New findings reveal koalas’ health risks following bushfires, will aid in future rescue efforts

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MORRIS ANIMAL FOUNDATION

 

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EVIE DUNSTAN ASSISTS WITH A PROJECT, WHICH ANALYZED DATA FROM THE KANGAROO ISLAND BUSHFIRE. 

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CREDIT: NATASHA SPEIGHT

DENVER/Jan. 9, 2024 – A new scientific publication featured in Veterinary Sciences will guide future wildlife rescue and rehabilitation after Australian bushfires. These findings provide critical information for improving koala care during subsequent fire seasons.

Natasha Speight, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Adelaide’s School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, spearheaded the study, analyzing clinical data from koalas affected by the recent Australian bushfires. Beyond generalized skin burns, the study revealed severe footpad burns, hindering koalas’ tree-climbing abilities and escape from fires. The study also reported on lung damage due to smoke inhalation.

“By understanding the extent of the burns of the skin in the footpads as well as furred regions of the body, koalas can be assessed for their likelihood for rehabilitation and release, or if the prognosis is poor,” Speight said. “Compounding the effect of burns on the health of the koalas, a high likelihood of lung damage due to smoke inhalation has also been found by this study, and this is an important additional consideration for veterinarians triaging rescued koalas.”

The $54,757 grant from Morris Animal Foundation facilitated data collation from comprehensive health assessments of koalas, sample analysis, statistical analysis and extensive collaboration with wildlife rescue groups and veterinarians. These findings significantly advance understanding of the impacts of bushfires on wildlife, which is crucial for future planning and care coordination.

“These resources can then be used by the government, wildlife carers and veterinarians to assess the prognosis for koalas that have injuries due to bushfires, as well as aid coordination of bushfire response efforts,” Speight added.

About Morris Animal Foundation
Morris Animal Foundation’s mission is to bridge science and resources to advance the health of animals. Founded in 1948 and headquartered in Denver, it is one of the largest nonprofit animal health research organizations in the world, funding nearly $160 million in more than 3,000 critical animal health studies to date across a broad range of species. Learn more at morrisanimalfoundation.org.

Media Contact: Annie Mehl

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JOURNAL

Veterinary Sciences

ARTICLE TITLE

Cutaneous and Respiratory Lesions in Bushfire-Affected Koalas

 

With only the pawprints, researchers study elusive bobcat

For the first time in bobcats, scientists are using errant DNA to gather extensive data

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

One Sunday morning in February of 2021, Dave Duffy’s kids told him they had just seen a bobcat through the window of their home near the University of Florida’s Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience outside St. Augustine, Florida. They knew their dad would want to know, because they had helped him countless times take samples of animal tracks in hopes of studying the creatures that left them.

Initially skeptical – bobcats are rarely spotted during the day out in the open – Duffy eventually went to check and there they were: six clear bobcat prints in the sandy soil. With his kids’ help, he scooped up small soil samples from the footprints and tucked them away for later.

In their latest research, Duffy and his team showed that they could readily recover bobcat DNA from the serendipitous tracks. In collaboration with the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens they also showed that DNA recovered from bobcat pawprints can be used to determine the animals’ ancestral background and even identify its unique microbial community. All from the errant DNA left behind long after the animal has left the area.

This kind of information can help scientists conserve rare or endangered species, even those, like bobcats, that are usually difficult to track.

“Bobcats, like many other species, are experiencing changes in their ranges, mostly due to humans,” said Duffy, a professor at the Whitney Lab who noted that the lab itself has encroached on the native bobcats’ range just as all development in the area has. “Being able to track where they are, what habitats they’re using, and what areas they’re in can help inform better management.”

Duffy and the team of researchers from UF reported their findings in November in the journal Biological Conservation. It’s just the latest from a team that has refined methods for studying environmental DNA, or eDNA, the genetic detritus left behind by all living things as they move through the world. Sequencing this eDNA can help protect wildlife like sea turtles or even study human populations from entire towns using their wastewater.

