Community-based approach boosts family engagement in ADHD care

Novel intervention aims to reduce inequities

Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago

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Innovative intervention delivered by trained community health workers – meaning nonclinical personnel with deep knowledge of the community – increased treatment utilization among participating families with children who have ADHD, according to a pilot study published in the Journal of Attention Disorders. This intervention for parents and caregivers, covering topics that range from education about ADHD to discussions of stigma and barriers to care, intends to reduce inequities in access to evidence-based treatment and boost family engagement in ADHD care.

“We know from previous studies that compared to White youth, Black, Hispanic, and Asian children with ADHD receive less treatment, including fewer visits with a healthcare provider and lower medication use,” said lead author Andrea Spencer, MD, Vice Chair for Research, Pritzker Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

“We are excited to make a tangible difference for children and their families by using a community-based approach to ADHD that has proved to be so successful for other pediatric conditions, like asthma,” she said. “When so many children have an illness and access to care is inadequate, we need to think beyond individual patient interactions and develop public health solutions. This is the first study to use an intervention for ADHD delivered by community health workers.”

ADHD, a neurobiological condition that affects about 6-8 percent of children, can have lifelong consequences, including educational and occupational underachievement, family and peer conflict, and justice involvement. Treatment, which includes a combination of FDA-approved medication, behavioral therapy and school accommodations, is effective at reducing symptoms and can improve ADHD outcomes.

Dr. Spencer explained that barriers to ADHD care include logistical difficulties, such as finances, insurance, transportation and lack of childcare. Also stigma, discrimination and implicit bias affect families’ experiences with engaging in ADHD care for their children.

In developing content for the intervention, Dr. Spencer and colleagues sought guidance from a Community Advisory Board consisting of racial and ethnic minoritized caregivers of children with ADHD, public school staff, pediatric clinical providers and leaders, child mental health clinicians and child mental health equity researchers.

The intervention included an average of six, hour-long sessions during which community health workers discussed with families evidence-based treatment for ADHD, myths vs. facts, how to respond to stigma and discrimination, how to talk about ADHD in a way that is empowering to kids, how to navigate care, communicate with clinicians and advocate for their child. Participants completed research questionnaires before and after the intervention, as well as exit interviews. Content was refined based on participant feedback.

The pilot study initially included 18 caregivers of children with recently diagnosed ADHD aged 6-12 years. Fifteen caregivers completed the intervention, 16 completed all study questionnaires and 13 completed the exit interview.

“We received overwhelmingly positive feedback about the content and strategy addressing stigma in particular,” said Dr. Spencer. “Caregivers reported that the intervention helped them confront their own stigma about ADHD, as well as stigma from others. A community-based approach really can change the stigma associated with ADHD and hopefully get more kids into treatment.”

Almost all caregivers (88 percent) agreed or strongly agreed that the intervention was helpful. Ninety-four percent of caregivers reported that the intervention made them feel more confident in seeking treatment for ADHD, and many caregivers reported that the program made them more likely to consider medications (69 percent), therapy (75 percent), and school services (88 percent) for their child’s ADHD.

The percent of children receiving outpatient treatment services increased from pre- to post-intervention, including an increase in medication use (from 38 percent to 50 percent), therapy use (from 31 percent to 69 percent), and a statistically significant increase in receipt of school accommodations (from 38 percent to 88 percent).

“Based on our promising results, we are planning a larger study, a randomized clinical trial, to evaluate the effectiveness of our intervention,” said Dr. Spencer. “Ultimately, we hope to improve outcomes for children with ADHD, especially for kids from minoritized racial and ethnic backgrounds.”

Study activities were done at Boston Medical Center/Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.

Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is a nonprofit organization committed to providing access to exceptional care for every child. It is the only independent, research-driven children’s hospital in Illinois and one of less than 35 nationally. This is where the top doctors go to train, practice pediatric medicine, teach, advocate, research and stay up to date on the latest treatments. Exclusively focused on children, all Lurie Children’s resources are devoted to serving their needs. Research at Lurie Children’s is conducted through Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute, which is focused on improving child health, transforming pediatric medicine and ensuring healthier futures through the relentless pursuit of knowledge. Lurie Children’s is the pediatric training ground for Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. It is ranked as one of the nation’s top children’s hospitals by U.S. News & World Report.

