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Background: Active social and spiritual support for persons with cancer and other serious illnesses has been shown to improve psychological adjustment to illness and quality of life. Objective: To evaluate a community-based support team intervention within the African American community using stakeholder interviews. Methods: Support team members were recruited from African American churches, community organizations, and the social network of individuals with serious illness. Support teams provided practical, emotional, and spiritual care for persons with cancer and other serious illness. The intervention was evaluated using semistructured interviews with 47 stakeholders including those with serious illness, support team volunteers, clergy, and medical providers. Results: Stakeholders report multiple benefits to participation in the support team; themes included "provision of emotional and spiritual support," "extension of support to patients' family," and "support complementary to medical care." Reported barriers to participation were grouped thematically as "desiring to maintain a sense of independence" and "normalcy"; "limitations of volunteers" were also discussed as a barrier to this model of supportive care. Conclusions: This qualitative evaluation provides initial evidence that a support team intervention helped meet the emotional and spiritual needs of African American persons with cancer or other serious illness. Volunteer support teams merit further study as a way to improve quality of life for persons facing serious illness.

The accepted mechanism of toxicity of many organophosphorous and carbamate insecticides is inhibition of acetylcholinesterase activity. In mammals, part of the toxicity assessment usually includes monitoring blood and/or brain acetylcholinesterase inhibition. Other tissues, however, contain cholinesterase activity (i.e. acetyl- and butyryl-cholinesterase), and the inhibition of that activity may be informative for a full appraisal of the toxicity profile. The present group of studies first optimized the variables for extraction and solubilization of cholinesterase activity from various rat tissues and then refined an existing automated method, in order to differentially assess acetyl and butyrylcholinesterase activity in those tissues. All these studies were conducted using tissues from untreated, Long–Evans, adult rats. The first studies determined the effect of Triton X-100 or salt (NaCl) on the extraction and solubilization of cholinesterase activity from retina, brain, striated muscle, diaphragm, and heart: phosphate buffer plus detergent (1% Triton X-100) yielded the highest activity for most tissues. For striated muscle, however, slightly more activity was extracted if the phosphate buffer contained both 1% Triton X-100 and 0.5 M NaCl. It was also noted that the degree of homogenization of some tissues (e.g. striated muscle) must be increased for maximal solubilization of all cholinesterase activity. Subsequent studies developed a method for assessing the level of acetylcholinesterase, butyrylcholinesterase and total cholinesterase activity in these tissues using an automated analyzer. In conclusion, automated assay of acetylcholinesterase activity in cholinergically innervated tissues in the rat (other than brain) is achievable and relatively convenient. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]