Because the researchers could sequence all the DNA in the sample, they also recovered information about the microbial community associated with the bobcat. Since these microbes can directly influence the health of an animal, understanding the community can give conservationists even more knowledge about the wildlife populations they study.

“As species become endangered or respond to climate change their range can shift, and the distribution of pathogens are moving as well. If you can recover information about what microbes are associated with your species of interest, you can assess whether they are microbes with positive benefits or detrimental pathogens,” Duffy said. “You might be able to tell if a wild population is healthy or not, without having to ever see or interact with individual animals.”

The depth of the research was only possible thanks to a collaboration with the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens. Zookeepers provided access to their bobcat’s enclosure, which allowed Duffy’s team to calibrate and confirm their techniques for the wild bobcat prints. They also showed that Abby, the zoo’s bobcat, which had been confiscated as an illegal pet, likely came from a southern U.S. population, as her DNA resembled that of Texas-area bobcats.

“While you can do some interesting analysis with one set of wild samples, you really need more than that to test these things rigorously. If it wasn’t for our collaborators at the Jacksonville Zoo, we would’ve had only one set of samples to trial these techniques on,” Duffy said.

The researchers also demonstrated that they could distinguish between samples from bobcats and the closely related Canada lynx. Because bobcats and the lynx have overlapping ranges in the northern U.S., having methods that can tell one species from another could help scientists analyze the species separately, which might be impossible relying on tracks alone.

In another recent study, the bobcat print samples helped the scientists show that eDNA persists for different durations in the environment depending on where in the cell it came from. These findings will help scientists more carefully interpret eDNA results in the future.

“Because these eDNA techniques are non-invasive, you don’t have to intrude upon the species you are studying,” Duffy said. “That makes them really beneficial to scientists studying endangered species and to the species themselves.”

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JOURNAL

Biological Conservation

DOI

10.1016/j.biocon.2023.110315 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

A novel eDNA approach for rare species monitoring: Application of long-read shotgun sequencing to Lynx rufus soil pawprints

The secret to better rural healthcare: Pay doctors to travel from urban to rural areas

News from the Journal of Marketing

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

Researchers from University of Oxford, Arizona State University, and University of Iowa published a new Journal of Marketing study that examines how paying doctors to visit rural areas is a cost-effective way to provide reasonable access and effective care to most rural communities.

The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Bringing the Doctor to the Patients: Cardiology Outreach to Rural Areas” and is authored by J. Jason Bell, Sanghak Lee, and Thomas S. Gruca.

Rural health care is in crisis.

Between 2010 and 2015, the death rate from coronary heart disease was significantly higher in rural areas (118.2 per million) than in urban areas (106.2 per million). The shortage of cardiologists is an especially serious issue facing over 60 million rural Americans who suffer from higher levels of heart disease, hypertension, and stroke. Reflecting concern over rising death rates for heart disease and stroke in rural areas, the American Heart Association (AHA) and American Stroke Association (ASA) issued a “Call to Action” in 2020 to address the rising inequities in cardiovascular health of rural Americans.

Since most rural communities are too small to support a full-time cardiologist, outreach clinics help increase access to cardiologists for under-served rural patients. Bringing cardiologists to the local community reduces the need for patients to travel inconvenient distances and can lead to more timely diagnoses and treatment, resulting in better patient outcomes. However, it is important for hospitals, policymakers, and insurance providers to understand outreach decisions and how they may be impacted by the coming cardiologist shortage.

This new study estimates the financial costs of mitigating cardiologist shortages by studying outreach patterns over 30 years in the state of Iowa. While rural areas are underserved by cardiologists, urban areas seem to be in a state of oversupply. As per 2019 data for Iowa, the number of cardiologists per 100,000 people is 10.6 in urban counties compared to 1.5 in rural counties and 6.5 nationwide. The level of competition for patients in urban locations provides further motivation for engaging in rural outreach.

Iowa has fewer than 200 cardiologists, almost all of whom live in urban areas—and their number is expected to drop by 10% in the coming years. To make up for the lack of rural presence in Iowa, many practices have developed a strong network of visiting consultant clinics where physicians in many specialties, including cardiology, make periodic visits from urban to rural areas. The networks provide reasonable access and effective care to most rural communities.

