White children far more likely to receive CT scans than Hispanic, African-American children

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• White children far more likely to receive CT scans than Hispanic, African-American children
• AAP President provides update on agenda for children
• University of Oklahoma team awarded $10.7 million contract to develop educational video game for training intelligence analysts
• New book explores the making of a humanitarian leader
• SUNY receives $4.3 million for research in neuroscience, pediatric pharmacology and vision
• Terry Fox Research Institute aims to change diagnosis and management of ovarian cancer worldwide
• USAID awards cooperative agreement to CONRAD for multipurpose prevention study
• $9.8 million program aims to change how science is taught in Buffalo schools
• Direct access to physical therapists associated with lower costs and fewer visits, new study says
• Industrial design students, professor earn honors at National Safety Conference

White children far more likely to receive CT scans than Hispanic, African-American children Posted: 17 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) White children are far more likely to receive cranial computed tomography (CT) scans in an emergency department following minor head trauma than are African-American or Hispanic children, a study by researchers at UC Davis has found. The study findings do not indicate that CT scans are underused in treating African-American and Hispanic children, the researchers said. Rather, they suggest that white children may receive too many CT scans -- and for that reason may be exposed to unnecessary radiation. The study results were presented today at the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) Scientific Assembly by JoAnne E. Natale, associate professor of pediatric critical care medicine at the UC Davis School of Medicine and the study's lead author. The higher rates of cranial CT scan use in children at low risk for clinically significant brain injury may represent overuse in white children, leading to increased radiation exposure and health-care costs, Natale said. Cranial computed tomography imaging commonly is used to determine the severity of injury in children and adults in emergency departments. Cranial CT scans use X-rays to image the cranium, brain, eye sockets and sinuses. However, in children with mild head trauma, earlier studies have found that fewer than 10 percent of CT scans identify a traumatic brain injury. CT scans use a significant amount of radiation and thus increase the risk of potential subsequent malignancies. For the current study, researchers examined data from children whose race and/or ethnicity was Hispanic, non-Hispanic African American, or non-Hispanic white. Although all of the children had minor head trauma, some could be categorized as being at greater risk of a clinically significant injury in which a CT scan may be indicated. Natale, who also is the medical director of the UC Davis Children's Hospital Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, said that the study utilized data compiled for a seminal... http://www.rxpgnews.com

AAP President provides update on agenda for children Posted: 15 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) BOSTON -- O. Marion Burton, MD, FAAP, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) will address attendees at 10:30 a.m. ET on Saturday,Oct. 15, 2011, at the AAP National Conference and Exhibition in Boston. Dr. Burton will outline AAP efforts to advance its agenda for children and reflect on his year as AAP president. In his talk, Dr. Burton will focus on maintaining the advances made, while not losing ground as budget cuts threaten to dismantle prior successes. Hard-won victories related to environmental and medical product protections for children are being challenged. Work remains to ensure inappropriate gag laws do not interfere with pediatricians discussing health and safety issues with families. Gains such as new immunization administration codes that enable pediatricians to recover the costs of delivering multi-component vaccines could be endangered as budgets are slashed and Medicaid reimbursements are challenged. The Affordable Care Act, which the AAP supported, is under scrutiny as more beneficiaries are added and costs shifted to state governments low on funds. Physicians and government agencies must continue to work together to ensure the improvements made in the infrastructure of children's health care and safety remain intact, Dr. Burton said. Dr. Burton will also discuss AAP international efforts, and particularly the Helping Babies Breathe initiative, which is saving newborns in resource-limited countries and helping move toward the Millennium goal of reducing deaths of children under age 5 by two-thirds by 2015. Dr. Burton will also address AAP's leading role in the evolving science of well child care and health supervision. The AAP has created strategic priorities around early brain and child development and epigenetics, and is leading the efforts of the Head Start National Center on Health cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Head Start. The AAP... http://www.rxpgnews.com

