Hospitalized children's perceptions of legacy: 'A symbol of yourself that you leave behind'.

BACKGROUND: Legacy building is a developmentally grounded, trauma-informed and family-centred psychosocial intervention designed to bolster patient and family resilience through collaborative activities and meaning making. However, little is known about the effects of these interventions, partially because of a lack of clarity regarding how children of different developmental levels understand the concept of legacy. Therefore, this study explored the ways in which hospitalized children defined the concept of legacy. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 45 hospitalized children (ages 6 to 18 years) on the acute and critical care units of an academic children's medical centre. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim; transcripts were independently coded by at least two members of the research team using an inductive, line-by-line approach; and codes were categorized and assembled into four overarching themes, resulting in a developmental typology of the concept of legacy. RESULTS: Participants described legacy as (1) concepts, actions or feelings motivated by the future; (2) represented through both tangible and intangible means; (3) informed by personal, educational, experiential and ideological sources; and (4) experienced as good, bad or neutral. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this study demonstrate that hospitalized children are aware of and can articulate an emerging concept of legacy - one that mirrors the progression of cognitive complexity shaped by their unique personal life and healthcare experiences. The developmental typology presented in this study can be a useful starting point for clinicians as they present and facilitate legacy building interventions throughout a child's hospital stay.

Defining Legacy: The Perceptions of Pediatric Health Care Providers.

Legacy building interventions like plaster hand molds are offered in most children's hospitals, yet little is known about how the concept of legacy is understood and described by pediatric health care providers. Therefore, this study explored pediatric health care providers' perceptions of legacy at an academic medical center to ensure that future legacy interventions are evidence-informed and theoretically grounded. An electronic survey featuring three open-ended questions and two multiple-choice questions with an option for free text response was completed by 172 medical and psychosocial health care providers. Analysis yielded four themes: (1) legacy is intergenerational, enduring, and typically associated with end-of-life; (2) legacies articulate the impacts on others for which one is known and remembered; (3) legacies can be expressed through tangible items or intangible qualities; and (4) legacies are informed and generated by family relationships and work experiences. By understanding legacy as a personally and professionally contextualized experience, health care providers can better assess and meet the legacy needs of hospitalized pediatric patients and families.

RORγ Agonists Enhance the Sustained Antitumor Activity through Intrinsic Tc17 Cytotoxicity and Tc1 Recruitment.

Activation of RORγ with synthetic small-molecule agonists has been shown to enhance type 17 effector (CD4+ Th17 and CD8+ Tc17 cells) cell functions and decrease immunosuppressive mechanisms, leading to improved antitumor efficacy in adoptive cell transfer and syngeneic murine tumor models. However, whether Tc17 cells possess intrinsic cytotoxicity and the mechanism they use to lyse target cells is controversial. We report here that Tc17 cells were lytic effectors dependent on perforin and granzyme A. In contrast to Tc1 cells, Tc17 cells resisted activation-induced cell death and maintained granzyme A levels, which conferred the ability to lyse target cells in serial encounters. Thus, although the acute lytic capacity of Tc17 cells could be inferior to Tc1 cells, comparable lysis was achieved over time. In addition to direct lytic activity, Tc17 cells infiltrated early into the tumor mass, recruited other CD8+ T cells to the tumor, and enhanced the survival and lytic capability of these cells during repeated target encounters. Synthetic RORγ agonists further augmented Tc17 survival and lytic activity in vitro and in vivo, controlling tumor growth not only through direct cytotoxicity, but also through recruitment and improved function of other effector cells in the tumor microenvironment, which suggests complementary and cooperate activities for effective immunotherapy.