East Orange Research Articles

Brief Parent-Child Substance Use Education Intervention for Black Families in Urban Cities in New Jersey: Protocol for a Formative Study Design.

Substance use continues to remain a public health issue for youths in the United States. Black youths living in urban communities are at a heightened risk of poor outcomes associated with substance use and misuse due to exposure to stressors in their neighborhoods, racial discrimination, and lack of prevention education programs specifically targeting Black youths. Many Black youths, especially those who live in urban communities, do not have access to culturally tailored interventions, leaving a critical gap in prevention. Since family is a well-known protective factor against substance misuse for Black youths, it is essential to create sustainable and accessible programming that incorporates Black youths' and their families' voices to develop a suitable prevention program for them. We aim to understand the cultural and environmental level factors that influence substance use among Black youths and develop a prevention program to increase parent-child substance use education among Black families. This study will take place within urban cities in New Jersey such as Paterson and East Orange, New Jersey, which will be the main study sites. Both cities have a large population of Black youths and this study's team has strong ties with youths-serving organizations there. A formative, qualitative study will be conducted first. Using the first 3 steps of the ADAPT-ITT (Assessment, Decision, Adaptation, Production, Topical Experts, Integration, Training, and Testing) framework we begin the development of an intervention for Black families. Three aims will be described: aim 1, collect qualitative data from Black parents and youths aged 11-17 years from parent-child dyads (N=20) on the challenges, barriers, and facilitators to communicating about substance use; aim 2, adapt a selected evidence-based intervention for Black families and develop a family advisory board to guide the adaptation; and aim 3 assess the feasibility of the intervention through theater testing, involving the family and community advisory board. This study is part of a 2-year research pilot study award from the National Institutes of Drug Abuse. Data collection began in May 2023, and for aim 1, it is 95% complete. All aim 1 data collection is expected to be complete by December 30, 2023. Data analysis will immediately follow. Aim 2 activity will occur in spring 2024. Aim 3 activity may begin in fall 2024 and conclude in 2025. This study will be one of the few interventions that address substance use among youths and uses parents and families in urban communities as a protective factor within the program. We anticipate that the intervention will benefit Black youths not only in New Jersey but across the nation, working on building culturally appropriate, community-specific prevention education and building on strong families' relationships, resulting in a reduction of or delayed substance use. DERR1-10.2196/55470.

Reconsidering Palmer v Thompson

Reconsidering Palmer <scp>v</scp> Thompson

Roth Memorial

Roth Memorial Patrick O'Donnell (bio) Arguably the most compelling final paragraph of an American novel, perhaps only second to that of The Great Gatsby, occurs in Philip Roth's The Human Stain, published on the cusp of the new millennium: I turned from the shore, once I was safely there, to look back and see if he was going to follow me into the woods after all and to do me in before I ever got my chance to enter Coleman Silk's boyhood house and, like Steena Palsson before me, to sit with his East Orange family as the white guest at Sunday dinner. Just facing him, I could feel the terror of the auger—even with him already seated back on his bucket: the icy white of the lake encircling a tiny spot that was a man, the only human marker in all of nature, like the X of an illiterate's signature on a sheet of paper. There it was, if not the whole story, the whole picture. Only rarely, at the end of our century, does life offer up a vision as pure and peaceful as this one: a solitary man on a bucket, fishing through eighteen inches of ice in a lake that's constantly turning over its water atop an arcadian mountain in America. (Stain 360-61) "The only human marker in all of nature, like the X of an illiterate's signature": thus Roth's ironic acceptance of the unreadability—the sheer opacity—of the human and the possibility of ever relating "the whole story." Yet Roth's life-project was a prolific and relentlessly provocative attempt to do so, or at least to fill in as many of the blanks as he could, in the time that he had, through all of those flawed and stained narrators and protagonists who inhabit his novels, blind and blind-sided here, illuminated by visions pure and peaceful there. No American novelist I know of, with the exception of Hawthorne, understood how deeply riven with contradiction the "nature" of "human nature" can be. In charting its excesses and its limitations, especially in the realm of self-understanding, Roth lost a lot of friends and made a lot of enemies, members of either party unwilling to accept his scorn for familiar categories; a novelist of filiation, he had no time for affiliation. His satirical proclivities, his attraction to the scandalous, his comic [End Page 111] outrageousness—qualities that both vie and correspond with the philosophical seriousness and the probative cultural and historical density of his fiction—have confused some and irritated others. At century's end, he captures perfectly in The Human Stain the antinomies of our growing intolerance of our own deep imperfection, paired with our growing lassitude in the face of human corruption and violence. In this novel, Roth implicitly protests against reductionism in all of its forms; he is an adversary of the binary, the all-too-easy separability of guilt from innocence and pure from impure that seems to have invaded every aspect of our contemporary Manichean existence in the difficult new century he anticipates, via Nathan Zuckerman, as he takes a last look at a Vietnam veteran alone, ice-fishing on a lake "that's constantly turning over its water atop an arcadian mountain in America." Nature, or the paradoxical snapshot of impermanent, ever-changing nature captured in this "whole picture," may offer a vision of purity against which the illegibility of the human can be marked, but the unreadability of the human stain viewed not as DNA but as "X," a cross-out or cipher, signifies for Roth our impenetrability and excess beyond any mappings offered by science, law, politics, or religion. In a designation that he would have immediately recognized and embraced, he was the most secular American writer of his time. Roth was not interested in life as a singularity, but in lives as pluralities, alterities. Most Roth protagonists live at least two lives, and though we sometimes have Nathan Zuckerman and David Kepesh to try to sort things out, they almost inevitably fall back on a recognition that the story they can tell is only half the...