University of Oklahoma team awarded $10.7 million contract to develop educational video game for training intelligence analysts Posted: 14 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A University of Oklahoma team has been awarded a $10.7 million multi-year contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory in support of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity to develop an educational video game or serious game to train intelligence analysts and measure their proficiency in recognizing and mitigating the cognitive biases that affect intelligence analysis. The objective of the game is to improve accuracy of credibility assessments and mitigate cognitive biases of future intelligence analysts. The game is a learning system where players must counteract threats to American interests by using the intelligence data at hand without allowing their cognitive biases to cloud their judgment. It is a great tribute to the strength of our faculty that OU was awarded this competitive contract, said OU President David L. Boren. It provides the opportunity for the University to participate in research that can have an impact to our national security and our intelligence capability. Norah Dunbar, associate professor in the OU Department of Communication and the Center for Applied Social Research, is the primary investigator responsible for project oversight. Scott Wilson, associate director for Innovative Technologies at the OU K20 Center, will oversee development of the game called Intelligence Crisis: Codename MACBETH, which stands for Mitigating Analyst Cognitive Bias by Eliminating Task Heuristics. Through game play, the system will highlight the use of a bias, such as confirmation bias, then provide the player with information on and opportunities to practice bias mitigation techniques based on the theoretical model, the Heuristic-Systematic Model of information processing. To test the success of the OU game, the team proposed an experimental design that will test the effectiveness of the game in reducing biases. Matthew Jensen, assistant professor of management information systems in the Michael F.... http://www.rxpgnews.com

New book explores the making of a humanitarian leader Posted: 14 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) How do seemingly ordinary people become the kind of leaders who have a meaningful and often lasting impact on the lives of those in need? Frank LaFasto, Ph.D., and Carl Larson, Ph.D., studied 31 humanitarian leaders from a range of nations, cultures, and generations and discovered that they followed a very similar path. The authors share their insights and the stories of these remarkable people in a new book, The Humanitarian Leader in Each of Us: 7 Choices That Shape a Socially Responsible Life (SAGE Publications). Based on their five years of research, LaFasto and Larson trace a path of seven pivotal choices. The path begins internally and reaches outward. It starts with leveraging one's own life experiences to connect deeply and personally with a need in society and culminates in leading the way for others by creating energy and passion for a worthwhile cause. The authors also identified such choices as experiencing a sense of fairness, believing we can matter, having a predisposition to respond, and persevering as key to becoming the kind of leader who takes charge of making a positive difference in the lives of others. The leaders we interviewed all began with self-awareness, said LaFasto. They made self-awareness the starting point for being attuned to the needs of others. Then their openness to an opportunity to help was the pivotal choice that turned this awareness into action. The authors also discovered that one key choice is counterintuitive. Although people are often told to think big, the leaders in this study began their efforts by taking small steps, often without a clear sense of where those steps would lead. Leadership tends to have a 'larger than life,' high-profile image, said LaFasto. But that isn't the only form of leadership. We found in our research that humanitarian leadership often begins in relatively lonely moments, with small acts of great courage. In this important book, LaFasto and... http://www.rxpgnews.com

SUNY receives $4.3 million for research in neuroscience, pediatric pharmacology and vision Posted: 14 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The State University of New York has received two grants totaling more than $4.3 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support neuroscience and pediatric pharmacology and vision research as part of SUNY REACH, a collaborative research network of SUNY's four academic health centers and the College of Optometry. The lead researchers on both grants will be headquartered at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. SUNY REACH (Research Excellence in Academic Health) is comprised of SUNY Downstate, University at Buffalo, College of Optometry, Stony Brook University School of Medicine, and Upstate Medical University. The first grant, $3.7 million from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development will support research into Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), a condition that contributes to vision loss (and in the most serious cases, blindness) in premature infants. Jacob V. Aranda, MD, PhD, professor or pediatrics and director of neonatalogy at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and principal investigator on the grant, notes that the condition affects 50 to 80 percent of preterm babies born weighing less than 1250 grams. Dr. Aranda's research will help define the molecular events that lead to ROP and develop drug strategies to prevent it. Dr. Aranda and Kay Beharry, director of the Perinatal-Neonatal Pharmacology Translational Lab at SUNY Downstate, along with Dr. William Jusko at Buffalo, will provide overall administration of the complex project, with two pre-clinical science protocols and one clinical protocol. These two protocols will focus on the hypothesis that caffeine and ibuprofen, used together, can be used to regulate the overgrowth of vessels that lead to ROP in animal models. Once studies on the safety, efficacy, and timing of intervention are completed, randomized clinical testing will begin at multiple clinical sites. In addition to Downstate, these will... http://www.rxpgnews.com