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Journal

Journal of Attention Disorders

DOI

10.1177/10870547251355 

 

Unraveling the complex features of the seismic scatterers in the mid-lower mantle through phase transition of (Al, H)-bearing stishovite

Ehime University

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image: 

(a)The phase boundary between stishovite and post-stishovite with the varying Al content. The contour represents the phase boundary of stishovite with different Al content and the H/Al ratio of ~1/3. Geotherm: from Katsura (2022). (b) The depth distribution histogram of the lower-mantle seismic scatterers in the circum-Pacific region (He & Zheng, 2018; Kaneshima, 2019; Li & Yuen, 2014; Niu, 2014; Niu et al., 2003; Vanacore et al., 2006; Yang & He, 2015; Yuan et al., 2021). (c) Map of the mid-lower mantle scatterers around the circum-Pacific region. The color of these spots represents the Al content in SiO2 required to account for the observed depth of these seismic scatterers. The Al content in SiO2 was estimated under the conditions of the H/Al ratio of ~1/3 and the normal mantle geotherm. The color bars in figures a and c are the same.

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Credit: Ehime University

Seismic studies have identified various small-scale scatterers in the mid-lower mantle, with low-VS anomalies and complex depth variations between 700 and 1900 km. Understanding the formation mechanisms of these scatterers is crucial for understanding mantle dynamics and chemical evolution. Previous studies suggest that their formation is linked to the structural phase transition of SiO2 from stishovite to post-stishovite in the subducted oceanic crusts, with variations in Al and H content potentially influencing the transition depth. However, earlier experiments on (Al, H)-bearing stishovite phase transition were conducted only at high pressures and 300 K, limiting our ability to quantify the relationship between variations in subducted oceanic crust composition and small-scale scatterers in the lower mantle. In this study, we investigate the phase transition of (Al, H)-bearing stishovite under simultaneously high pressure and temperature conditions. Our results reveal that the incorporation of 0.01 a.p.f.u Al into stishovite with H/Al ratio of ~1/3 lowers the transition pressure by 6.7(3) GPa. However, the Clapeyron slope of this transition is nearly unaffected by changes in the Al content and has a value of 12.2-12.5(3) MPa/K. According to our results, Al content variation ranging from 0 to 0.07 a.p.f.u in SiO2 can reasonably explain the depth distribution from 800 to 1900 km of the seismic scatterers observed in the circum-Pacific region. These results provide critical experimental evidence for understanding the formation and corresponding dynamic processes of small-scale scatterers in the lower mantle.

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Journal

Geophysical Research Letters

DOI

10.1029/2024GL114146 

 

New study reveals preventing an hour of intense pain in chickens costs less than a hundredth of a cent

Welfare Footprint Institute

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A new study published today in Nature Food evaluates the impacts of the European Chicken Commitment (ECC), an initiative calling on food companies to adopt slower-growing breeds and higher welfare standards. While concerns over increased costs and emissions have been barriers to adoption, the study puts those concerns in perspective. For example, using EU carbon externality costs (the cost for companies to emit one tonne of CO₂ under the EU Emissions Trading System), the study showed that it costs less than one-hundredth of a cent to prevent each hour of intense pain —equivalent to the emissions from driving a standard car for about 15 meters.

The study also shows that switching from fast-growing to slower-growing chicken breeds, in line with the ECC, prevents at least 15 to 100 hours of intense pain per bird—at a cost of just US$1 more per kilogram of meat. The findings challenge assumptions that higher-welfare systems are too costly or inefficient, and offer a robust framework for weighing welfare, economic, and environmental considerations. They also call into question the idea that the intensification of animal agriculture, with a focus on faster growth, can be defended on environmental grounds, given the disproportionate and severe welfare harms intensive production entails and the minimal differences in environmental metrics.

The research applies the Welfare Footprint Framework, a scientific method that now makes it possible to put numbers on animal welfare. When applied to meat chickens—the most populous land vertebrates on Earth (over 70  billion birds are each year) — it reveals the toll of current industrial practices; rapid growth rates lead to widespread lameness, cardiovascular problems, heat stress, and chronic hunger, leading to disabling and excruciating pain.

“These are not abstract values. They allow us to put animal welfare on the same footing as other policy priorities,” said Dr. Kate Hartcher, Senior Researcher at the Welfare Footprint Institute and one of the authors of the study. “When you compare the cost of avoiding intense pain to the cost of other externalities, the numbers speak for themselves.”

