Evaluating a Food Pantry–Based Intervention to Improve Food Security,Dietary Intake,and Quality in Midwestern Food Pantries

BackgroundVoices for Food was a longitudinal community, food pantry–based intervention informed by the social ecological model, and designed to improve food security, dietary intake, and quality among clients, which was carried out in 24 rural food pantries across 6 Midwestern states.ObjectiveOur objective was to evaluate changes in adult food security, dietary intake, and quality from baseline (2014) to follow-up (2016), and to assess the role of adult food security on dietary outcomes.DesignA multistate, longitudinal, quasi-experimental intervention with matched treatment and comparison design was used to evaluate treatment vs comparison group changes over time and changes in both groups over time.Participants/settingAdult food pantry clients (n = 617) completed a demographic food security survey, and up to three 24-hour dietary recalls at baseline (n = 590) and follow-up (n = 160).InterventionCommunity coaching served as the experimental component, which only “treatment” communities received, and a food council guide and food pantry toolkit were provided to both “treatment” and matched “comparison” communities.Main outcome measuresChange in adult food security status, mean usual intakes of nutrients and food groups, and Healthy Eating Index-2010 scores were the main outcome measures.Statistical analyses performedLinear mixed models estimated changes in outcomes by intervention group and by adult food security status over time.ResultsImprovements in adult food security score (–0.7 ± 0.3; P = .01), Healthy Eating Index-2010 total score (4.2 ± 1.1; P < .0001), and empty calories component score (3.4 ± 0.5; P <.0001) from baseline to follow-up were observed in treatment and comparison groups, but no statistically significant changes were found for adult food security status, dietary quality, and usual intakes of nutrients and food groups between the 2 groups over time. The intervention effect on dietary quality and usual intake changes over time by adult food security status were also not observed.ConclusionsFood pantry clients in treatment and comparison groups had higher food security and dietary quality at the follow-up evaluation of the Voices for Food intervention trial compared with baseline, despite the lack of difference among the groups as a result of the experimental coaching component.     

Using Big Data for Cardiovascular Health Surveillance: Insights From 10.3 Million Individuals in the CANHEART Cohort

BackgroundThe increasing availability of large electronic population-based databases offers unique opportunities to conduct cardiovascular health surveillance traditionally done using surveys. We aimed to examine cardiovascular risk-factor burden, preventive care, and disease incidence among adults in Ontario, Canada—using routinely collected data—and compare estimates with health survey data.MethodsIn the Cardiovascular Health in Ambulatory Care Research Team (CANHEART) initiative, multiple health administrative databases were linked to create a population-based cohort of 10.3 million adults without histories of cardiovascular disease. We examined cardiovascular risk-factor burden and screening and outcomes between 2016 and 2020. Risk- factor burden was also compared with cycles 3 to 5 (2012 to 2017) of the Canadian Health Measures Survey (CMHS), which included 9473 participants across Canada.ResultsMean age of our study cohort was 47.9 ± 17.0 years, and 52.0% were women. Lipid and diabetes assessment rates among individuals 40 to 79 years were 76.6% and 78.2%, respectively, and lowest among men 40 to 49 years of age. Total cholesterol levels and diabetes and hypertension rates among men and women 20 to 79 years were similar to Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS) findings (total cholesterol: 4.80/4.98 vs 4.94/5.25 mmol/L; diabetes: 8.2%/7.1% vs 8.1%/6.0%; hypertension: 21.4%/21.6% vs 23.9%/23.1%, respectively); however, patients in the CANHEART study had slightly higher mean glucose (men: 5.79 vs 5.44; women: 5.39 vs 5.09 mmol/L) and systolic blood pressures (men: 126.2 vs 118.3; women: 120.6 vs 115.7 mm Hg).ConclusionsCardiovascular health surveillance is possible through linkage of routinely collected electronic population-based datasets. However, further investigation is needed to understand differences between health administrative and survey measures cross-sectionally and over time.     

Prevention of alloimmune rejection using XBP1-deleted bone marrow-derived dendritic cells in heart transplantation

1. Download : Download high-res image (173KB)
2. Download : Download full-size image

     

Skin3D: Detection and longitudinal tracking of pigmented skin lesions in 3D total-body textured meshes

We present an automated approach to detect and longitudinally track skin lesions on 3D total-body skin surface scans. The acquired 3D mesh of the subject is unwrapped to a 2D texture image, where a trained objected detection model, Faster R-CNN, localizes the lesions within the 2D domain. These detected skin lesions are mapped back to the 3D surface of the subject and, for subjects imaged multiple times, we construct a graph-based matching procedure to longitudinally track lesions that considers the anatomical correspondences among pairs of meshes and the geodesic proximity of corresponding lesions and the inter-lesion geodesic distances.We evaluated the proposed approach using 3DBodyTex, a publicly available dataset composed of 3D scans imaging the coloured skin (textured meshes) of 200 human subjects. We manually annotated locations that appeared to the human eye to contain a pigmented skin lesion as well as tracked a subset of lesions occurring on the same subject imaged in different poses. Our results, when compared to three human annotators, suggest that the trained Faster R-CNN detects lesions at a similar performance level as the human annotators. Our lesion tracking algorithm achieves an average matching accuracy of 88% on a set of detected corresponding pairs of prominent lesions of subjects imaged in different poses, and an average longitudinal accuracy of 71% when encompassing additional errors due to lesion detection. As there currently is no other large-scale publicly available dataset of 3D total-body skin lesions, we publicly release over 25,000 3DBodyTex manual annotations, which we hope will further research on total-body skin lesion analysis.     

A comprehensive method for calculating total body irradiation

PurposeTo provide means for calculating the dose received by various tissues of the patient, calculate lung shield, and verify received dose using a phantom as a tool for quality assurance for a planned Total Body Irradiation (TBI) procedure in radiotherapy.MethodUsing Microsoft Visual Basic, MATLAB, and Python, a program for Total Body Irradiation Calculation in Radiotherapy (TBICR) is constructed. It uses patient translation and beam zone method for total body irradiation calculations to compute the proper dose received by the patient and determine the lung shield thickness. There are three main user-friendly interfaces in the application. The first one allows the user to upload the TBI topography and estimate the distances needed for TBI calculations. The second one enables the user to count the number of beam zones needed for each point and estimate the effective area (A_eff) for each level. The third interface estimates the velocity required to deliver the relative dose depending on patient separation, Monitor Units (MU), couch speed and travel distance. It allows the user to compute the required lung shield thickness, read any patient's CT DICOM file and acquire dose in any distinct location using machine learning model to predict the dose.ResultsThe TBICR software has been successfully validated by reproducing all of the manual calculations in an exact and timely manner. TBICR generated more accurate results and confirmed the absorbed dose to patient through measurements on Anderson phantom.ConclusionsA computer program for the calculation of total body irradiation (TBI) is described in full. The dose received at each point on the patient, the calculation of lung shield and the determination of the velocity and time required for the couch movement are all made possible using the software. The ease of use, precision, data storage and printing are some important features of the present software.