Faculty Bibliography

Recent medical advances are allowing more youth with neuromuscular disorders to live into adulthood, thus increasing the necessity to transition youth from pediatric to adult medical care. Examining salient factors and processes for successful transition planning from pediatric to adult medical care in youth with neuromuscular disorders is a nascent field of study. The current study aims to address the key quality improvement question of identifying factors to consider when planning for transition by exploring the views of youth with neuromuscular disorders, caregivers, and providers within a multidisciplinary clinic regarding current care transition practices via quantitative and qualitative approaches. Both qualitative and quantitative results highlighted patient-endorsed importance of transition and emphasized the need for future tailored supports to facilitate gleaning skills for transition. Overall, this study offers valuable insights from patients, parents, and providers about challenges and best practices involved in transition planning for young adults with neuromuscular disorders.

INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND:Females with disabilities have greater preconception health risks and adverse perinatal outcomes than those without disabilities. Characterization of reproductive health care utilization among females with disabilities in the United States is limited. We examined health care receipt before, during, and after pregnancy by extent of disability among U.S. females with recent live births. METHODS:This cross-sectional study used Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System data (collected 2018-2020 and analyzed in 2025) from 24 states that included the Washington Group Short Set of Questions on Disability. Participants self-reported health care visits in the year prior to pregnancy; receipt and timing of prenatal care; and receipt of a postpartum checkup. Disability was assessed as extent of difficulty (none, some, and a lot of difficulty). Associations between extent of disability and health care utilization were estimated using multivariable modified Poisson regression (adjusted prevalence ratios, aPR, and 95% confidence intervals, CI). RESULTS:trimester initiation of prenatal care, but they had a 171% (aPR=2.71, 95% CI: 1.49-4.94) and 63% (aPR=1.63, 95% CI: 1.40-1.91) higher prevalence of not having any prenatal care and not having a postpartum checkup, respectively, than females with no difficulty. CONCLUSIONS:Females with some and a lot of difficulty reported lower receipt of reproductive, prenatal, and postpartum care than those with no difficulty. Strategies are needed to establish and coordinate comprehensive reproductive health care among females with disabilities.

This dataset, Collab-CXR, provides a unique resource to study human-AI collaboration in chest X-ray interpretation. We present experimentally generated data from 227 professional radiologists who assessed 324 historical cases under varying information conditions: with and without AI assistance, and with and without clinical history. Using a custom-designed interface, we collected probabilistic assessments for 104 thoracic pathologies using a comprehensive hierarchical reporting structure. This dataset is the largest known comparison of human-AI collaborative performance to either AI or humans alone in radiology, offering assessments across an extensive range of pathologies with rich metadata on radiologist characteristics and decision-making processes. Multiple experimental designs enable both within-subject and between-subject analyses. Researchers can leverage this dataset to investigate how radiologists incorporate AI assistance, factors influencing collaborative effectiveness, and impacts on diagnostic accuracy, speed, and confidence across different cases and pathologies. By enabling rigorous study of human-AI integration in clinical workflows, this dataset can inform AI tool development, implementation strategies, and ultimately improve patient care through optimized collaboration in medical imaging.

Serious workforce shortages in youth mental health widen the gap between demand and use, and exacerbate health disparities. A strategy to address this is training and integrating youth and young adult (Y/YA) peers to deliver services. This paper reviews international scientific studies on Y/YA services targeting mental health conditions or health promotion. We applied systematic criteria including controlled designs (RCTs or quasi-experimental), active intervention delivered by a young person, key search terms, and peer-reviewed publication between 2012 and 2023. The review yielded 32 studies meeting criteria, encompassing six domains: eating disorders, health promotion, depression/anxiety, suicidal risk, serious mental illness (SMI) and "other." The most consistent evidence for effectiveness was for eating disorders; findings in the other domains were mixed. Training manuals, fidelity measurement, reporting of demographic data, and consistency in outcome measurement were largely absent, limiting both replicability and generalizability. The acceleration of scientific attention to youth/young adult peer services over the past decade and emerging support for its effectiveness is encouraging, however, and it bodes well for mitigating workforce shortages and, more importantly, for improving the quality of services for young people.