The welfare impact estimates also include the hidden conditions of the parent birds used to produce meat chickens. Because they share the same genetics for fast growth and weight gain but need to survive for much longer, these birds must be severely feed-restricted, resulting in lifelong hunger and thousands of hours in intense distress. “Few people are aware that the pain and distress behind chicken meat production begins even before a chick is born — with the life of their mother”, said Dr. Cynthia Schuck-Paim, Scientific Director of the Welfare Footprint Institute and the study’s lead author. “To meaningfully improve welfare in meat chicken production, we need genetic changes. Without them, mother hens must continue to endure extreme hunger to avoid the health problems caused by rapid growth.”

Until now, animal welfare has lacked a standardized metric that can be integrated alongside financial and environmental indicators. The Welfare Footprint Framework fills that gap, enabling animal welfare impacts to be understood and  compared in common and easy-to-understand units. This study marks a turning point in how animal welfare is considered in food systems. By providing a clear, science-based way to measure animals' experiences, the Welfare Footprint Framework makes it possible to drive meaningful reforms and ensure animals are no longer left out of the conversation. 

The study was carried out through a collaboration between the Welfare Footprint Institute, the Stockholm Environment Institute, and the University of Colorado Boulder.

Publication: The Welfare Footprint Framework can help balance animal welfare with other food system priorities. Nature Food. DOI: 10.1038/s43016-025-01213-z

For more information: media@welfarefootprint.org.

The Welfare Footprint Framework is freely available for research and policy use at welfarefootprint.org

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Journal

Nature Food

DOI

10.1038/s43016-025-01213-z 

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

The Welfare Footprint Framework can help balance animal welfare with other food system priorities

Article Publication Date

18-Aug-2025

 

Seabirds only poop while flying

Cell Press

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video: 

Using backward-facing cameras mounted on streaked shearwaters, researchers recorded seabirds’ pooping habits in the open ocean.

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Credit: Leo Uesaka

On Japan’s desert islands, researchers uncovered a peculiar bathroom ritual among seabirds. Reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on August 18, the team found that streaked shearwaters (Calonectris leucomelas) poop while flying—not while floating on water—and they do so every 4 to 10 minutes. This habit may help the birds stay clean and fertilize the ocean below. 

But the team didn’t set out to document the seabirds’ bathroom habits. “I was studying how seabirds run on sea surface to take off,” says Leo Uesaka, the lead author from the University of Tokyo. “While watching the video, I was surprised that they dropped feces very frequently. I thought it was funny at first, but it turned out to be more interesting and important for marine ecology.” 

Seabird droppings enrich the soil and fertilize nearby coastal waters thanks to their high nitrogen and phosphorus contents. Researchers have studied how these nutrients shape ecosystems on land, but much less is known about how they impact what happens far from shore, in the open ocean, where seabirds spend most of their lives. With an estimated 424 million shearwaters and their kins, their droppings could fertilize the water below, providing nutrients to plankton and other marine life. 

Using eraser-sized, backward-facing cameras strapped to the bellies of 15 streaked shearwaters, Uesaka recorded and analyzed nearly 200 defecation events. He found that the birds almost always relieved themselves while flying and that defecation often followed shortly after takeoff. Occasionally, the birds took off solely for bathroom breaks and returned to the water within a minute. These findings suggest that they intentionally avoid pooping while floating, notes Uesaka. 

“Streaked shearwaters have very long and narrow wings, good for gliding, not flapping,” says Uesaka. “They have to flap their wings vigorously to take off, which exhausts them. This means the risk of excreting on the sea surface outweighs the effort to take off. There must be a strong reason behind that.” 

The researchers suspect this habit may spare the birds from fouling their feathers with feces, help them avoid attracting predators, or simply help the birds poop more easily compared to a floating position. 

While in flight, the birds pooped about every 4 to 10 minutes. The team estimated that the birds excrete 30 grams of poop every hour, which is about 5% of their body mass. 

“We don’t know why they keep this excretion rhythm, but there must be a reason,” says Uesaka. 

To find out, he plans to use cameras or temperature sensors with longer battery life, combined with GPS, to map where seabirds release their droppings at sea. He hopes that these future studies will offer further insights into the role of seabird feces in marine ecology. 

“Feces are important,” Uesaka says. “But people don’t really think about it.” 

