Vaccination against COVID-19: Factors That Influence Vaccine Hesitancy among an Ethnically Diverse Community in the UK

The UK’s minority ethnic population, despite being at higher risk of COVID-19 and experiencing poorer health outcomes, continue to have lower uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine compared with their white British counterparts. Given the importance of the vaccination programme in improving health outcomes, this research sought to examine the influential factors that impact the decision to accept the COVID-19 vaccination among an ethnically diverse community. A total of 1058 residents from Luton, UK, a large town with an ethnically diverse population, completed a community survey. Questions centred around uptake or individuals’ intentions to accept the offer of COVID-19 vaccination alongside demographics, knowledge, and views on the vaccine. A binary logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine the most significant predictors of vaccine hesitancy, while respondents’ reasons for not getting vaccinated were identified using qualitative content analysis. Findings revealed that age and ethnicity were the only sociodemographic factors to predict vaccine hesitancy. Knowledge of symptoms and transmission routes, alongside ensuring information about COVID-19 was objectively sourced, were all identified as protective factors against vaccine hesitancy. Qualitative analysis revealed that ‘lack of trust in government/authorities’ and ‘concern of the speed of vaccine development’ were the most common reasons for non-uptake. This research reinforces the importance of age, ethnicity, and knowledge as influential factors in predicting vaccine hesitancy. Further, this study uncovers some of the barriers of uptake that can be utilised in developing promotional campaigns to reduce vaccine hesitancy in certain sections of the diverse UK population.

The Biodegradation of Soil Organic Matter in Soil-Dwelling Humivorous Fauna

Soil organic matter contains more carbon than global vegetation and the atmosphere combined. Gaining access to this source of organic carbon is challenging and requires at least partial removal of polyphenolic and/or soil mineral protections, followed by subsequent enzymatic or chemical cleavage of diverse plant polysaccharides. Soil-feeding animals make significant contributions to the recycling of terrestrial organic matter. Some humivorous earthworms, beetles, and termites, among others, have evolved the ability to mineralize recalcitrant soil organic matter, thereby leading to their tremendous ecological success in the (sub)tropical areas. This ability largely relies on their symbiotic associations with a diverse community of gut microbes. Recent integrative omics studies, including genomics, metagenomics, and proteomics, provide deeper insights into the functions of gut symbionts. In reviewing this literature, we emphasized that understanding how these soil-feeding fauna catabolize soil organic substrates not only reveals the key microbes in the intestinal processes but also uncovers the potential novel enzymes with considerable biotechnological interests.

Cryptophyte and Photosynthetic Picoeukaryote Abundances in the Bransfield Strait during Austral Summer

A remarkable shift in the species composition and size distribution of the phytoplankton community have been observed in coastal waters along the Antarctic Peninsula over the last three decades. Smaller photoautotrophs such as cryptophytes are becoming more abundant and important for the regional ecosystems. In this study, flow cytometry was used to quantify the smallest phytoplankton in the central Bransfield Strait and explore their distribution across the strait in relation to physical and chemical properties of the two major water masses: the warmer and less saline Transitional Zonal Water with Bellingshausen Sea influence (TBW), and the cold and salty Transitional Zonal Water with Weddell Sea influence (TWW). Pico- and nano-phytoplankton clusters were distinguished and enumerated in the cytograms: photosynthetic picoeukaryotes, cryptophytes (about 9 µm in size), and smaller (3 µm) nanophytoplankton. It was shown that nanophytoplankton developed higher abundances and biomasses in the warmer and less saline TBW. This biotope was characterized by a more diverse community with a pronounced dominance of Cryptophyta in terms of biomass. The results support the hypothesis that increasing melt-water input can potentially support spatial and temporal extent of cryptophytes. The replacement of large diatoms with small cryptophytes leads to a significant shift in trophic processes in favor of the consumers such as salps, which able to graze on smaller prey.

Challenges and Opportunities With Deaf Multilingual Learners

There are an estimated 34 million children worldwide with hearing loss greater than 40dB. As around 90% of children who are Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) are born to parents with typical hearing there are often questions of what language the child who is DHH could and should learn. For the 90% of typically hearing parents who had no prior knowledge of sign language, the idea of having to learn another language to use with their children can be very daunting. Additionally, as the world becomes more bi/multilingual, many children who are DHH may live in a culturally and linguistically diverse community where the home language is not the same language as the community at large; these children are known as DHH Multilingual Learners (DMLs). This can cause additional potential language and cultural learning constraints on immigrant parents who are not yet familiar with their new community's spoken language(s) and culture(s). This results in an increased need for culturally competent professionals to work with DMLs to provide effective interventions.