An Australian Model

While the outreach clinic model has been the most successful in plugging holes in rural cardiology access, it still has weaknesses. Physicians who participate in the program are unable to see patients while they are driving to the outreach clinic. This “windshield time” can last as long as two to three hours in Iowa and includes not just lost opportunities to see patients, but also mileage and other vehicle expenses. The opportunity costs are significant enough that only about half of Iowa’s cardiologists participate in an outreach clinic.

In Australia, which has an even greater rural health care crisis than the U.S., the government’s Rural Health Outreach Fund subsidizes qualifying specialists to motivate them to practice in rural areas. As Bell explains, “our study finds that if a payment program were adopted in Iowa to subsidize physicians for their windshield time, the payments would cost about $405,000 a year to maintain the current level of cardiology care in rural areas, even after the anticipated decline in numbers.”

The study also explores other options.

• The suggestion to recruit foreign doctors to practice in rural areas has met with some success for primary care physicians, where the bulk of the funding is targeted. For such a program to be more cost effective than the public subsidy, it would have to attract five cardiologists who would work for $81,000 or less a year, a highly unlikely outcome. That would provide far less coverage than the network of outreach clinics for the same cost.

• Increased use of telehealth has also been proposed, but patients have been reluctant to use it for complicated health concerns. Furthermore, there are issues regarding reimbursement for cardiac telehealth consultations and lack of reliable, high-speed internet access in many rural areas.

The study looks only at cardiology, but the findings suggest that similar public subsidies would be an effective way to at least maintain health care coverage in rural areas in other specialties. “While we have generally been reluctant to suggest the government pay providers to practice in certain locations, we have few other feasible options to provide equitable access to necessary health care to some 60 million rural Americans,” says Lee.

Future research needs to move beyond the usual focus on merely improving provider outcomes to advancing our understanding of the implications for patients. Gruca states that “our novel way of viewing the problem of patient access shows how it is influenced by the competitive marketing decisions individual providers make. We expect that focusing on provider behavior and patient outcomes will enable marketing scholars to provide valuable insights into other important and complicated problems in health care.”

Full article and author contact information available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/00222429231207830

About the Journal of Marketing 

The Journal of Marketing develops and disseminates knowledge about real-world marketing questions useful to scholars, educators, managers, policy makers, consumers, and other societal stakeholders around the world. Published by the American Marketing Association since its founding in 1936, JM has played a significant role in shaping the content and boundaries of the marketing discipline. Shrihari (Hari) Sridhar (Joe Foster ’56 Chair in Business Leadership, Professor of Marketing at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University) serves as the current Editor in Chief.
https://www.ama.org/jm

About the American Marketing Association (AMA) 

As the largest chapter-based marketing association in the world, the AMA is trusted by marketing and sales professionals to help them discover what is coming next in the industry. The AMA has a community of local chapters in more than 70 cities and 350 college campuses throughout North America. The AMA is home to award-winning content, PCM® professional certification, premiere academic journals, and industry-leading training events and conferences.
https://www.ama.org

 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Marketing

DOI

10.1177/00222429231207830 

ARTICLE TITLE

Bringing the Doctor to the Patients: Cardiology Outreach to Rural Areas

New research shows mobile methadone units are most impactful in rural areas

The research highlights the importance of expanding access to opioid treatments in remote locations

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO ANSCHUTZ MEDICAL CAMPUS

While mobile methadone units make a difference in expanding methadone use for patients with opioid addictions, they are likely to be most impactful in rural areas, according to new research.

The research was published today in Health Services Research and focused on the impact of adding new treatment services exclusively to rural Louisiana, where like in many other remote parts of the country, there are limited healthcare infrastructures and barriers to transportation. They compared this data to the impact of adding units statewide, where people have more access to traditional healthcare facilities. 

The research team used predictive modeling approaches to estimate new methadone uptake following a hypothetical expansion of mobile methadone in the state. They looked specifically at cases where mobile methadone operators could choose their operation locations freely and in a separate instance where they were restricted to serving rural areas to identify potential geographic differences in their effectiveness.

