'Believe in me and I will believe in myself', a rural Australian health service learns how to mangan dunguludja ngatan (build strong employment) for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: Australian Aboriginal people have higher rates of unemployment and poorer health than non-Aboriginal Australians. Historical segregation policies that spanned 60 years negatively impacted workforce inclusion. A Victorian regional health service recently developed an Aboriginal Employment Plan (AEP) targeted to reach 2% employment of Aboriginal people by 2020. This study aimed to identify strategies that will build strong Aboriginal employment. METHODOLOGY: A qualitative research protocol was designed. Purposive recruitment of people with a vested interest in the growth of Aboriginal employment at the health service participated in focus groups and individual interviews. RESULTS: Twenty-four people including local Elders, past and present Aboriginal employees, key community stakeholders and health service executives participated. Learnings from the past, the present and strategies for the future emerged from two important stories: (1) the story of a strong group of local Aboriginal people who successfully approached the matron of the hospital in the early 1960s for employment. (2) The story of the 'verandah babies'. DISCUSSION: The history of the health service in question demonstrated the power of the possible with a self-determined group of Aboriginal people, who, in the face of cultural inequity, achieved employment at the health service. The opportunity for healing and a new start was illustrated by the story of women who gave birth on the verandahs due to their exclusion from the main hospital. Today, the 'verandahs' have been replaced with a modern hospital decorated with Aboriginal art, expressing cultural safety and inclusion, presenting fertile ground for strengthening and sustaining Aboriginal employment. CONCLUSION: Eleven strategies have emerged from three themes; safety, equity and pathway, offering mainstream health services insight into how to mangan dunguludja ngatan (build strong employment). Cultural safety can be achieved through acknowledging the past and reconciling that through engaging, partnering and collaborating with the Aboriginal community. Visual representations of culture and participation in celebratory activities engender awareness and understanding. The development of local, flexible career development pathways for Aboriginal people facilitates a 'sense of belonging' to the health service and a dual 'sense of pride' within the community: whereby the Aboriginal person feels proud to represent their community and the community is proud to be represented. Cultural equity is facilitated through mutual learning and reciprocal understanding of difference.

Assessment of osteoporosis-website quality.

INTRODUCTION: The Internet provides great opportunities for patient healthcare education, but poses risks that inaccurate, outdated, or harmful information will be disseminated. Osteoporosis is a topic of great interest to patients, many of whom use the Internet to obtain medical information. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate measurement tools to determine the quality of osteoporosis websites for patients. METHODS: Quality indicators in the categories of content, credibility, navigability, currency, and readability were incorporated into separate evaluation tools for healthcare professionals and for patients. Websites were selected from an Internet search. Interobserver reliability and validity were assessed, and a sample of osteoporosis websites was evaluated by an osteoporosis nurse educator and compared to patient evaluations. RESULTS: For the quality indicators, there was 79% agreement between the osteoporosis nurse educators, 88% agreement between the physician osteoporosis experts, and 71% agreement comparing the osteoporosis nurse educators to the physician osteoporosis experts. Quality scores for evaluated websites ranged from 18-96 (maximum possible=100), with a mean of 66. Websites with Uniform Resource Locator (URL) suffix .com scored significantly lower compared to those with .gov (P<0.05), .edu (P<0.01), and .org (P<0.01). Healthcare professionals and patients were in agreement on the quality of the highest-rated websites, with less agreement for lower-rated websites. CONCLUSIONS: In summary, a tool for measuring the quality of medical websites was developed and evaluated. Significant variability in osteoporosis-website quality was observed. Higher-quality scores were associated with a higher level of search engine match and specific URL suffixes. A validated tool for evaluating medical websites may have value in assisting patients to select high-quality osteoporosis educational information on the Internet, and may encourage website developers to improve the quality of information that is provided.

Attachment styles in older European American and African American adults.

OBJECTIVES: Differential attachment styles have been linked to differential emotion regulation and ability to cope with stress in samples of young adults. There are few data on attachment styles in older adults despite the fact that attachment relationships are said to play a significant role in psychological well-being throughout the life span. The goal of the study was to examine attachment patterns in older adults. METHODS: Participants were 800 community-dwelling older European Americans and African Americans (M = 74 years) living in a large urban community. Attachment measures included the family and friend intimacy subscales from the Network Analysis Profile and the Relationship Scales Questionnaire. RESULTS: In contrast to findings with younger individuals, where the majority of respondents have been found to be secure (i.e., comfortable with closeness and dependency), the majority of the present sample were found to be dismissing/avoidant (i.e., uncomfortable with closeness, compulsively self-reliant). European Americans scored higher than African Americans on attachment security, whereas African Americans scored higher than European Americans on dismissing attachment. However, the assessment of relatedness based on the Network Analysis Profile, where respondents named their closest kin, indicated that African Americans had higher scores than European Americans, though their networks were smaller. DISCUSSION: Age and ethnicity differences appear to reflect cohort effects related to the impact of economic hardship on families earlier this century and racial prejudice. The high rates of dismissing attachment and low rates of secure attachment in this large urban population suggest that these individuals may be at risk for social isolation and poor health as they become older and more frail.

Antisense oligonucleotide sequences targeting the muscarinic type 2 acetylcholine receptor enhance performance in the Morris water maze.

Blocking autoinhibitory muscarinic type 2 (m2) acetylcholine receptors in the central nervous system may increase the release of acetylcholine and improve learning and memory. Antisense oligonucleotides (OGNs) complementary to m2 receptor mRNA were synthesized and evaluated for their efficacy at decreasing receptor number and reversing deficits in a cognitive task. Three antisense OGNs, which decreased m2 receptor binding in NG108-15 cells, were continuously infused into the lateral cerebral ventricle of rats for 6 days at a rate of 0.5 micro1/h and a daily dose of 72 microg. Performance in the Morris water maze was compared to groups receiving control OGNs or vehicle alone. Decrements induced by 0.2 mg/kg of scopolamine i.p. were significantly reversed by 2 of the 3 antisense OGNs. Use of antisense OGNs targeting the m2 receptor may be a new strategy to increase cholinergic neurotransmission and improve learning and memory.

Trisomy 13 (Patau syndrome) with an 11-year survival.

Trisomy 13 is very rare in live-born children. Only a small number of these children survive the first year and very few cases are reported to live longer. Survival time depends partly on the cytogenetic findings--full trisomy 13 or trisomy 13 mosaicism--and partly on the existence of serious somatic malformations. We report on a 11-year-old girl with full trisomy 13. In this case, missing cerebral and cardiovascular malformations probably allowed the long survival.

Infectious diseases in wild animals in Utah. VI. Experimental infection of birds with Rickettsia rickettsii.

Lundgren, D. L. (University of Utah, Salt Lake City), B. D. Thorpe, and C. D. Haskell. Infectious diseases in wild animals in Utah. VI. Experimental infection of birds with Rickettsia rickettsii. J. Bacteriol. 91:963-966. 1966.-Chickens, pigeons, pheasants, sparrow hawks, red-tailed hawks, ravens, magpies, and a marsh hawk were inoculated with Rickettsia rickettsii, the etiological agent of Rocky Mountain spotted fever. The development and persistence of complement-fixing (CF) antibodies and rickettsemias were tested for in these birds. Rickettsiae were recovered from the blood of a number of birds up to the 16th day after inoculation, whereas only the pigeon was found to develop high CF antibody titers. It was concluded that certain species of birds have the potential of contributing to the dissemination of R. rickettsii in nature, and that the CF test is generally unsuitable for serological diagnosis of this organism in birds.