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Black college students continue to face the specter of anti-Blackness which creates additional barriers to success and flourishing in higher education. This study investigates how instructors in higher education can provide racial equity to Black students in AANAPISI/HSI classrooms through counterspaces. We use culturally relevant pedagogy to investigate the experiences of 21 Black college students at an AANAPISI/HSI to understand better how higher education instructors can utilize counterspaces, places where Black college students can challenge dominant discourses and create a collegial learning environment. We identified three counterspace themes: (1) Mitigate Eurocentric Pedagogy, (2) Employ Black and Critical Scholarship, and (3) Foster Black Excellence Zones. Implications provide educators with ways to enact meaningful support both academically and socially to Black-identifying students in college classrooms.

Abstract The approach to patients with high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma (SMM) varies among clinicians; while some advocate early intervention, others reserve treatment at progression to multiple myeloma (MM). We aimed to describe the myeloma-defining events (MDEs) and clinical presentations leading to MM diagnosis among SMM patients seen at our institution. We included 406 patients diagnosed with SMM between 2013–2022, seen at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN. The 2018 Mayo 20/2/20 criteria were used for risk stratification. Median follow-up was 3.9 years. Among high-risk patients who did not receive treatment in the SMM phase (n = 71), 51 progressed by last follow-up; the MDEs included: bone lesions (37%), anemia (35%), hypercalcemia (8%), and renal failure (6%); 24% met MM criteria based on marrow plasmacytosis (≥60%) and/or free light chain ratio (>100); 45% had clinically significant MDEs (hypercalcemia, renal insufficiency, and/or bone lesions). MM diagnosis was made based on surveillance labs/imaging(45%), testing obtained due to provider suspicion for progression (14%), bone pain (20%), and hospitalization/ED presentations due to MM complications/symptoms (4%). The presentation was undocumented in 14%. A high proportion (45%) of patients with high-risk SMM on active surveillance develop end-organ damage at progression. About a quarter of patients who progress to MM are not diagnosed based on routine interval surveillance testing.

Background Commercial determinants of health (CDoH) represent a critical frame for exploring undue corporate and commercial influence over health. Power lenses are integral to understanding CDoH. Impacts of food, alcohol, and gambling industries are observable CDoH outcomes. This study aims to inform understanding of the systems and institutions of commercial and/or corporate forces working within the Australian food, alcohol, and gambling industries that influence health and well-being, including broader discourses materialised via these systems and institutions.Methods Twenty semi-structured interviews were conducted with key-informants on Australian public policy processes. Interviewees were current and former politicians, political staff members, regulators and other public servants, industry representatives, lobbyists, journalists, and researchers with expertise and experience of the Australian food, alcohol, and/or gambling industries. Interviews sought participants’ perceptions of Australian food, alcohol, and gambling industries’ similarities and differences, power and influence, relationships, and intervention opportunities and needs.Results Strategies and tactics used by Australian food, alcohol and gambling industries are similar, and similar to those of the tobacco industry. They wield considerable soft (eg, persuasive, preference-shaping) and hard (eg, coercive, political, and legal/economic) power. Perceptions of this power differed considerably according to participants’ backgrounds. Participants framed their understanding of necessary interventions using orthodox neoliberal discourses, including limiting the role of government, emphasising education, consumer freedom, and personal choice.Conclusion Food, alcohol, and gambling industries exercise powerful influences in Australian public policy processes, affecting population health and well-being. Per Wood and colleagues’ framework, these manifest corporate, social, and ecological outcomes, and represent considerable instrumental, structural, and discursive power. We identify power as arising from discourse and material resources alike, along with relationships and complex industry networks. Addressing power is essential for reducing CDoH harms. Disrupting orthodox discourses and ideologies underpinning this should be a core focus of public health (PH) advocates and researchers alike.

Background In many sectors of the economy, for-profit business corporations hold excessive power relative to some governments and civil society. These power imbalances have been recognised as important contributors to many pressing and complex societal challenges, including unhealthy diets, climate change, and widening socio-economic inequalities, and thus pose a major barrier to efforts to improve public health and health equity. In this paper, we reviewed potential actions for addressing excessive corporate power.Methods We conducted a scoping review of diverse literature (using Scopus, Web of Science, HeinOnline, and EBSCO databases), along with expanded searches, to identify state and collective actions with the potential to address excessive corporate power. Actions were thematically classified into overarching strategic objectives, guided by Meagher’s ‘3Ds’ heuristic, which classifies actions to curb corporate power into three groups: dispersion, democratisation, and dissolution. Based on the actions identified, we proposed two additional strategic objectives: reform and democratise the global governance of corporations, and strengthen countervailing power structures.Results We identified 178 documents that collectively cover a broad range of actions to address excessive corporate power. In total, 18 interrelated strategies were identified, along with several examples in which aspects of these strategies have been implemented.Conclusion The proposed framework sheds light on how a diverse set of strategies and actions that seek to address excessive corporate power can work synergistically to change the regulatory context in which corporations operate, so that broader societal goals, including health and equity, are given much greater prominence and consideration vis-à-vis powerful corporate interests.

