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Background In June 2021, the Injury Research Engagement Project (I-REP) was established. In 2022, we preformed focus group analysis with patients/caregiver and researchers that resulted in themes in preferences, motivations, and best practices to increase participation in trauma research. The importance of trust and well-established relationships was common across all groups. In this study, we aimed to further evaluate preferences regarding research procedures and outcomes, and develop a panel for sustained patient engagement.Methods We performed a multiphase, mixed methods study to elicit trauma stakeholders’ perspectives regarding aspects of research. Previously published phase 1 involved focus group analysis. Phase 2 vignette-based surveys and phase 3 panel formation are described here. One survey was completed by patients/caregivers, and the second by trauma researchers. We compared the responses using independent t-tests. This was followed by a webinar and development of an I-REP panel of patients/caregivers.Results 60 patients/caregivers and 114 researchers participated in the online surveys, with completion rates of 68% and 69%, respectively. The majority of patients/caregivers were >45 years, female (66.7%), and >3 years out from their or their family member’s injury (68.6%). The majority of the researchers were >35 years and male (56.2%). Participants were asked to gauge their perceptions of different research scenarios. The analysis identified themes emerging across groups. Several survey findings differed from phase 1, including motivations to participate (payment) and consent preferences (timing, approach). Racial and ethnic demographics of the participants were not collected.Conclusions Engaging trauma stakeholders results in research more relevant to patients’ needs and priorities. Qualitative engagement methods that intentionally include a more diverse population and determining the appropriate format for specific questions may lead to results that are be more generalizable. The educational webinar was well received, and several participants opted to serve as I-REP panelists to collaborate with trauma researchers moving forward.Level of evidence IV.

The complexity of the care environment, the emergent nature, and the severity of patient injury make conducting clinical trauma research challenging. These challenges hamper the ability to investigate potentially life-saving research that aims to deliver pharmacotherapeutics, test medical devices, and develop technologies that may improve patient survival and recovery. Regulations intended to protect research subjects impede scientific advancements needed to treat the critically ill and injured and balancing these regulatory priorities is challenging in the acute setting. This scoping review attempted to systematically identify what regulations are challenging in conducting trauma and emergency research. A systematic search of PubMed was performed to identify studies published between 2007 and 2020, from which 289 articles that address regulatory challenges in conducting research in emergency settings were included. Data were extracted and summarized using descriptive statistics and a narrative synthesis of the results. The review is reported in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines. Most articles identified were editorial/commentary (31%) and published in the USA (49%). Regulatory factors addressed in the papers were categorized under 15 regulatory challenge areas: informed consent (78%), research ethics (65%), institutional review board (55%), human subjects protection (54%), enrollment (53%), exception from informed consent (51%), legally authorized representative (50%), patient safety (41%), community consultation (40%), waiver of informed consent (40%), recruitment challenges (39%), patient perception (30%), liability (15%), participant incentives (13%), and common rule (11%). We identified several regulatory barriers to conducting trauma and emergency research. This summary will support the development of best practices for investigators and funding agencies.

A difficult issue for tutoring programs is low participation, especially at commuter campuses. At the University of Houston-Downtown, this problem seems particularly acute for developmental education (DE) courses. This paper describes the Supplemental Instruction (SI) program at the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) with focus on the role of the SI Leader in accelerated DE math courses. A study was conducted between Fall 2015 and Spring 2017 to evaluate differences in student performance in two courses between sections that were staffed with an SI Leader and those that had no assistance from the SI program. The study found statistically significant differences in grade performance between SI session participants and non-SI participants. The study also found that students passed at a higher rate in accelerated Intermediate Algebra as compared to traditional biweekly sections. Finally, students passed at a higher rate in accelerated sections that were staffed with an SI Leader compared to accelerated sections without an SI Leader.

Religious affiliation and attendance have been shown to affect various facets of mental health, including the willingness to seek mental health assistance; however, little is known about how theological beliefs influence people’s assessments of religious and secular mental health assistance options. Prior research using theological conservatism (beliefs about scripture, sin, and salvation) has conceptualized this perspective as being a schema in which the dimensions operate in tandem. Nonetheless, given the personalized nature of mental health, this study has conceptualized this perspective as three interrelated, but distinctly different dimensions of a religious belief system. Using data from the NORC General Social Survey’s (GSS) 2006 and 2018 waves (N = 2563), this study enlists a fruitful but underutilized approach to gauging perceptions of mental health assistance through the use of situational vignettes that prompt survey respondent appraisals of different sets of circumstances and various possible solutions. This study finds some support for the hypothesis that predicted theological conservatism would be associated with a more favorable view of religious support for mental health as opposed to secular sources of assistance; there was also considerable support for the hypothesis that the salvation dimension of this worldview would exhibit an influence apart from the scripture and sin dimensions. This investigation sheds light on an understudied facet of religion in relation to receptivity toward distinctive forms of mental health treatment and highlights potential directions for future research.