Northern Mariana Islands and Guam Begin Regulating Social Work, Adopt ASWB Licensing Exam

Posted on by

(PRWEB) September 30, 2014

The Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and the Territory of Guam have joined the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) in order to administer the ASWB social work licensing exam as part of adopting new regulations for the social work profession. This is the first time that social workers will be regulated and licensed in these jurisdictions. The board of directors for the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB), the nonprofit association of social work regulatory bodies in the U.S. and Canada that owns and maintains the licensing exams, accepted the application of both U.S. jurisdictions by unanimous vote.

We are pleased to welcome the Health Care Professions Licensing Board of the Northern Mariana Islands and the Guam Board of Social Work of the Territory of Guam as members of ASWB, said ASWB President Dorinda N. Noble, Ph.D., LCSW. Professional regulation protects the public by ensuring that consumers have an avenue of recourse if practitioners step outside the boundaries of the rules, regulations, and ethics that guide our profession. The ASWB social work licensing exam ensures that social work professionals demonstrate their ability to practice competently and safely before becoming licensed.

The Northern Mariana Islands and the Territory of Guam form the Mariana Islands in the Pacific subregion of Micronesia.

Northern Mariana Islands The Health Care Professions Licensing Board (HCPLB) of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands includes the regulation of the profession of social work. The board recently adopted regulations for licensing baccalaureate, masters, and clinical social workers.

CNMI is a commonwealth of the United States, ratified in 1975. It is a 14-island archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. The population of approximately 53,000 (2013) lives predominantly on the islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Rota.

Territory of Guam The Guam Social Work Board of the Territory of Guam is an independent regulatory agency with the authority to license and regulate the profession of social work in Guam. The board is in the process of developing regulations for the licensure of social workers at the baccalaureate, masters, and clinical levels.

Guam became a U.S. territory in 1898. Its current form of government was established in 1950. The island of Guam is the southernmost and largest of the Mariana island chain. It is also the largest island in Micronesia. The population in 2013 was approximately 165,000.

About ASWB

The Association of Social Work Boards is the nonprofit association of social work regulatory bodies in the United States and Canada. In addition to Guam and Northern Mariana Islands, ASWB member jurisdictions include 49 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. Virgin Islands, and all ten Canadian provinces. The association owns and maintains the licensing examinations used by its jurisdictional members and also provides services to members and social workers, such as the Approved Continuing Education program, the ASWB Social Work Registry, and the Public Protection Database. ASWBs mission is to strengthen protection of the public by providing support and services to the social work regulatory community in order to advance safe, competent, and ethical practices. Visit http://www.aswb.org for more information.

Go here to see the original:

Northern Mariana Islands and Guam Begin Regulating Social Work, Adopt ASWB Licensing Exam

ASHG Launches Scientific EventPilot Meeting App with 3,500 Offline Abstracts for the Largest Human Genetics Meeting …

Posted on by

Santa Rosa, California (PRWEB) October 01, 2014

ATIV Software today released the ASHG 2014 mobile event app, built on the dynamic EventPilot platform, for leading scientists and members of the American Society of Human Genetics around the world. The EventPilot conference app, specialized in large scientific and medical meetings, allows attendees to view thousands of abstracts as well as share insights and opinions with peers. Learn more at http://ativsoftware.com.

EventPilot makes navigating our complex scientific program easy - you can even perform Boolean search through all of our abstracts offline, said Yimang Chen, Director of IT at the American Society of Human Genetics. The specialized features in EventPilot greatly enhance the attendee experience and bring value to scientific meetings like ours.

EventPilot scientific conference apps support large and complex programs while allowing users to seamlessly navigate content through clean design and intuitive UI. Robust search capabilities let users pinpoint sessions and research abstracts in seconds while multi-select filters help locate key information quickly and easily. Meeting planners can increase attendee engagement where users share insights and exchange opinions in context of the session. Attendee-to-attendee messaging provides a safe venue for direct interaction without releasing personal contact details, and allows for discussion to continue well after the event concludes. Credit flagging, schedule reminders, and animated maps help attendees stay organized throughout the meeting.