Taxes on sugary drinks are often used to encourage companies to reformulate their products to reduce the sugar content. This comment discusses how product reformulation can strengthen the market and political power of the food industry, and questions whether these political risks outweigh the public health benefits. It proposes the term ‘corporate harm minimisation’ to describe the strategic adaptation of a public health harm reduction strategy to align with company or industry goals. It concludes by reflecting on the other ways that corporations influence health beyond the production and marketing of ‘unhealthy commodities,’ and why public health actors must explore other strategies to challenge powerful corporations.

Abstract Measures of muscle and adipose tissue mass have been associated with outcomes in several malignancies, but studies in multiple myeloma (MM) are inconsistent. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between muscle and fat areas and radiodensity, and overall survival (OS) in patients with newly diagnosed MM. We included 341 patients diagnosed with MM from 2010–2019 who had an 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography at diagnosis. A cross-sectional image at the third lumbar vertebrae was segmented into muscle and fat components. Median follow up was 5.7 years. There was no association between sarcopenia and baseline disease characteristics or OS. Low muscle radiodensity was associated with higher disease stage, anemia, and renal failure. OS was 5.6 vs. 9.0 years in patients with muscle radiodensity in the lower vs. middle/upper tertiles, respectively (P = 0.02). High subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) radiodensity was associated with higher stage, anemia, thrombocytopenia, hypercalcemia, renal failure, and high LDH. OS was 5.4 years vs. not reached in patients with SAT radiodensity in the upper vs. middle/lower tertiles, respectively (P = 0.001). In conclusion, sarcopenia was not associated with OS in MM patients. High SAT radiodensity and low muscle radiodensity were associated with advanced disease stage and adverse laboratory characteristics.

Recent reports of hookworm infection in Alabama, USA, has prompted surveillance in Mississippi, given the states’ similar environmental conditions. We collected stool specimens from 277 children in Rankin County, Mississippi. Kato–Katz microscopic smear, agar plate culture, and quantitative PCR indicated no soil-transmitted helminths. Nevertheless, further surveillance in other high-risk Mississippi counties is warranted.

The diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in children and the need to distinguish between subtypes (Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC)) requires lengthy investigative and invasive procedures. Non-invasive, rapid, and cost-effective tests to support these diagnoses are needed. Faecal volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are distinctive in IBD. VOC profiles can be rapidly determined using a gas chromatography–sensor device (OdoReader©). In an inception-cohort of children presenting with suspected IBD, we directly compared the diagnostic fidelity of faecal calprotectin (FCP, a non-specific protein marker of intestinal inflammation) with OdoReader© VOC profiles of children subsequently diagnosed with IBD with matched controls diagnosed with other gastrointestinal conditions. The OdoReader© was 82% (95% confidence interval 75–89%) sensitive and 71% (61–80%) specific but did not outperform FCP (sensitivity 93% (77–99%) and specificity 86% (67–96%); 250 µg/g FCP cut off) in the diagnosis of IBD from other gastrointestinal conditions when validated in a separate sample from the same cohort. However, unlike FCP and better than other similar technologies, the OdoReader© could distinguish paediatric CD from UC (up to 88% (82–93%) sensitivity and 80% (71–89%) specificity in the validation set) and justifies further validation in larger studies. A non-invasive test based on VOCs could help streamline and limit invasive investigations in children.

For over 10 years, and prior to the release of the 2020 NASP standards, school psychology faculty at California State University, Long Beach have sought to broaden the training and preservice experiences of our students in consultation and systems change. The coauthors sought and obtained federal funding to provide scholarships for our students to engage in extensive readings, discussions, and fieldwork activities that went beyond our core program to increase students' skill development and confidence in promoting a multitiered system of support (MTSS). Simultaneously, we sought to recruit, retain, and graduate more diverse school psychology students. Our nontraditional training and recruitment activities as well as the short- and long-term outcomes of this project are described. The results of this initiative include a significant increase in diverse school psychologists, curriculum changes to incorporate training grant opportunities for all program students, and alumni who report competence in engaging in consultation at the systems-level.

