Wellness Committee Status and Local Wellness Policy Implementation Over Time.

INTRODUCTION: Local Wellness Policies are school-district documents containing guidelines for schools to promote nutrition/physical activity. In cross-sectional studies, schools with wellness committees are more likely to implement Local Wellness Policies. This prospective cohort study examines associations between wellness committee status over time and change in Local Wellness Policy implementation using a biennial, statewide survey. METHODS: School administrators completed surveys following the 2012-2013 (Wave I) and 2014-2015 (Wave II) school years, including a 17-item Local Wellness Policy implementation scale. Four wellness committee status categories included established (both Waves, 35%); new (Wave II only, 22%); discontinued (Wave I only, 13%); and never (neither Wave, 30%). Linear mixed models conducted in 2017-2018 compared LWP implementation change across status groups, accounting for clustering and school characteristics. RESULTS: Of 1,333 schools, 701 had Wave I data (53%); 748 Wave II (56%); and 441 both (33%). Schools were 69% elementary, 56% suburban, and 35% and 28% had majority (≥75%) African American/Hispanic or low-income student body, respectively. At Wave I, schools with wellness committees (established/discontinued groups) had higher Local Wellness Policy implementation (mean=32.0, SD=11.5, and mean=28.3, SD=11.4, respectively) compared with schools without committees (never/new: mean=15.4, SD=10.7 and mean=17.6, SD=11.4, respectively, F=64.9, p≤0.001). Over time, never and established groups maintained low and high Local Wellness Policy implementation, respectively. Compared with never, new committees increased implementation by 9.9 points (SE=1.8, p<0.001), and discontinued committees decreased by 11.2 (SE=2.1, p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Forming and maintaining wellness committees encourages Local Wellness Policy implementation and should be a recommended strategy for school wellness promotion.

White matter development during late adolescence in healthy males: a cross-sectional diffusion tensor imaging study.

BACKGROUND: Previous MRI studies of healthy children have reported age-related white matter (WM) changes in language and motor areas of the brain. The authors investigated WM development in healthy adolescent males through age-associated changes in fractional anisotropy (FA), radial (lambda( perpendicular)) and axial (lambda(||)) diffusivity. METHODS: Twenty-four healthy adolescent males (mean age=16.6, SD=2.5 years) were divided into two groups with an age split of 16.9 years and underwent a whole-brain voxelwise analysis. RESULTS: At a threshold of p<0.001 and extent threshold of 100 contiguous voxels, several clusters with increased FA and axial diffusivity and no differences in radial diffusivity were observed in older adolescents compared to the younger adolescents in the left arcuate fasciculus, bilateral posterior internal capsule/thalamic radiation, bilateral prefrontal gyrus, right superior temporal gyrus, and posterior corpus callosum. Increased FA and lambda(||) of several clusters along the arcuate fasciculus significantly correlated with a test of language and semantic memory. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest ongoing maturational changes especially in the arcuate fasiculus during late adolescence. Increased FA and lambda(||) with no changes in radial diffusivity may reflect a developmental pattern of reduced tortuousity toward more straightened fibers and/or increased axonal fiber organization during late adolescence.

Mapping the functional anatomy of sentence comprehension and application to presurgical evaluation of patients with brain tumor.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The main clinical indication for functional MR imaging (fMRI) has been to preoperatively map the cortex. Motor paradigms to activate the cortex are simple and robust; however, language tasks show greater variability and difficulty. The aim of this study was to develop a language task with an adequate control task to engage the areas of the posterior temporal lobe responsible for sentence comprehension. METHODS: We performed a cloze paradigm requiring silent reading of a visually presented sentence-completion task based on semantic meaning versus a letter-scanning epoch requiring the completion of nonlinguistic strings or a rest period. Before this task was clinically used in two patients epilepsy and cavernous angioma, its feasibility and accuracy were tested in 14 healthy right-handed participants. RESULTS: Results showed significant activation of the posterior temporal cortex, including a broad area across the posterior left temporal cortex extending into the inferior parietal lobule. When the sentence completion-minus-letter string task was compared with the sentence completion-minus-rest task, increased activation was present in the posterior temporal lobe. CONCLUSION: Decreased significant activation during the sentence completion-minus-rest contrast may be attributed to increased noise from intersubject variability in the rest period. Our results suggest that this task elucidates areas important to reading comprehension in the posterior and inferior temporal regions that verbal fluency and auditory discrimination tasks do not. Data from two cases are summarized to exemplify the input of this task for neurosurgery.