About EventPilot

The EventPilot mobile conference app features include:

Thousands of Abstracts and Posters Designed for scientific and medical events, EventPilot conference apps natively contain all conference proceedings.

Rich Experience and Paperless Events EventPilot supports paperless events by integrating PDFs, handouts, scientific abstracts, note taking, and more to create a valuable reference app that is used by attendees long after the event.

Networking Attendees can increase in-app dialogue through intuitive session commenting and messaging capabilities to achieve a more topic-based approach to conversations. Social media integration helps attendees to easily share breakthrough research topics.

Availability The free iPhone and iPad conference app is available now in the App Store. The free Android event app is available in the Android market. A web version for BlackBerry and other web- enabled devices is available at http://ativ.me/5ez.

See the original post here:

ASHG Launches Scientific EventPilot Meeting App with 3,500 Offline Abstracts for the Largest Human Genetics Meeting ...

Health Care and Construction Workers Create Pink Ribbon for Breast Cancer Awareness

Posted on by

Contact Information

Available for logged-in reporters only

Newswise More than 600 health care and construction workers donned pink hard hats while forming a giant human ribbon at the UC San Diego Jacobs Medical Center construction site today in support of National Breast Cancer Awareness month.

The event, coordinated by EMCOR/Dynalectric San Diego, launches a month-long call to action campaign to remind people to be screened for breast cancer, the second leading cause of cancer death among women after lung cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, 40,000 women are expected to die from breast cancer in 2014.

Breast cancer can affect both men and women, said Anne Wallace, MD, director of the UC San Diego Health System Comprehensive Breast Health Center. Knowing your family history and risk factors could save your life. Have a discussion with your physician now about risks associated with your individual genes. If you need treatment, seek a comprehensive breast center where youll get customized treatment plans using a team-approach that cares for the whole patient.

Wallace and other UC San Diego Health System employees joined EMCOR/Dynalectric and Kitchell construction workers, along with Congressman Scott Peters, Speaker of the Assembly Toni Atkins and San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts to form the 88-foot-long pink ribbon. Throughout the month of October, workers at the Jacobs Medical Center construction site will wear the pink hard hats.

The 10-story Jacobs Medical Center is slated to open in La Jolla in 2016, with three clinical care units under one roof: the Hospital for Advanced Surgery, the Hospital for Women and Infants and the newly named Pauline and Stanley Foster Hospital for Cancer Care.

The Hospital for Cancer Care will be the only in-patient facility of its kind in San Diego County, which has the fifth largest U.S. population, and where cancer is the No. 1 cause of death. With 108 dedicated beds, the facility will double UC San Diego Health Systems capacity to treat patients with every form of malignancy. It will also be the critical inpatient venue for delivery of scientific discoveries made by university researchers, providing the region with a broad array of leading-edge treatments.

For example, patients will have access to targeted, personalized treatments, such as stem cell therapy and cell-based immunotherapy, both requiring inpatient care by specialized staff. It will provide expanded state-of-the-art facilities for treatment of some of the most fragile patients, including those cared for by the Blood and Bone Marrow Transplant Program, jointly sponsored by UC San Diego Health System and Sharp Healthcare.

The proximity between the Hospital for Cancer Care and UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center seamlessly connects and aligns patient care.

Continue reading here:

Health Care and Construction Workers Create Pink Ribbon for Breast Cancer Awareness

Challenges Abound for Vermonts Mental Health Care System

Posted on by

Randolph For evidence of the failings and limitations of the network of public and private providers that deliver mental health care in Vermont, look at the headlines.

In recent months, there were stories of the suicide of Vermont Law School professor Cheryl Hanna a few days after she was forced to wait in a emergency room until a psychiatric bed became available in the states largest hospital; of a patient kept in restraints for 12 hours at a Bellows Falls mental health facility and coerced into taking medication; of a pair of suicide attempts by teenagers receiving psychiatric care at the Brattleboro Retreat.