Terry Fox Research Institute aims to change diagnosis and management of ovarian cancer worldwide Posted: 13 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) MONTREAL, QUE. -- Women throughout the world will benefit from a new, pan-Canadian Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI) initiative that aims to change the way in which ovarian cancer is diagnosed and managed. TFRI and the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer are providing a total of $5-million in funding for a five-year, multi-site Ovarian Cancer Pan-Canadian Program called COEUR. The program will identify new biomarkers to predict and treat this relatively rare but deadly form of cancer, which will result in the use and application of current and new drugs more effectively for patients. Ovarian cancer is the fifth-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the Western world. One in every four women diagnosed with this form of cancer is resistant to standard first-line chemotherapy. Through TFRI, leading ovarian cancer researchers and clinicians across Canada have joined forces to develop a made-in-Canada solution to this global clinical problem facing cancer doctors. The team's work will result in a new stratification system for ovarian carcinoma subtypes and will help clinicians better determine what treatment will work best for each patient. Patients who do not respond to standard therapy can be directed to clinical trials where new therapies are being validated. This project will change the way in which pathologists, physicians and clinicians think about ovarian cancer. It will help us to classify and sub-divide ovarian cancer into different diseases through molecular profiling. A better understanding of the disease will enable the development and delivery of more personalized care for the patient, which is both better and more efficacious, says TFRI President and Scientific Director Dr. Victor Ling. The program brings together expertise and resources from across the country to improve the lives of women in Canada and beyond who are diagnosed with ovarian cancer, says Dr. Stuart Edmonds, Director of the Research... http://www.rxpgnews.com

USAID awards cooperative agreement to CONRAD for multipurpose prevention study Posted: 13 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Arlington, VA -- USAID awarded CONRAD a five year project with a $2 million ceiling to focus on testing the safety and effectiveness of the SILCS diaphragm, the one-size-fits-most contraceptive barrier, combined with tenofovir gel -- the only topical product proven to prevent the acquisition of HIV and Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV). If shown to be safe, effective and acceptable, this combination of products would provide women with a non-hormonal contraceptive method under their own control that also delivers protection against HIV and HSV. This award supports Aim 2 of USAID's Biomedical Research for Reproductive Health: to fast track development of reproductive health technologies that can simultaneously prevent unintended pregnancy, HIV, and other sexually transmitted infections. Results of the SILCS diaphragm contraceptive effectiveness study were announced last month and showed effectiveness rates similar to that of a traditional fitted diaphragm. The benefits of this single size diaphragm include eliminating the need for a pelvic exam to fit the diaphragm, and meeting the contraceptive needs of women unable or unwilling to use a hormonal method. In a recent landmark effectiveness trial conducted by CAPRISA in South Africa, tenofovir gel was shown to reduce the risk of HIV infection by 39% and HSV by 51%. Confirmatory studies of the gel are ongoing and will support regulatory approval. Dr. Henry Gabelnick, CONRAD's Executive Director said, We see an urgent need for multipurpose prevention technologies, including non-hormonal methods that are easy to use, and that can be combined with a product that reduces the risk of HIV and HSV infection. This type of reproductive health technology is particularly needed in areas of the world where women need easy to use methods that are within their control. Almost half of all pregnancies worldwide, estimated to be over 100 million annually, are unintended. In 2008, this... http://www.rxpgnews.com