“Several interconnected factors play a role in the prevalence of opioid use disorders in rural areas and this includes limited access to healthcare services, which is why we wanted to compare this data to help with decision-making when allocating resources to combat this public health crisis,” says first author Jason Gibbons, PhD, assistant professor and a health economist in the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

The research finds that adding ten units exclusively to rural Louisiana was associated with a 13 percentage point increase in Medication for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD) treatment rates in rural zip codes.

Adding the same number of units across the state, not exclusively in rural areas, was predicted to increase MOUD treatment rates in Louisiana by up to nearly three percentage points.

“We find significant geographic variation in the impact of mobile methadone implementation, which means careful location planning will be required to maximize their benefit in other communities,” Gibbons says.

The researchers also predict that adding ten units to rural communities could provide nearly 20 percent of all beneficiaries residing in rural areas being treated with methadone to be around 24 miles closer to a methadone treatment provider. Their model also suggests that most patients will only be willing to travel up to 50 miles for methadone services, highlighting the potential for mobile units to close historical access gaps to methadone treatment.

To study the impact, the researchers looked at 43,341 Louisiana Medicaid patients with a diagnosis of opioid dependence identified in the Medicaid claims data between 2020 and 2021.

They then simulated the impact of mobile methadone units in Louisiana using two approaches:  a “Poisson regression approach,” which involved predicting the number of opioid use disorder patients that might use methadone at mobile locations based on the underlying association between methadone use and proximity to a brick-and-mortar methadone clinic and a “policy approach,” which leveraged local treatment uptake rates following the expansion of methadone coverage to Louisiana Medicaid beneficiaries in 2020 to estimate methadone use following mobile unit implementation. 

The analysis revealed mobile methadone would have a distinct impact in rural communities if these locations were prioritized and recommended operators collaborate with state and local policymakers regarding where to locate them to help maximize their impact.

About the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus is a world-class medical destination at the forefront of transformative science, medicine, education and patient care. The campus encompasses the University of Colorado health professional schools, more than 60 centers and institutes, and two nationally ranked independent hospitals - UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital and Children's Hospital Colorado - that treat more than two million adult and pediatric patients each year. Innovative, interconnected and highly collaborative, the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus delivers life-changing treatments, patient care and professional training and conducts world-renowned research fueled by over $704 million in research grants. For more information, visit www.cuanschutz.edu.

About the Colorado School of Public Health

The Colorado School of Public Health is one of the only tri-institutional public health schools in the country. We leverage the power of three leading institutions—the University of Colorado (CU) Anschutz Medical Campus, Colorado State University (CSU), and the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) —to advance public health locally, nationally, and globally. Collectively, the School’s mission is to promote the physical, mental, social, and environmental health of people and communities. Through education, population-based research, and community service, the Colorado School of Public Health brings together institutions, agencies, and diverse populations. For more information, visit: https://coloradosph.cuanschutz.edu.

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JOURNAL

Health Services Research

ARTICLE TITLE

Simulated impact of mobile opioid treatment program units on increasing access to methadone for opioid use disorder.

 

COVID-19 affected Canadians with noncommunicable diseases more than those without, according to a new report

Latest iCARE study reveals how mental health declined for many people who live with chronic ailments

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

 

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SIMON BACON: “WE ARE SEEING AN UNEQUAL DISRUPTION TO MENTAL HEALTH IN PEOPLE WHO HAVE NONCOMMUNICABLE DISEASES VERSUS THOSE THAT DO NOT.”

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CREDIT: CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

Researchers at the Montreal Behavioural Medicine Centre (MBMC) say people with noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or chronic lung ailments were disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new report is part of the International COVID-19 Awareness and Responses Evaluation Study, or iCARE.

The report also shows that women living with NCDs reported suffering greater psychological distress, such as feelings of isolation and loneliness, compared to men. Men with NCDs reported increased alcohol consumption.

Based on an ongoing population study, the paper was published in the journal BMC Public Health.  Researchers collected the data from eight cross-sectional Canadian representative samples between June 2020 and February 2022. Over 24,000 online respondents participated in the study.