Mental disorders are increasingly understood as disorders of brain development. Large and heterogeneous samples are required to define generalizable links between brain development and psychopathology. To this end, we introduce Reproducible Brain Charts (RBC), an open resource that integrates data from 5 large studies of brain development in youth from three continents (N = 6,346). Bifactor models were used to create harmonized psychiatric phenotypes, capturing major dimensions of psychopathology. Following rigorous quality assurance, neuroimaging data were carefully curated and processed using consistent pipelines in a reproducible manner. Initial analyses of RBC emphasize the benefit of careful quality assurance and data harmonization in delineating developmental effects and associations with psychopathology. Critically, all RBC data-including harmonized psychiatric phenotypes, unprocessed images, and fully processed imaging derivatives-are openly shared without a data use agreement via the International Neuroimaging Data-sharing Initiative. Together, RBC facilitates large-scale, reproducible, and generalizable research in developmental and psychiatric neuroscience.

BACKGROUND:Children from migrant families with absent parents are more likely to have poorer physical and mental health than children from non-migrant families. The impact of labor migration on left-behind family members in South Asian countries is not well-known. This study aimed to examine the patterns of labor migration and its impact on the health and development of children and their caregivers in rural Nepal. METHODS:Baseline family data collected from a school-based violence prevention program were utilized. Parents/caregivers (N = 346) with school-aged children (aged 3 to 15 years attending nursery to primary grades) from the rural Arghakhanchi district of Nepal were included in the study. A series of descriptive and chi-square analyses were carried out to explore the pattern of labor migration and differences between labor-migrant and non-labor-migrant families. Multivariate linear and logistic regression analyses were applied to explore the correlates and moderators involved. RESULTS:Labor migration has been a common practice in rural Nepal, with an estimated 49% of families having parents working overseas, mostly in India (57%) and Gulf countries (39%) on low-skill labor jobs. Labor migration was significantly associated with left-behind caregivers' and children's mental health. Left-behind caregivers in father-only labor-migrant families reported higher levels of depression than did parents in non-labor migrant families and left-behind children from labor-migrant families reported greater anger than did children from non-labor migrant families. The impact of labor migration on families was moderated by social class. For low social-class father migrant families, left-behind children were at greater risk for developmental delay and behavioral problems, but there seems to be a protective effect for high social-class father migrant families (with lower risk of developmental delay and problem behaviors compared to all other groups). CONCLUSIONS:Labor migration has a substantial impact on the mental health of left-behind families and children. The impact of labor migration may vary by living social-cultural context. Understanding the complex dynamics of labor migration has important implications for local and global migration-related health service planning.

Suicide remains a leading cause of death among US youth. The emergency department (ED) is a critical access point for identifying suicide risk and initiating interventions to reduce that risk. Key strategies include developing individualized safety plans and counseling on reducing access to lethal means. This article reviews the current evidence supporting ED safety planning for youth at risk of suicide and presents a practical framework for its delivery. It also explores strategies to enhance the implementation of safety planning and lethal means counseling, including using clinical pathways, training of staff, optimizing reimbursement, and integrating resources into the electronic medical record system. Finally, the article highlights emerging innovations aimed at improving the reach of safety plan interventions in the ED setting.

Early childhood is a critical period for overall development and well-being, yet children from low-income and low-resourced families, such as Chinese American immigrant families, often have unmet mental health needs as they face additional barriers like limited English proficiency and health literacy. Cultural and linguistic adaptation is essential for equitable access to resources and care. Despite the need, early childhood mental health among Chinese American families remains significantly understudied. A digital mental health solution may pose greater access and convenience to address the mental health needs of this community. Thus, this study aims to collaboratively develop a web-based app called OurChild, which provides culturally and linguistically adapted early childhood mental health and development resources for Chinese American immigrant families in New York City. Using the Participatory Cultural Adaptation Framework for Implementation Research (PCAFIR), the project involves a multiphased participatory co-design process: 1. understanding community needs through formative research and engagement; 2. building a digital library with evidence-based and culturally tailored content; 3. designing a culturally tailored web-based app using a participatory approach; and 4. refining and validating the design through user testing. Informed by formative data from existing studies and programs; focus groups and interviews with community experts (n = 6) and parents (n = 11); user testing with parents (n = 11), and through an iterative re-design process, the app was designed to be user-friendly, culturally relevant, and evidence-based. This study described the co-design process and highlighted the lessons learned in developing culturally tailored digital health tools to promote digital health equity for underserved communities.