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Research
Promoting Mental Health in New Zealand: Building Resilience in Teenage ChildrenThere has been concerns about the increasing incidence of youth depression and anxiety, with school teachers seeking out ways to better equip youth with skills to help them deal with daily life. A resilience training programme for youth was implemented in one region of New Zealand.
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Protection against neonatal respiratory viral infection via maternal treatment during pregnancy with the benign immune training agent OM-85Incomplete maturation of immune regulatory functions at birth is antecedent to the heightened risk for severe respiratory infections during infancy. Our forerunner animal model studies demonstrated that maternal treatment with the microbial-derived immune training agent OM-85 during pregnancy promotes accelerated postnatal maturation of mechanisms that regulate inflammatory processes in the offspring airways.
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Peri-operative steroid management in the paediatric populationPatients with adrenal insufficiency are at risk of adrenal crisis, a potentially life-threatening emergency in the peri-operative period due to their attenuated ability to mount a cortisol response.
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Advancing our understanding of psychological flow: A scoping review of conceptualizations, measurements, and applicationsResearch on psychological flow is well established, although criticisms remain regarding conceptual and measurement issues associated with the construct. This scoping review maps flow-related research across scientific disciplines, examining the conceptualization, measurement instruments, and outcomes of flow between 2012 and 2019. Across 236 sources that met the review criteria, 108 different flow-related constructs were measured by 141 instruments, and 84 possible antecedents were identified.
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Skin health of Aboriginal children living in urban communitiesSkin concerns are frequent among urban-living Aboriginal children, yet specialist dermatology consultations are limited with studies highlighting the need for improved cultural security. Through newly established paediatric dermatology clinics at two urban Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs), we aimed to describe clinic and patient data, including disease frequencies and associations, to inform dermatology service provision and advocacy.
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Outcomes following a behaviour change intervention within hospitals to improve birth registrations and hospital utilisation for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander infantsThe primary objective was to determine whether a behaviour change intervention delivered to hospital staff would (1) improve the proportion of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander (Aboriginal) babies being registered and (2) reduce hospital admissions and emergency presentations for babies <6 months old. The secondary objective was an observational analysis to determine factors that might influence the proportion of registered Aboriginal births in Western Australia.
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Global risk of selection and spread of Plasmodium falciparum histidine-rich protein 2 and 3 gene deletionsSince their first detection in 2010, Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasites lacking the P. falciparum histidine-rich protein 2 gene (pfhrp2) have been observed in 40 of 47 surveyed countries, as documented by the World Health Organization. These genetic deletions reduce detection by the most widely used rapid diagnostic tests, prompting three countries to switch to alternative diagnostics.
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Parenting in the age of social media: The buffering effect of parental self-efficacy on the relationship between parental social media use and parent child-relationship qualityThe widespread use of technology in daily life has raised concerns about its potential to disrupt social relationships, particularly within one of the most important human relationships: the parent-child relationship. This study assesses whether parental social media use (measured by a novel parental social media intensity scale) affects the parent-child relationship (measured by the child-parent relationship scale - short form), and whether parental self-efficacy (PSE, measured by the parenting sense of competence scale) moderates this effect.
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How Alexithymia Increases Mental Health Symptoms in Adolescence: Longitudinal Evidence for the Mediating Role of Emotion RegulationAlexithymia is characterised by difficulties identifying and describing feelings, as well as a lack of focus on feelings. Alexithymia is a transdiagnostic risk factor for developing a wide array of psychopathologies, such as anxiety and depression, with a key hypothesised mechanism being the impairing impact of alexithymia on emotion regulation competency. However, no study has tested whether difficulties with emotion regulation mediate the link between alexithymia and psychopathological symptoms using longitudinal designs.
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Prevalence of youth type 2 diabetes in global Indigenous populations: a systematic reviewWe aimed to synthesise global prevalence estimates of type 2 diabetes among Indigenous youth aged under 25 years, and examine age- and gender-specific differences and secular trends.