 “We are seeing an unequal disruption to mental health in people who have noncommunicable diseases versus those that do not,” says Simon Bacon, a professor in the Department of Health, Kinesiology and Applied Physiology in the Faculty of Arts and Science.

Bacon is one of the MBMCs’ co-directors.

“Physical activity and dietary behaviour worsened. And, most worryingly, people with NCDs were disproportionately more affected by canceled medical appointments.

“This means that a group of people who probably use, and need to use, the health care system more are now dealing with greater levels of restricted access due to strains on the overall health care system.”

The researchers note that participants who reported NCDs tended to be older, have a high school education or less, an annual household income under $60,000 CAD. They were more likely to report having a diagnosed mental health disorder.

Participants with NCDs were also 21 per cent more likely to report significant COVID-induced anxiety, depression, loneliness and anger. They were more likely to report doing less physical activity (24 per cent) and eating a less healthy diet (22 per cent) than those without NCDs.

This group was also 57 per cent more likely to report having medical appointments cancelled or avoiding the emergency room. And, they were 87 per cent more likely to report having had trouble accessing non-COVID medical care.

Women affected more than men

The pandemic also had a greater impact on the overall health of women, both with and without NCDs, compared to men.

Women with an NCD were more likely to report feeling anxious because of COVID compared to men with an NCD. Men with an NCD were more likely to feel anxious because of COVID than men without an NCD. Similar trends were noted for depression.

Gender differences were also evident surrounding alcohol use. Women with an NCD were less likely to report drinking more alcohol because of COVID than women without an NCD. But men with an NCD were more likely to report more alcohol intake because of COVID than men without.

Warning signs ahead

These indicators are concerning to Bacon and his co-authors. He notes that as pandemic restrictions ease, more people with NCDs — especially those who went untreated at the pandemic’s height — are likely in more need of urgent care.

This growth in demand for care is compounded by increased numbers of people who developed NCDs during the pandemic due to ageing and other factors. As such, health care providers may find themselves overwhelmed, even as COVID cases decrease in number and severity.

“Many people with noncommunicable diseases are coming back into the system at a much greater health deficit. The system that is already struggling to catch up,” says Bacon, FRQS co-chair in AI for Health Behaviour Change.

“There is a potential for a vicious cycle that will add additional strain to the system. This situation may result in people starting to miss out on care again. We do not have the resources available to treat both the people currently in the system and the people that are entering it.

“We do not have a strategy to address this problem.”

The study was cowritten by Frédrique Deslauriers, Camille Léger and Kim Lavoie of the Université du Québec à Montréal. Vincent Gosselin-Boucher of the University of British Columbia and Ariany Marques Vieira of Concordia are also co-authors.

The iCARE Study is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canada Research Chairs Program, the Fonds de recherche du Québec-santé, the Fonds de recherche du Québec-Société et culture, and the Ministère de l’Économie et de l’Innovation du Québec.

Read the cited paper (in English only): “The impact of COVID-19 on the lives of Canadians with and without noncommunicable chronic diseases: results from the iCARE Study.”

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JOURNAL

BMC Public Health

DOI

10.1186/s12889-023-15658-z 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The impact of COVID-19 on the lives of Canadians with and without non-communicable chronic diseases: results from the iCARE Study

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Oct-2023

COI STATEMENT

KLL has served on the advisory board for Schering-Plough, Takeda, AbbVie, Almirall, Janssen, GSK, Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) and Sojecci Inc and has received sponsorship for investigator-generated research grants from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and AbbVie, speaker fees from GSK, Astra-Zeneca, Astellas, Novartis, Takeda, AbbVie, Merck, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bayer, Pfizer and Air Liquide, and support for educational materials from Merck, none of which are related to the current article. SB has received consultancy fees from Merck for the development of behavior change continuing education modules, speaker fees from Novartis and Janssen and has served on advisory boards for Bayer, Sanofi and Sojecci Inc, none of which are related to the current article. There are no other competing interests related to the authors of this manuscript.

