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Purpose: Women and children continue to miss preventive visits. Which neighborhood factors predict inadequate prenatal care (PNC) and well-child visit (WCV) attendance remain unclear. Description: In a retrospective case–control study at Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, mothers with less than 50% adherence or initiation after 5 months gestation were eligible as cases and those with ≥ 80% adherence and initiation before 5 months were eligible as controls. Children in the lowest quintile of adherence were eligible as cases and those with ≥ 80% of adherence were eligible as controls. Cases and controls were randomly selected at a 1:2 ratio and matched on birth month. Covariates were derived from the 2018 American Community Survey. A hotspot was defined as a zip code tabulation area (ZCTA) with a proportion of controls less than 0.66. ZCTAs with fewer than 5 individuals were excluded. Weighted quantile regression was used to determine which covariates were most associated with inadequate attendance. Assessment: We identified 38 and 35 ZCTAs for the PNC and WCV analyses, respectively. Five of 11 hotspots for WCV were also hotspots for PNC. Education and income predicted 51% and 34% of the variation in missed PNCs, respectively; language, education and transportation difficulties explained 33%, 29%, and 17% of the variation in missed WCVs, respectively. Higher proportions of Black residents lived in hotspots of inadequate PCV and WCV attendance. Conclusion: Neighborhood-level factors performed well in predicting inadequate PCV and WCV attendance. The disproportionate impact impact of inadequate PCV and WCV in neighborhoods where higher proportions of Black people lived highlights the potential influence of systemic racism and segregation on healthcare utilization. Significance: What is already known on this subject? Many pregnant women and children continue to miss preventive visits. It is not known what geographic factors contribute to missed visits. What this study adds? Neighborhood-level factors performed well in predicting inadequate prenatal care and well-child attendance. There were disproportionate missed preventive visits in neighborhoods where higher proportions of Black people lived, highlighting the role of systemic racism and segregation on healthcare utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phase shift plays a vital role in the analysis of interference and manipulation of polarization behavior in interferometric techniques. The Sagnac interferometer (SI) is initially studied due to its ability to withstand external environmental factors, including noise, temperature, and other interferences. However, the real impact of these factors is not demonstrated. To address this, comparative studies are conducted involving both mathematical theories, simulations, and physical experiments of Sagnac and Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZI), both utilizing a phase shift. The purpose is to explore the SI advantages over the MZI in a series of experiments with both interferometers to validate the superior configuration. Numerical simulations of the total electric field are performed at the output of these interferometers. By adjusting the orientation of a half-wave plate from 45 and 135 degrees at a step of 90 degrees, the interference fringe pattern and respective signal are generated. These simulation parameters are then implemented experimentally, and the results from both approaches are carefully analyzed and compared. It is shown that the light reflection through the SI setup makes it more tolerant to noise compared to the MZI. Consequently, these results confirm that the image intensity and pixel level of the SI are higher than that of the MZI, potentially leading to greater brightness for the simplified image analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]