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Background: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in remote Australia have initiated bold policies for health-enabling stores. Benchmarking, a data-driven and facilitated 'audit and feedback' with action planning process, provides a potential strategy to strengthen and scale health-enabling best-practice adoption by remote community store directors/owners. We aim to co-design a benchmarking model with five partner organisations and test its effectiveness with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community stores in remote Australia. Methods: Study design is a pragmatic randomised controlled trial with consenting eligible stores (located in very remote Northern Territory (NT) of Australia, primary grocery store for an Aboriginal community, and serviced by a Nutrition Practitioner with a study partner organisation). The Benchmarking model is informed by research evidence, purpose-built best-practice audit and feedback tools, and co-designed with partner organisation and community representatives. The intervention comprises two full benchmarking cycles (one per year, 2022/23 and 2023/24) of assessment, feedback, action planning and action implementation. Assessment of stores includes i adoption status of 21 evidence-and industry-informed health-enabling policies for remote stores, ii implementation of health-enabling best-practice using a purpose-built Store Scout App, iii price of a standardised healthy diet using the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healthy Diets ASAP protocol; and, iv healthiness of food purchasing using sales data indicators. Partner organisations feedback reports and co-design action plans with stores. Control stores receive assessments and continue with usual retail practice. All stores provide weekly electronic sales data to assess the primary outcome, change in free sugars (g) to energy (MJ) from all food and drinks purchased, baseline (July-December 2021) vs July-December 2023. Discussion: We hypothesise that the benchmarking intervention can improve the adoption of health-enabling store policy and practice and reduce sales of unhealthy foods and drinks in remote community stores of Australia. This innovative research with remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities can inform effective implementation strategies for healthy food retail more broadly. Trial registration: ACTRN12622000596707, Protocol version 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vitamin D deficiency is a public health issue, with reports of six- to twenty-five-fold rise in vitamin D testing. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to many chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, depression, and chronic pain. Identifying factors associated with risk of deficiency in individuals with chronic pain will help minimize time and cost. This study aims to examine the factors associated with vitamin D testing, intake, and physician-advised supplementation in individuals with chronic pain. Using a cross-sectional design, data were collected from 465 individuals with chronic pain. These data were analyzed using penalized logistic regression with the LASSO technique. Fifty-seven percent reported being tested for vitamin D, about 40% reported being diagnosed with vitamin D deficiency, and of those who had been tested, 60% reported taking vitamin D supplementation. The findings suggest older age (OR 3.12, CI [1.02, 9.50]) and higher mean pain intensity score (OR 2.02, CI [1.13, 3.59]) increased an individual's chance of being vitamin D deficient. Unemployment or on leave due to pain (OR 1.79, [CI 1.03, 3.11]), part-time employment (OR 1.86, CI [1.02, 3.39]), and being a resident of Australia (OR 2.32, CI [1.13, 4.72]) increased chances of being tested for vitamin D. Being diagnosed with vitamin D deficiency (OR 6.67, CI [2.75, 16.19]), unemployed or on leave due to pain (OR 3.71, CI [1.25, 11.00]), and in part-time employment (OR 2.69, CI [0.86, 8.38]) were associated with physician-advised vitamin D supplementation. Our results may have practical implications, as identifying pretest risk factors may assist in identifying who is at risk of vitamin D deficiency, whom to test, and when to treat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Chronic nonspecific musculoskeletal pain (CNMP) is a complex idiopathic condition that causes significant disruption to patients' lives, their relationships, and functionality. The cause of CNMP is not fully understood, which makes diagnosis and management challenging. As general practitioners (GPs) are central to the management of chronic pain, their perspectives on managing CNMP are important. Purpose: To explore the clinical reasoning GPs use when diagnosing and managing CNMP. Methods: A qualitative study design using focus group discussion was conducted with Australian GPs. Five focus group discussion were conducted across Adelaide. All focus group discussions were audio-recorded, and transcripts were coded and analyzed thematically with the program NVivo. Results: The main themes remained consistent across the five focus group discussion's: the ambiguous cause of CNMP; sex differences; developing the "right strategy"; patient-centered care; and verifying vitamin D levels. Conclusion: The findings show that GPs use a patient-centered approach tailored to individual patients' medical history, physical examination findings, and psychosocial health. There was general concern about low levels of vitamin D in patients with CNMP, and vitamin D supplements were recommended if indicated by a patient's history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The customary medicinal plant knowledge possessed by the Australian Aboriginal people is a significant resource. Published