 

New study suggests arsenic may raise diabetes risk for males

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, N.Y. – Chronic exposure to arsenic, often through contaminated groundwater, has been associated with Type 2 diabetes in humans, and there are new clues that males may be more susceptible to the disease when exposed.

A new Cornell University study – using lab mice genetically modified with a human gene to shed light on the potential link – revealed that while the male mice exposed to arsenic in drinking water developed diabetes, the female mice did not.

These results would not have been possible without using a mouse model engineered to express a human enzyme for metabolizing arsenic, since normal mice process arsenic much more efficiently than humans and require very high levels of exposure before they become diabetic.

“Our paper lays the foundation for future investigations into the mechanism of how arsenic exposure leads to diabetes, why there are striking male-female differences, and potential therapeutic strategies,” said Praveen Sethupathy, professor of physiological genomics and the study’s senior author.

Endemic levels of arsenic above safe limits in both Bangladesh and Mexico led to studies that showed an association between higher levels of arsenic exposure and Type 2 diabetes. Though these studies had very small sample sizes, they offered clues for further research.

Mice in the study were exposed for a month to doses of arsenic in drinking water that were nonlethal but sufficient to potentially promote Type 2 diabetes. The researchers then examined liver and white adipose tissues that are implicated in diabetes. In the humanized male mice alone, they found increased expression in genes related to insulin resistance. Also, in both liver and white adipose tissues of the humanized male mice, they identified a biomarker called miR-34a, which is highly associated with insulin resistance in Type 2 diabetes and other metabolic diseases.

“This would suggest miR-34a is potentially a way to screen individuals who live in areas that have endemic arsenic levels,” said Jenna Todero, first author of the study and doctoral student in Sethupathy’s lab. “If you have elevated miRNA-34a, you might be at risk for Type 2 diabetes onset or other metabolic dysfunction.”

The study was funded by the Superfund Research Program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

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JOURNAL

Environmental Health Perspectives

DOI

10.1289/EHP12785 

ARTICLE TITLE

Molecular and Metabolic Analysis of Arsenic-Exposed Humanized AS3MT Mice

 

War on bugs can’t be won, York U researchers declare

New paper from Global Strategy Lab calls for antimicrobial resistance to be reframed as a sustainability issue

Peer-Reviewed Publication

YORK UNIVERSITY

TORONTO, Jan 9, 2024 – From a wartime spread of antimicrobial resistant disease in Ukraine, to superbugs in China causing “white lung” pneumonia in children, 2023 brought no shortage of new evidence that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) continues to be a pressing problem globally, and this pattern shows no sign of abating in 2024 unless a radical shift occurs. 

To truly tackle the issue of AMR, York University researchers with the Global Strategy Lab (GSL) argue it needs to be understood as a socio-ecological challenge that accepts AMR as a phenomenon stemming from natural evolutionary processes. In other words, the war on bugs can’t be won; what’s needed is a major change in how people live with it. 

“For the past hundred years, we’ve tried to address AMR like a medical problem. But we haven't really made much progress in actually mitigating the deeper drivers of the issue,” says Isaac Weldon, a recent York PhD political science graduate and lead author of a new peer-reviewed article published today in the prestigious Perspectives on Politics journal. “We argue that there's a lot of potential to make progress by instead looking at it as a problem with our relationship with the microbial world and sustainability.” 

AMR stems from both the natural tendency of bacteria, viruses and fungi to evolve as well as the acceleration of that process through human interventions such as an over-reliance or misuse of antibiotics in medical settings, to the routine use of antimicrobials in the livestock industry. Global data from 2019 showed more than a million deaths a year directly related to AMR, and the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have accelerated this process.

Last year, GSL set up the AMR Policy Accelerator with $8.7 million from Wellcome Trust to deal with this urgent threat. While Weldon acknowledges that medical and technological innovation will be a crucial component in managing the issue, new antimicrobial drugs alone will not be the solution.

“What we’re currently doing is treating the symptoms and not the causes of AMR,” says Weldon, also an investigator with GSL. “Without addressing the underlying social relationships that drive our use, innovation would have to operate at an unsustainable speed as these microbes evolve faster than we can make new drugs.”

