Implementation of Check-In/Check-Out to Improve Classroom Behavior of At-Risk Elementary School Students.

The multi-tiered school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports offers a comprehensive model for the prevention of behavioral and academic problems in schools. This study evaluated Check-in/Check-out (CICO), a Tier 2 intervention, with three elementary school students from a high-need population, whose problem behavior was hypothesized to be maintained by teacher attention. The study employed a concurrent multiple baseline design across participants, a single case experimental design to examine the effects of CICO on student academic engagement and problem behavior during instruction. Results indicated that implementation of CICO with fidelity by the CICO coordinator, classroom teachers, and parents lead to increased academic engagement and reduced problem behavior in all three students. Tau-U Effect sizes were medium to large for academic engagement and small to medium for problem behavior across students. Data on two students indicate that systematically fading the number of times teachers utilize the daily report card has the potential for promoting maintenance effects. For one student, fading of the coordinator was successful. Social validity assessment indicated high levels of satisfaction with the CICO intervention by the participating students, teachers, and one parent.

Peer sexual harassment, affect, and substance use: Daily level associations among adolescents.

INTRODUCTION: Peer sexual harassment is associated with adolescent substance use at the global level; however, it is unknown whether substance use occurs proximal in time to the sexual harassment experience. This study used daily reports to examine the proximal relations between sexual harassment victimization and affect and substance use. Based on theories of self-medication, we hypothesized that negative affect and substance use (cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana) would be higher than typical on days when sexual harassment occurred relative to nonvictimization days. METHOD: A community sample of 13-16-year-old adolescents (N = 204, 55.4% female) from a metropolitan area in the northeastern United States completed 56 days of online reports assessing experiences with peer sexual harassment, substance use (cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana), and positive and negative affect. RESULTS: Multilevel modeling revealed that experiencing sexual harassment on a given day was associated with higher than typical negative affect on that day, relative to nonvictimization days. The likelihood of cigarette and alcohol use (but not electronic cigarettes, marijuana, or positive affect) was greater on days when sexual harassment occurred. CONCLUSION: Sexual harassment victimization is proximally associated with negative affect and alcohol and cigarette use, suggesting that adolescents may be using substances to cope with sexual harassment victimization. The co-occurrence of sexual harassment with negative affect and substance use points to the need for prevention efforts that conjointly address sexual harassment victimization, coping, and substance use.

A Comprehensive COVID-19 Daily News and Medical Literature Briefing to Inform Health Care and Policy in New Mexico: Implementation Study.

BACKGROUND: On March 11, 2020, the New Mexico Governor declared a public health emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The New Mexico medical advisory team contacted University of New Mexico (UNM) faculty to form a team to consolidate growing information on severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its disease to facilitate New Mexico's pandemic management. Thus, faculty, physicians, staff, graduate students, and medical students created the "UNM Global Health COVID-19 Intelligence Briefing." OBJECTIVE: In this paper, we sought to (1) share how to create an informative briefing to guide public policy and medical practice and manage information overload with rapidly evolving scientific evidence; (2) determine the qualitative usefulness of the briefing to its readers; and (3) determine the qualitative effect this project has had on virtual medical education. METHODS: Microsoft Teams was used for manual and automated capture of COVID-19 articles and composition of briefings. Multilevel triaging saved impactful articles to be reviewed, and priority was placed on randomized controlled studies, meta-analyses, systematic reviews, practice guidelines, and information on health care and policy response to COVID-19. The finalized briefing was disseminated by email, a listserv, and posted on the UNM digital repository. A survey was sent to readers to determine briefing usefulness and whether it led to policy or medical practice changes. Medical students, unable to partake in direct patient care, proposed to the School of Medicine that involvement in the briefing should count as course credit, which was approved. The maintenance of medical student involvement in the briefings as well as this publication was led by medical students. RESULTS: An average of 456 articles were assessed daily. The briefings reached approximately 1000 people by email and listserv directly, with an unknown amount of forwarding. Digital repository tracking showed 5047 downloads across 116 countries as of July 5, 2020. The survey found 108 (95%) of 114 participants gained relevant knowledge, 90 (79%) believed it decreased misinformation, 27 (24%) used the briefing as their primary source of information, and 90 (79%) forwarded it to colleagues. Specific and impactful public policy decisions were informed based on the briefing. Medical students reported that the project allowed them to improve on their scientific literature assessment, stay current on the pandemic, and serve their community. CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 briefings succeeded in informing and guiding New Mexico policy and clinical practice. The project received positive feedback from the community and was shown to decrease information burden and misinformation. The virtual platforms allowed for the continuation of medical education. Variability in subject matter expertise was addressed with training, standardized article selection criteria, and collaborative editing led by faculty.