information on it is scattered throughout the literature, in heterogeneous data formats, and is scattered among various Aboriginal communities across Australia, due to a multiplicity of languages. This ancient knowledge is at risk due to loss of biodiversity, cultural impact and the demise of many of its custodians. We have developed the Customary Medicinal Knowledgebase (CMKb), an integrated multidisciplinary resource, to document, conserve and disseminate this knowledge. Description: CMKb is an online relational database for collating, disseminating, visualising and analysing initially public domain data on customary medicinal plants. The database stores information related to taxonomy, phytochemistry, biogeography, biological activities of customary medicinal plant species as well as images of individual species. The database can be accessed at http:/ /biolinfo.org/cmkb. Known bioactive molecules are characterized within the chemoinformatics module of CMKb, with functions available for molecular editing and visualization. Conclusion: CMKb has been developed as a prototype data resource for documenting, integrating, disseminating, analysing multidisciplinary customary medicinal plant data from Australia and to facilitate user-defined complex querying. Each species in CMKb is linked to online resources such as the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS), NCBI Taxonomy, Australia's SpeciesLinks-Integrated Botanical Information System (IBIS) and Google images. The bioactive compounds are linked to the PubChem database. Overall, CMKb serves as a single knowledgebase for holistic plant-derived therapeutics and can be used as an information resource for biodiversity conservation, to lead discovery and conservation of customary medicinal knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae) are flightless birds native to Australia. Emu farming is becoming popular among farmers for business. Emu meat is the best alternative to red meat as it contains low fat and cholesterol. Shelf-life of emu meat is very short, making it more challenging for meat processors and retailers. This study examined the shelf-life of emu meat under ambient (28 ± 2 °C) and refrigeration (5 ± 1 °C) temperatures and, the evolution of qualitative and microbial characteristics over time. Meat stored under different temperatures showed a decrease in extract release volume (ERV), while opposite results were observed for pH, MSC and TBARS. TVB-N content of meat during ambient and refrigerated temperatures increased with aging and ranged from 3.50 to 9.10 mg/100 g, respectively. Total Viable Count (TVC) and differential count were determined. TVC for ambient and refrigerated temperatures ranged from 4.54 ± 0.11 to 7.28 ± 0.26 and 4.54 ± 0.11 to 6.99 ± 0.22 log CFU/g, while yeast and mold count (YMC) were 2.57 ± 0.19 to 4.54 ± 0.20 and 2.57 ± 0.19 to 4.56 ± 0.10 log CFU/g till spoilage. However, Salmonella spp. was not observed. Emu meat stored at ambient temperature spoiled after 18 h and at refrigerated temperature it spoiled after 120 h, showing that refrigerated meat stays fresh longer than ambient meat. • Emu meat shelf-life decreased at ambient condition compared to refrigerated condition. • High pH increases microbial count of emu meat at different aging and temperature. • Salmonella spp was not present in emu meat samples stored at different temperatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worldwide, environmental conservation directives are mandating greater inclusion of Indigenous people and their knowledge in the management of global ecosystems. Colonised countries such as the United States of America, New Zealand and Australia have responded with an array of policy and programs to enhance Indigenous involvement; however, balancing Indigenous and non-Indigenous priorities and preferred management methods is a substantial challenge. Using Australia as a case study, we investigate past documentation and use of Indigenous biocultural knowledge (IBK) and assess the main contributions to ecosystem science and management. Focussing on the terrestrial environment, this innovative paper presents an integrated review of IBK documentation (IBKD) by conducting a spatial, temporal and content analysis of the publically available literature. A spatial analysis of the place-based documents identified Australian IBKD hotspots, gaps and opportunities for further collaboration. Sixty percent of IBKD has occurred off the Indigenous estate with only 19% of the total coinciding with current Indigenous Protected Areas. We also found that IBKD hotspots were different to Australia’s biodiversity hotspots suggesting opportunity for development of integrated biological and cultural hotspots. A temporal analysis of IBKD showed exponential growth since the 1970s and typical involvement of non-Indigenous researchers. Indigenous authorship remained negligible until the 1990s when there was an obvious increase, although only 14% of IBKD to date has acknowledged Indigenous authorship. Working through Australia’s broad biological conservation priorities, we demonstrate how IBK has and can be used to inform research and management of biodiversity, threatened species, aquatic ecosystems, fire, invasive species, and climate change. We also synthesise documented suggestions for overcoming cross-cultural awareness and communication challenges between Indigenous people and biologists, environmental managers and policy makers. Lastly, we suggest that inclusion of both tangible and philosophical engagement of Indigenous people in national conservation agendas may promote more holistic socio-ecological systems thinking and facilitate greater progress towards addressing the Indigenous engagement directive of international conservation agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]