The barriers for Black doctoral students are a long-term higher education issue that needs to be addressed and considered seriously as an academic pipeline issue. Anti-Blackness in higher education admissions and curriculum not only harms educational democracy but directly affects the limited number of Black doctoral students. Black doctoral students are often "the only" in their programs and may contend with microaggressions in addition to their wages not meeting their basic needs. Faculty mentors can employ critically reflexive (co-)mentoring to develop meaningful relationships with Black doctoral students. Faculty mentors can improve the retention and graduation of Black doctoral students by validating them.

Kinetic energy is usually the entry point for the study of energy in physics and is often perceived as unproblematic. We present evidence, however, that some learners who seem to have accepted the concept, from elementary school students to college physics majors and in-service teachers, nevertheless do not consistently attribute kinetic energy to moving objects that are being pushed or carried by other objects. Factors that seem to contribute to this idea include that the passive object is not moving "on its own"; the lack of attributes, like wheels, that suggest the ability to move on its own; and the perception that it would stop immediately if the driving object were to stop or disappear. We interpret these observations in terms of a model of a conceptual change via assimilation rather than accommodation and suggest some possible instructional implications.

This case study investigated the transformative learning outcomes for undergraduate students enrolled in two sociology courses taught by The State University of New York at Albany, at an urban ecoliteracy environmental justice center. Authors conducted participant observation and gathered data from surveys, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups with university student, high school, and community stakeholders. In the short-term, sociology students exhibited an increased interest in civic engagement, an heightened awareness of community and environmental issues, and committed to adopting pro-environmental behaviors. Transformative learning outcomes were documented in relation to affirming/changes in longer-term academic, life, and career paths. This research contributes to the fields of urban environmental education and environmental sociology that advocate for a better understanding of the outcomes of programs that facilitate youth mentoring and experiential ecojustice pedagogies that emphasize social justice development, issues of power and justice, and the enhancement of civic engagement, action competencies, and critical consciousness.

Context: Unlearning is a critical component of evidence-based practice, yet research related to its role in athletic training practice is limited. Objective: To explore athletic trainers' (ATs') perceptions of and experiences with unlearning. Design: Cross-sectional. Setting: Online survey with open-ended questions. Patients or Other Participants: Seven hundred fifteen of 6925 ATs accessed the survey (access rate = 10.3%) with 640 ATs completing it (completion rate = 94%). Main Outcome Measure(s): We distributed a survey consisting of 8 to 10 demographic questions, 1 Likert-scale item on familiarity with unlearning, and 4 to 5 open-ended questions. Descriptive statistics summarize demographic information. Open-ended data were analyzed using the consensual qualitative research approach. Respondents who self-reported familiarity with unlearning were asked to described its meaning. To ensure data quality, these responses were compared with definitions of unlearning by 2 research team members. If consensus was reached that a participant's understanding of unlearning aligned with the definitions, the remaining responses from that participant were included in the qualitative data analyses reported in this manuscript. Results: Most respondents were minimally or not at all familiar with unlearning (n = 505/652, 77%). Approximately 46% (n = 181/391; 120 clinicians, 61 educators) accurately described the meaning of unlearning. Analysis of open-ended responses yielded 2 themes: "barriers to unlearning" and "facilitators of unlearning." Reported barriers were intrinsic and extrinsic in nature and involved key stakeholders that frequently interact with ATs. Facilitators of unlearning included continued education, mentorship and team mindset, resources and evidence, and stakeholder education. Conclusions: Respondents were largely unfamiliar with unlearning despite its role in promoting evidence-based practice. Continued education for ATs and relevant stakeholders is needed and may be accomplished through the creation and dissemination of accessible resources that highlight knowledge and skills that should be unlearned. These educational efforts may help to normalize unlearning in athletic training practice to continually improve the delivery of patient care.

When teaching practice changes due to unwelcome forces, like COVID-19, there still could be pedagogical innovations worth keeping in post-pandemic toolboxes. This leads to the questions: What teaching practices from the pandemic do we want to keep or modify? What lessons learned from the pandemic should we consider keeping when moving forward? Market research for online education in Australia predicts that the blending of face-to-face and online teaching modes will not evaporate after the pandemic, and in the US, educators face similar expectations to blend learning modalities to reach students with diverse needs and overcome challenges of remote geographies. The authors describe two teaching practices adopted for remote teaching of US college students during the pandemic. They reflect on these practices by examining student survey data and discuss their decision-making about modifications for the post-pandemic era.