Examining Benchmarks for the Daily Report Card Intervention in a Therapeutic Recreational Setting.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to (1) examine benchmarks for the benefits of the Daily Report Card (DRC) within a therapeutic recreation setting, that is, the Summer Treatment Program (STP) and (2) explore differences in baseline characteristics and treatment outcomes among optimal and suboptimal responders. Benchmarks were examined for children's DRC target behaviors using standardized mean difference (SMD) effect sizes (ES) across 2-week periods of the STP. METHOD: Participants were 38 children attending an STP. RESULTS: Aside from teasing, all DRC targets showed improvement by the second 2-week period that was sustained through the third 2-week period. Optimal responders demonstrated greater improvement in parent-rated impairment and camp behaviors than suboptimal responders. Some baseline differences between responder groups were found. CONCLUSION: This study provides the first benchmarks for change in DRC targets within a therapeutic recreational setting, offering guidelines for treatment expectations. Implications for clinical decision-making, treatment planning, and future research are discussed.

Outcomes of School-Home Intervention for Attention and Behavior Problems: Teacher Adherence Matters.

This study evaluated the effects of teacher adherence to behavioral treatment on student outcomes. Eighty-four children (ages 7-11) completed a 12-week, collaborative school-home behavioral intervention designed for youth with significant attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms and impairment. Teacher adherence was assessed via school mental health provider (SMHP) ratings and Daily Report Card (DRC) implementation. Pre- and post-treatment outcomes included parent and teacher ratings of organizational skills and problem behaviors, observational measures of classroom task engagement and off task behaviors and report card standard grades. Using multi-level models to account for clustering by school, teacher adherence rated by SMHPs predicted improvement across teacher- and parent-rated organizational skills, parent-rated problem behaviors, and classroom observations of task engagement and off-task behavior. Higher rates of DRC implementation only predicted improvements in parent-rated organizational skills; percentage of days parents signed the DRC only predicted teacher-rated improvement in organizational skills. Post-hoc analyses indicated that teacher adherence and child success with academic targets on the DRC during the first month predicted parent-rated improvement in organizational skills. These results suggest that teacher adherence, particularly when rated by SMHPs, is an important predictor of positive treatment outcomes across both school and home settings. Future research is needed to better understand methods for measuring and optimizing teacher adherence to classroom behavioral interventions.

Maritime field studies: methods for exploring seafarers' physical activity.

In order to determine the health status of seafarers, questionnaires are frequently applied or medical/ /psychological examinations conducted ashore, for example, in the form of medical fitness examinations or simulator training. In such a survey design, the occupational influences and the individual reaction cannot be ascertained. However, these aspects are especially important in the maritime context as employees on board are often exposed to the typical shipping-related stressors in the workplace for many months, both during working hours and during leisure time. In particular, it is assumed that working on board requires a high level of physical effort. Therefore, an exploration of occupational stress and strain, particularly the assessment of the seafarers' physical activity, should preferably be carried out in a comprehensive and realistic way in a maritime field study, i.e. an on-the-job survey directly on board.

Daily School Context of Adolescents' Single Best Friendship and Adjustment.

Research on adolescent best friendships typically focuses on school-based friendships, ignoring important differences between classroom-based and out-of-school friendships. With data from 156 ninth-grade students, many of whom named more than 1 best friend across the 14-day period, the authors examined associations between the daily school context of one's best friendship and adjustment. Benefits of in-grade best friendships were found in academic engagement when a composite was assessed across the 2-week period. Daily findings were more complex and were different between weekends and school days. Out-of-grade best friends were named more frequently on weekends, and on weekend days in which they named an out-of-school best friend participants spent more time with that friend but felt like less of a good student. Implications for our understanding of friendship context and for the measurement of friendship itself are discussed.

Standardization of Disease, Diagnostic and Neurosurgical Procedures for the Investigation of Korean Neurosurgical Epidemiology - Part 2: Clinical Application -

OBJECTIVE: Using the standardization of disease diagnosis of disease, and surgical procedures, the authors have made a clinical application for the analysis of inpatient data with the ability to search for information pertinent for writing of clinical articles. METHODS: A client-server system and database software was developed for networking. For clinical application, a computerized daily report has been developed. Data from Neurosurgical patients admitted at Soonchunyang University Hospital from January to December 1998 were analyzed with this system. Data for clinical articles was obtained using the search mode, information such as orbital infarction syndrome following intracranial aneurysm surgery and epidemiological analysis or geriatric neurosurgical patients. RESULTS: For the daily report it takes approximately 10 minutes to input the patients demographic information, name of disease, diagnosis and surgical procedure. The daily report also numbers and sorts the inpatients according to large categories of diagnosis, reports the ratio between inpatients and operative patients. The annual report that was obtained was very accurate and gave rapid statistics for the one year. By retrospective study for the past 18 years, we calculated the incidence of orbital infarction syndrome following intracranial aneurysm surgery as 1.4%, and also estimated the population of geriatric inpatients as 18.3% by retrospective study. CONCLUSIONS: It has been found to be most useful to make a daily and annual report for tracking and research purposes. For use in clinical articles, it can be possible to do a search of the patients using the standardized disease, diagnosis and neurosurgical procedures application and obtain pertinent information in a timely manner.