Observations on the Talk and the Walk

This chapter provides basic definitions of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and identifies skills and competencies necessary for the chief diversity officer (CDO) in higher education, post-2020. Specific concepts from research and industry provide strategies and tactics for the professional stepping into “the work.” This chapter enters the dialogue about DEI from the entry point of consulting as change manager with faculty experience. It proceeds from there to discuss the five terrains of inclusive excellence that offer a new foundation for equity of policy and practice in higher education. The terrains lead into an examination of intersectionality and the work of creating an intentionally diverse community. Decision quality and critical thinking and other competencies for inclusive excellence leadership, such as emotional intelligence and cultural competence, round out the dialogue with specific observations from and suggestions for research and practice.

Looking through the FOG: microbiome characterization and lipolytic bacteria isolation from a fatberg site

Sewer systems are complex physical, chemical and microbial ecosystems where fats, oils and grease (FOG) present a major problem for sewer management. Their accumulation can lead to blockages (‘Fatbergs’), sewer overflows and disruption of downstream wastewater treatment. Further advancements of biological FOG treatments need to be tailored to degrade the FOG, and operate successfully within the sewer environment. In this study we developed a pipeline for isolation of lipolytic strains directly from two FOG blockage sites in the UK, and isolated a range of highly lipolytic bacteria. We selected the five most lipolytic strains using Rhodamine B agar plates and pNP-Fatty acid substrates, with two Serratia spp., two Klebsiella spp. and an environmental Acinetobacter strain that all have the capacity to grow on FOG-based carbon sources. Their genome sequences identified the genetic capacity for fatty acid harvesting (lipases), catabolism and utilization (Fad genes). Furthermore, we performed a preliminary molecular characterization of the microbial community at these sites, showing a diverse community of environmental bacteria at each site, but which did include evidence of sequences related to our isolates. This study provides proof of concept to isolation strategies targeting Fatberg sites to yield candidate strains with bioremediation potential for FOG in the wastewater network. Our work sets the foundation for development of novel bioadditions tailored to the environment with non-pathogenic Acinetobacter identified as a candidate for this purpose.

Effective Recruitment Strategies for Community-Dwelling Persons Living With Dementia and Their Caregivers

Recruitment of diverse community-dwelling persons living with dementia (PLWD) and their caregivers (dyads) into randomized controlled trials (RCT) is challenging, time consuming and expensive. This presentation will describe community outreach efforts used over a one-year period to recruit dyads of PLWD and their caregivers in Healthy Patterns RCT. Community outreach yielded 296 inquiries, such that people expressed interest in joining the study. Of the 296 inquiries, almost all (95.6%) identified as African American, and 91(30.7%) consented to join the study. Presentations at senior centers yielded the highest number of inquiries (n=148), followed by staff presence at various community events such as health fairs and senior galas (n=145) and referrals (n=3). We found that community outreach was an effective recruitment strategy to generate inquiries among diverse PLWD and their caregivers to enroll in Healthy Patterns. We will discuss these strategies and provide suggestions for recruiting diverse dyads into clinical trials.

Reliabilities of mean and variability of ambulatory pain among community dwelling older adults

Individual’s pain experiences vary substantially over time periods, and the variability in pain may be an important metric to predict health consequences. However, research on its reliability is lacking among older adults. We aimed to examine the reliabilities of both intra-individual mean (IIM) and intra-individual variability (IIV) of subjective pain reports assessed using ecological momentary assessments (EMA) among racially diverse, community dwelling older adults. Participants were from the Einstein Aging Study (N=311, age=70-91) and completed a 14-day EMA protocol which included self-reports of pain intensity 6 times a day. Pain IIV was quantified using intraindividual standard deviation (iSD). We followed Wang and Grimm(2012)’s approach to calculate the reliability of IIM and IIV. Over a 2-week period, we found excellent reliabilities for both pain IIM (.99) and pain IIV (.91), showing that these measures are reliable and can be used to link with various health outcomes among community dwelling older adults. We also estimated the average number of assessments that produce acceptable levels of reliability. The average of 2 assessments for pain IIM and 23 assessments for pain IIV produced values that exceeded reliability score of .80, suggesting that a briefer study design may be used to reduce participants’ burden with reliable pain metrics. Future studies need to examine whether pain IIV is associated with cognitive, emotional, and physical health among older adults and whether intervention studies that target to reduce pain IIV improve health consequences.