For a view of what the state is doing to prevent future tragedies, as well as to improve care and replace a problem-plagued, 54-bed psychiatric hospital in Waterbury that was destroyed by Tropical Storm Irene, look to Act 79.

That law, passed in 2012, put forward a master plan for a comprehensive, humane and efficient mental health care system that encouraged even some skeptics. Theres a lot good to be said about Vermonts system, said Ed Paquin, executive director of Disability Rights Vermont, a nonprofit that represents and advocates for Vermonters with disabilities. Were pretty supportive of the direction that Act 79 puts the state in.

But implementing that plan has proved challenging. Said Julie Tessler, executive director of the Vermont Council of Developmental and Mental Health Services, an organization of 16 social service agencies: Act 79 expressed a wonderful vision and we are still working on it.

That work is done every day and night by caregivers around the state, often in the psychiatric wards of hospitals and less visibly in local clinics and other community programs.

People dont understand what we do, said Linda Chambers, executive director of the Clara Martin Center, which provides services in Orange and parts of Windsor counties. Were doing the heavy lifting with the hardest clients, she added. Otherwise, they go to higher levels of care.

Clara Martin is one of 10 nonprofit organizations tapped by the Mental Health Department to deliver front-line care for mental illness in their communities. Like their counterparts in many states, Vermont advocates and caregivers would like to see the role of large state hospitals minimized and caregiving decentralized and integrated in communities. But as in other states, the shift in caregiving responsibilities to local clinics and programs has rarely been accompanied by a similar shift in resources.

Constrained for revenue, community mental health providers have been hard-pressed to offer competitive salaries. That has made staff recruitment and retention difficult. The resulting vacancies in caregiving positions can translate into extended waits for therapy and other programs. And that can delay the start of treatment for new patients and leave stranded in high-level care facilities patients who have recovered enough to return to treatment closer to home that is less expensive.

The repercussions dont stop there. When scarce high-level care beds are occupied by less severely ill patients, they arent available for those whose needs are desperate. And when care is unavailable from mental health specialists, patients turn instead to hospital emergency rooms and primary care doctors.

Original post:

Challenges Abound for Vermonts Mental Health Care System

Pitt team searches for genetic roots of cleft lip, palate

Posted on by

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

30-Sep-2014

Contact: Anita Srikameswaran SrikamAV@upmc.edu 412-578-9193 University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences @UPMCnews

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine have been awarded a $11.8 million, five-year grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, part of the National Institutes of Health, to continue their exploration of the genetic roots of cleft lip and cleft palate and to expand the effort to include populations in Colombia, Nigeria, the Philippines and Pennsylvania.

Orofacial clefts (OFCs), which are small gaps in the lip or palate that can form when a baby's mouth doesn't develop properly during pregnancy, occurs in 1 out of 700 live births worldwide, said Mary L. Marazita, Ph.D., professor and vice chair, Department of Oral Biology, and director of the Center for Craniofacial and Dental Genetics (CCDG).

"Orofacial clefts present a significant public health challenge as these patients typically require surgical, nutritional, dental, speech and behavioral treatments for years," Dr. Marazita said. "We hope to build on the progress we've made in our previous studies by identifying genetic susceptibility not only for the overt defects, but also for more subtle features such as changes in facial structure that we have found in relatives of participants with OFCs."

Dr. Marazita and Seth M. Weinberg, Ph.D., assistant professor of oral biology, and director of the CCDG Imaging and Morphometrics Lab, lead the coordinating center for the project, which includes researchers from the University of Iowa, the Newborn Screening Foundation in the Philippines, the Lancaster Cleft Palate Clinic, Nigeria's University of Lagos, Colombia's Foundation Clinica Noel, and KU Leuven University in Belgium.

For the work's next phase, the team will recruit for genetic studies about 6,100 individuals from more than 1,500 families with a history of cleft lip with or without cleft palate, or cleft palate alone, from a low-risk population in Nigeria; high-risk populations in the Philippines and Colombia; and mid-risk populations in Pittsburgh and Lancaster, Pa., as well as 2,000 unrelated individuals with no history of OFC.

