu 2018). These names are sometimes used in communicating the BCs of groundwater flow models, and therefore, correct association between nomenclature and the mathematical form of BCs is important for properly communicating model characteristics
Intracameral antibiotics for prophylaxis of post operative endophthalmitis in Australia : comment
Full text linkThis author accepted manuscript is made available following 12 month embargo from date of publication (October 2019) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policy.
This article is protected by copyright [Wiley]. All rights reserved.
"This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Phillips, C. J., & Mills, R. A. (2019). Intracameral antibiotics for prophylaxis of postoperative endophthalmitis in Australia: Comment. Clinical & Experimental Ophthalmology. https://doi.org/10.1111/ceo.13645, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/ceo.13645. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions."We read with interest the article by Lipsky and Barrett and concur that intracameral moxifloxacin is a safer and more efficacy alternative to vancomycin as evidence emerges of postoperative haemorrhagic occlusive retinal vasculitis (HORV) associated with vancomycin.1 However we wish to redress the point stated about lack of avilability in Australia. Moxifloxacin is available in Australia for preparation into intracameral formulation. In our centre, when managing patients with penicillin or β-lactam allergy, we have ceased using vancomycin and now routinely administer intracameral moxifloxacin. We report the steps undertaken to implement this change in our care pathway
Biomedical applications of polyelectrolyte coated spherical gold nanoparticles
Full text link© The Author(s) 2019 This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.Surface modified gold nanoparticles are becoming more and more popular for use in biomaterials due to the possibility for specific targeting and increased biocompatibility. This review provides a summary of the recent literature surrounding polyelectrolyte coatings on spherical gold nanoparticles and their potential biomedical applications. The synthesis and layer-by layer coating approach are briefly discussed together with common characterisation methods. The potential applications and recent developments in drug delivery, gene therapy, photothermal therapy and imaging are summarized as well as the effects on cellular uptake and toxicity. Finally, the future outlook for polyelectrolyte coated gold nanoparticles is explored, focusing on their use in biomedicine
Aristotle and Democracy
Full text link© 2019 the author.This paper looks at Aristotle's Politics from the perspective of contemporary political, social and economic problems and possibilities. A focus upon Aristotle's defence of slavery highlights the fact that while contemporary liberal political ideas of human rights challenge Aristotelian-type defences of sexism and racism, such ideas fail to address hierarchical and exploitative class-structured political and economic relations — still justified in the same way in which Aristotle justifies slavery. Consideration of the Politics is of particular contemporary relevance because of the ways in which it correctly highlights problems of unregulated markets and banking operations, unrestricted pursuit of profit and the dangers of rule by a rich minority, which has reached its apogee today, after four decades of neoliberalism. And because of the ways in which it points towards possible radical democratic reforms in the future
Gorgopotamos and after: Tom Barnes' Greek archive 1942-45
Full text link© 2019 the authorCecil Edward (Tom) Barnes took part in the famous sabotage operation of the Gorgopotamos Bridge in November 1942 as leader of the demolition party. Remaining in Greece after the attack, he rose to become one of two Area Commanders for the Allied Military Mission in Greece. The archive he left behind at his death in 1952 includes over 1000 photos, war diaries, letters and reports, mainly relating to his experiences in Greece. This study demonstrates how these eye-witness records illuminate important aspects of these critical years in modern Greek history including the Gorgopotamos operation itself and the trek across Greece which followed, the “Animals” operation which was conducted to convince Hitler that the Allied landings would take place in Greece and distract his attention from Sicily, surrender overtures from the German commander in Epirus (General Hubert von Lanz), and the so-called first two rounds of Civil War in 1943 and 1944