Researchers found that streaked shearwaters have strict bathroom schedules, pooping every four to 10 minutes and almost always while flying, not while floating.

Credit

Yusuke Goto

This research was supported by funding from Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from JSPS, Japan Science and Technology Agency SPRING, and the Cooperative Program of Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute of the University of Tokyo. 

Current Biology, Uesaka & Sato, “Periodic excretion patterns of seabirds in flight” https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)00818

Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit: http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com. 

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Journal

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2025.06.058 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Periodic excretion patterns of seabirds in flight

Article Publication Date

18-Aug-2025

 

Exploration and dispersal are key traits involved in a rapid range expansion

Researchers find that behavioral flexibility is related to exploration, and that great-tailed grackles disperse farther at their range edge

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

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Picante, a male great-tailed grackle, flying by an unbanded female at the Arizona State University campus.

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Credit: © Melissa Folsom

To the point

• Exploratory behavior: Grackles who were trained to be more flexible were more exploratory after the training than untrained grackles. This indicates that the more an individual investigates a novel object, the more it can learn and adapt its behavior accordingly.
• Range expansion: Grackles in an edge population disperse farther than those in a more central population. This suggests that the rapid geographic range expansion of great-tailed grackles is associated with individuals differentially expressing dispersal behaviors.
• Key traits: Flexibility, exploration, and dispersal are key traits involved in this species’ rapid expansion into new areas.

Behavioral flexibility, the ability to adapt one’s behavior to changing circumstances based on previous experience, is thought to play an important role in a species' ability to successfully adapt to new environments and expand its geographic range. New findings from researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, the University of California Santa Barbara, and Auburn University, advance our understanding of the responses to novel circumstances by revealing flexibility in behavior on an individual level. These new results provide critical information for predicting which traits facilitate a species' ability to adapt its behavior to new areas, which is crucial in today's changing world.

Flexibility-trained grackles were more exploratory

The researchers investigated great-tailed grackles because they are an urban bird species that has rapidly expanded its range across North America over the past 140 years. Grackles who were trained to be more flexible were more exploratory after the training than untrained grackles.

“This shows that flexibility and exploration are linked - the more an individual investigates a novel object, the more it can learn and adapt its behavior accordingly,” says Corina Logan, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Gates Cambridge Scholar. These findings suggest that flexibility and exploration are key traits involved in this species’ rapid expansion into novel environments.

Just because it can be measured doesn’t mean it’s reliable

Large gaps exist in our knowledge of how behaviors relate to each other and the environment because researchers often rely on unvalidated behaviors or proxies to draw conclusions about how these systems work. To address this issue, the researchers in the current study measured four behaviors: exploration of new environments and novel objects, boldness towards known and novel threats, persistence, and motor diversity. However, only two of these behaviors, exploration of a new environment and persistence, were consistent across individuals. Consistency indicates that it is a stable trait that can be compared with other stable traits.

“Animals cannot tell us what they are thinking, so it's really important to ensure that our methods of quantifying behavior and cognition actually tell us what we want to know,” says lead researcher Kelsey McCune at the University of California Santa Barbara (currently at Auburn University). This highlights the importance of measuring multiple behaviors and validating their consistency before including them in analyses.

Grackles on the edge are less related, thus disperse farther

In a follow-up study, the researchers found that flexibility in behavior is linked not only to the exploration of novel environments on a small scale (e.g., a small tent), but also to novel spaces on a much larger scale. They found that grackles living closer to the edge of the expansion front in California exhibit greater dispersal behavior, with both male and female individuals moving farther away from their parents and siblings. In contrast, females in particular remained close to where they hatched in a population in the middle of the northern expansion front in Arizona.

“For a population to establish itself in a new area, many individuals of both sexes must move there,” says lead researcher Dieter Lukas at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. “The great-tailed grackles appear to have the flexibility to stay when they can, but to move when necessary.”

These results show that the rapid geographic range expansion of great-tailed grackles is associated with individuals expressing dispersal behaviors differentially.

Three female great-tailed grackles investigating a food opportunity in a parking lot in Sacramento, California.

A flock of great-tailed grackles flying in the mist in Sacramento, California.

Credit

© Corina Logan

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Journal

Peer Community Journal

DOI

10.24072/pcjournal.593 

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Behavioral flexibility is related to exploration, but not boldness, persistence or motor diversity

Article Publication Date

18-Aug-2025