"Recent studies indicate different genes seem to be involved in different ethnic groups, so we must broaden our perspective to understand the factors that lead to clefts," Dr. Weinberg said. "We have limited information about the development of cleft palate alone, for example. This research effort will greatly add to our knowledge."

The team also will assess participants for subclinical manifestations of genetic predisposition for OFCs with high-resolution ultrasound scanning of mouth muscles, lip print patterns, 3-D imaging of facial surfaces and more. Their previously published studies have shown that relatives of OFC patients are more likely to have subtle defects in the orbicularis oris muscle around the mouth, and facial differences such as mid-face retrusion and wider faces. OFC patients also report a family history of cancer more often than unaffected individuals, noted Dr. Marazita.

The rest is here:

Pitt team searches for genetic roots of cleft lip, palate

New hypothyroidism treatment guidelines from American Thyroid Association

Posted on by

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

30-Sep-2014

Contact: Kathryn Ryan kryan@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News @LiebertOnline

New Rochelle, NY, September 30, 2014Levothyroxine (L-T4), long the standard of care for treating hypothyroidism, is effective in most patients, but some individuals do not regain optimal health on L-T4 monotherapy. New knowledge about thyroid physiology may help to explain these differences. An expert task force of the American Thyroid Association on thyroid hormone replacement reviewed the latest studies on L-T4 therapy and on alternative treatments to determine whether a change to the current standard of care is appropriate, and they present their recommendations in the article "Guidelines for the Treatment of Hypothyroidism," published in Thyroid, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers and the official journal of the American Thyroid Association (ATA). The Guidelines are available free on the Thyroid website.

Task force co-chairs J. Jonklaas and A.C. Bianco, with colleagues from the Clinical and Translational Science sub-committees, coauthored the Guidelines on behalf of the American Thyroid Association Task Force on Thyroid Hormone Replacement. The authors reviewed the clinical literature related to three main therapeutic categories: levothyroxine therapy; non-levothyroxine-based thyroid hormone therapies (including thyroid extracts, synthetic combination therapy, triiodothyronine therapy, and compounded thyroid hormones); and use of thyroid hormone analogues.

The task force concluded that levothyroxine should remain the standard of care for treating hypothyroidism, noting that no consistently strong evidence supports the superiority of alternative therapies. They emphasize that the recommendations are intended to guide physicians' clinical decision-making on thyroid hormone replacement therapy for individual patients.

"These very comprehensive guidelines provide a superb overview on the current evidence about treatment modalities for patients with hypothyroidism," says Peter A. Kopp, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Thyroid and Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Molecular Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois. "In addition, the document highlights gaps in our knowledge and indicates which topics are in need of future research, for example the need for long-term outcome clinical trials testing combination therapies and continuing research on thyroid hormone analogs."

"These ATA guidelines, developed by an expert team, provide useful, up-to-date information on why to treat, including subclinical disease, who to treat, and how to treat hypothyroidism. Information is evidence-based and recommendations are graded. I think they will be used extensively by all clinical endocrinologists, especially by our members," says Hossein Gharib, MD, President of the ATA, Professor of Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minnesota.

###

About the Journal

See the original post here:

New hypothyroidism treatment guidelines from American Thyroid Association

Your Digital Twin Could Be Making Your Decisions

Posted on by

In a recent and intriguing article atBusiness Insider, futurist John Smart makes a bold prediction in regard to near-future technology: Within five years, we could each have a digital twin an online version of ourselves that will make decisions for us in a world of information overload.

Of course, futurists are prone to bold predictions. Its literally part of the job. But the implications of Smarts ideas have an eerie ring of plausibility. The basic gist is that, as personal digital assistants like Siri and Cortana evolve, theyll learn our habits and preferences at the same time that were delegating more and more tasks to them.