Weldon and co-author Steven J. Hoffman, director of GSL and Dahdaleh Distinguished Chair in Global Governance & Legal Epidemiology with York’s Faculty of Health and Osgoode Hall Law School, outline major problems with the current governance approach to AMR. They introduce five principles for designing institutions for a better ecological fit of human-microbial ecosystems to minimize drug resistance: 

1. There’s no silver bullet. Recognizing that there is no easy fit or one-fits all solution for AMR means problem-solving must always be tailored to specific ecological situations and health challenges of diverse populations.
2. Create institutions that can adapt over time. Future proofing doesn’t mean creating institutions that are strong enough to withstand change, but ones flexible enough to evolve with the changing nature of AMR and our relationship to it.
3. Diversify practices. As the best way to tackle AMR is still unknown,  diversifying practices can help us discover what works, when, and where. 
4. Create records. As practices are diversified, records need to be kept of what works to enable learning and adjustments in policy. 
5. Involve stakeholders. This involves everyone from the public at large, to government and decision makers. 

“What we are proposing is a completely different way of looking at the issue,” says Hoffman. “We are hoping this journal article will be a foundational piece that will inspire further AMR research in this direction.”

Watch a video of Weldon explain the research.

GSL is hosting the live online webinar Is “Co-existing” with Microbes the Key to Addressing AMR? on Feb. 1 at 9 a.m. featuring Weldon, Hoffman, and Clare Chandler from the London Tropical School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. For details and registration information, click here. 

 

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York University is a modern, multi-campus, urban university located in Toronto, Ontario. Backed by a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners, we bring a uniquely global perspective to help solve societal challenges, drive positive change, and prepare our students for success. York's fully bilingual Glendon Campus is home to Southern Ontario's Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education. York’s campuses in Costa Rica and India offer students exceptional transnational learning opportunities and innovative programs. Together, we can make things right for our communities, our planet, and our future.

 

Media Contact: Emina Gamulin, York University Media Relations, 437-217-6362, egamulin@yorku.ca

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JOURNAL

Perspectives on Politics

DOI

10.1017/S1537592723002906 

ARTICLE TITLE

“Fit for Purpose?” Assessing the Ecological Fit of the Social Institutions that Globally Govern Antimicrobial Resistance

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Jan-2024

 

Increasing levels of "hype" language in grant applications and publications

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TSUKUBA

 

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IMAGE GRAPHICS

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CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF TSUKUBA

Tsukuba, Japan—The success of scientific endeavors often depends on support from public research grants. Successful applicants increasingly describe their proposed research using promotional language ("hype"); however, it remains unclear whether they use hype in their subsequent research publications.

A research team led by the University of Tsukuba analyzed all published research abstracts of projects funded by the US National Institute of Health (NIH) from 1985 to 2020. The analysis covered 139 hype adjectives emphasizing significance (e.g., imperative, paramount), novelty (e.g., revolutionary, ground-breaking), scale (e.g., massive, vast), rigor (e. g., careful, sophisticated), utility (e.g., impactful, seamless), attitudes (e.g., incredible, exciting), and the gravity of problems (e.g., dire, devastating). A dramatic growth in almost all hype terms was found over the 36-year period. Furthermore, the usage trends of hype adjectives were closely correlated with the usage trends in NIH funding applications during the same period. This finding suggests that the language choices of investigators at the grant application stage affect the subsequent presentation of research findings.

The study indicates the role of funding mechanisms in shaping the tone of research communication. Recognizing the concerns surrounding increasing levels of hype, funding bodies are urged to not nudge investigators towards salesmanship.

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This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grant number 21K02919)

 

Original Paper

Title of original paper:
Promotional language (hype) in abstracts of publications of NIH funded research

Journal:
JAMA Network Open

DOI:
10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.48706

Correspondence

Associate Professor Neil Millar
Institute of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba

Related Link

Institute of Systems and Information Engineering

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JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.48706 

ARTICLE TITLE

Promotional Language (Hype) in Abstracts of Publications of National Institutes of Health–Funded Research, 1985-2020