$9.8 million program aims to change how science is taught in Buffalo schools Posted: 13 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A coalition of regional partners has received $9.8 million from the National Science Foundation to expand a promising, teacher-focused initiative that aims to change how science is taught in Buffalo Public Schools. The five-year program, led by the University at Buffalo, Buffalo Public Schools, Buffalo State College and the Buffalo Museum of Science, is called the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Partnership (ISEP). The big idea behind the initiative is to throw the community's diverse resources behind reforming science education, primarily by improving teachers' skills and knowledge. Through ISEP, science and math teachers at 12 middle and high schools in the Buffalo Public Schools district will receive a wealth of new professional development opportunities. Chief among them: the chance to spend a summer conducting interdisciplinary research with local scientists. These experiences will encourage educators to add interdisciplinary content to lessons, and to devote more class time to activities like experiments that emphasize problem-solving. This approach to teaching makes science more exciting for students, challenging them to think broadly and arrive at answers on their own. Throughout the school year, ISEP teachers will receive support and mentoring from professional learning communities that include fellow teachers, museum educators, Buffalo State College and UB faculty members, UB students, and local scientists and engineers. Meeting weekly, these networks will give teachers a place to swap ideas and seek advice as they develop lesson plans emphasizing scientific inquiry and big-picture, interdisciplinary ideas. Ultimately, the goal is to improve teacher retention and student success in a high-needs district where performance in science and math falls well below the state average. If it works, ISEP will raise the number of students finishing high school with an interest in science, technology,... http://www.rxpgnews.com

Direct access to physical therapists associated with lower costs and fewer visits, new study says Posted: 13 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A new study suggesting that the role of the physician gatekeeper in regard to physical therapy may be unnecessary in many cases could have significant implications for the US health care system, says the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). The study, published ahead of print September 23 in the journal Health Services Research (HSR), reviewed 62,707 episodes of physical therapy using non-Medicare claims data from a Midwest insurer over a 5-year period. Patients who visited a physical therapist directly for outpatient care (27%) had fewer visits and lower overall costs on average than those who were referred by a physician, while maintaining continuity of care within the overall medical system and showing no difference in health care use in the 60 days after the physical therapy episode. The study is noteworthy because services delivered by physical therapists account for a significant portion of outpatient care costs in the United States, according to the study, and some health insurance plans require a physician referral for reimbursement of these services. In addition, although 46 states and the District of Columbia now allow some form of direct access to physical therapists, some of them nonetheless impose restrictions if patients have not been referred by a physician. Physical therapists have long known that direct access to our services is safe and effective, said APTA President R. Scott Ward, PT, PhD. The elimination of referral requirements and other restrictions has been a priority of APTA for decades. This study provides further evidence that direct access to physical therapists could go a long way toward helping to make health care more affordable and accessible for all. We encourage researchers and insurers to continue to further investigate this important issue that could have a profound impact on patient care. When patients choose direct access to a physical therapist, it does not mean the end of... http://www.rxpgnews.com

Industrial design students, professor earn honors at National Safety Conference Posted: 13 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Many on-the-job injuries are preventable. That fact stuck in the minds of University of Houston industrial design students as they prepared projects focused on workplace safety. Recently, three of these projects took top honors during the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's (NIOSH) Prevention Through Design conference in Washington, D.C. Their mentor, EunSook Kwon also was recognized at this conference. Kwon, an associate professor in UH's Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture, received the conference's Excellence in Teaching award. The best part of being an educator is seeing your students receive awards like this, Kwon said. It was a great moment. For me, my award was only made possible through their achievements. The student grand prize went to Spinal Cord, a design for a safer, more efficient extension cord to be used on construction sites. Designed by industrial design students Jennie Macedo, Ya-Han Chen and Juan Jimenez, Spinal Cord proposes a safer, durable, easy-to-use extension cord. In creating a practical design, students researched traditional extension cords used on contemporary work sites. Their findings included statistics from the U.S. Consumer Safety Commission, which indicated that 50 percent of fractures, lacerations or sprains at work sites are caused by tripping over extension cords. They also observed a lack of resilience in traditional cords, which caused breaks, tears or exposed wires. They also observed these cords' tendency to become easily tangled. Macedo, Chen and Jimenez developed a cord design that is segmented to retain its original structure (avoiding tangling), easily rolls into a circular carrying case and is resistant to damage or strains. Also, users would be able to only extend portions of the cord from the case as opposed to unraveling all of it. The cord would remain flat on the ground without coiling up. Among the other finalists was Beehave, a design for a modified... http://www.rxpgnews.com

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