Tips For Dating An Avatar

Gradually, our personal agent will morph into a kind of cyber-self able to navigate the online world in our stead, says Smart, founder of the Acceleration Studies Foundation. And theyll live, potentially, forever. When you and I die, our kids arent going to go to our tombstones, Smart told Business Insider. Theyre going to fire up our digital twins and talk to them.

The digital twin concept is based on emerging trends in a number of areas, including conversational interface (CI) technology and improved artificial intelligence systems that can crunch massive amounts of data quickly. Our digital twins will learn about our values and interests by being constantly plugged into our personal data stream emails and online activity and by increasing verbal interaction through the CI technology.

Robot Frets Over Moral Puzzle, Humans Die

The short-term examples Smart cites in the article digital twins doing our shopping or scheduling arent particularly compelling. Proponents of online agent technology have been conjecturing on this stuff since the 1990s. But the long-range implications are interesting. As our digital twins become more savvy, they could basically become both the depositories for, and the guardians of, all of our online information.

The future of personal control isnt control of data, Smart said. The future that we care about is control of an algorithmic interface of your identity.

via Business Insider

Credit: ThinkStock

Go here to see the original:

Your Digital Twin Could Be Making Your Decisions

MNACs modernist makeover

Posted on by

The National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) in Barcelona is best known for its medieval art, particularly its collection of Romanesque murals, which is considered one of the most important in the world. But a significant chunk of the museums holdings of around 30,000 pieces is modern art, dating back to the beginning of the last century, and up to the 1950s. Now, around 1,300 pieces, half of them never exhibited in public before, are to go on display in a specially prepared space covering 4,000 square meters of the museums first floor.

The walls of the space, formerly a neutral off-white, have been painted in bright colors, while the paintings have been hung seemingly willy-nilly.

One of the MNACs main tasks is to showcase Catalan art through the centuries, but the collection now on display also includes work by Juan Gris, Julio Romero de Torres, Alfred Sisley and Edvard Munch. These all form part of the collection and help to put it in context, says the museums director, Pepe Serra.

Weve presented a big picture of what society was like, with all its contradictions

MNAC director Pepe Serra

When Serra took over three years ago, he made it clear that he wanted to break with tradition, and put the modern art collection in context. As a result, painting, sculpture, posters, cinema, illustrations, furniture, advertising, photography, and particularly architecture are all on display. Together the pieces tell the story of the beginning of modern art, and how realism gradually emerged as the dominant trend in the early 20th century. Paintings such as Mariano Fortunys The Battle of Tetun, which harks back to the styles of the 19th century, become superseded by more lifelike depictions of events.

The exhibition brings the period to life through the faces of the artists as depicted in their self-portraits, as well as those of their wealthy patrons. We have tried to avoid focusing on styles such as Impressionism, Futurism, Cubism, Expressionism, etc., and have instead presented a big picture of what society was like, with all its contradictions, says Serra. The major works are there as well, and are enriched by being seen alongside others created at that time.

The longer-term goal, says Serra, is for the MNAC to become the benchmark for modernism, a movement that developed in Catalonia, represented by artists and architects such as Ramon Casas, Santiago Ruisiol, Miquel Utrillo, Isidre Nonell, Pablo Picasso and Carles Casagemas. Space has been found to present 20 pieces of furniture created by Antoni Gaud, alongside work by his long-time collaborator Josep Maria Jujol.

Works by Juli Gonzlez, Joaquim Sunyer, Josep de Togores, Joaquim Torres-Garca, Salvador Dal and Picasso are all to be found in the 39 sections that make up the collection. There are also pieces related to the Spanish Civil War, among them photographs taken by Agust Centelles, many of which were exhibited alongside Picassos Guernica in the Republican Pavilion at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris in 1937.

An epilogue is provided in the form of works lent by the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) by Antoni Tpies, Modest Cuixart and Joan Pon, members of the Dau al Set, which attempted to revive surrealism in Spain at the end of the 1940s. Despite having 4,000 square meters at our disposal, we ran out of space, says Serra, who says the Baroque and Renaissance areas of the museum are now to be redesigned.

More here:

MNACs modernist makeover