Veterans have greater variability in their perception of binocular alignment.

IntroductionA significant population of our wounded veterans suffer long-term functional consequences of visual deficit, disorientation, dizziness, and an impaired ability to read. These symptoms may be related to damage within the otolith pathways that contribute to ocular alignment. The purpose of this study was to compare perception of vertical and torsional ocular alignment between veterans and healthy controls in an upright and supine test position.Materials and methodsVeterans (n = 26) with reports of dizziness were recruited from the East Orange Veterans Administration Hospital. Healthy controls (n = 26) were recruited from both Johns Hopkins University and the East Orange VA. Each subject performed 20 trials each of a novel vertical and torsional binocular alignment perception test. Veterans underwent semicircular canal and otolith pathway function testing.Results88% of the Veterans had an absent otolith response. Only the veterans had an abnormally large variability in perception of both vertical and torsional ocular alignment, and in both upright and supine position. Neither post-traumatic stress disorder, nor depression contributed to the misperception in binocular alignment.ConclusionsOur novel method of measuring vertical and torsional misalignment distinguishes veterans with dizziness from healthy controls. The high prevalence of absent otolith function seems to explain this result. Further studies are needed to better understand the fundamental mechanism responsible for the increased variability of perception of binocular alignment.

Project SEED scholar Rita Baskett

Rita Baskett says she felt like an outsider when she was first placed in a lab through the American Chemical Society Project SEED program. Many of the other students in the labs were family members of researchers, she says. “But I came a different route.” Baskett’s father immigrated to the US from the British Virgin Islands with a fifth-grade education. Her mother, a high school graduate, was a crossing guard in Baskett’s hometown of East Orange, New Jersey. One of Baskett’s sisters joined the military, while the other was the first in her family to graduate from college. “I was the second!” Baskett says. Baskett says she always had an interest in the sciences and was a part of her high school’s math and science club. Her chemistry teacher told her about Project SEED, which provides summer research experiences to high school students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. That summer, Baskett

No Sex in Newark: Postindustrial Erotics at the Intersection of Urban and Adult Film History

No Sex in Newark: Postindustrial Erotics at the Intersection of Urban and Adult Film History Whitney Strub (bio) No masterpiece of pornography by most standards, Newark Penn Station Pt 1: Dude Fingering My Musty Booty (neanea14, 2015) consists of fifty-six seconds set in a restroom that foreground a man’s thrust-out ass. We peer up into it from below, as another man sitting on a toilet in an adjacent stall reaches under the divide to, indeed, finger it. The man being fingered shoots the scene from his phone camera, held in one hand as he strokes himself with the other, leaving us with a shaky and constrained view. Just before the minute mark, it abruptly stops. [End Page 175] Fortunately for viewers left disoriented or seeking narrative or sexual closure, our cruising pornographer, known only as neanea14, posted a short sequel to his XTube channel. In the caption to Newark Penn Station Pt 2 (2015), he explains, “i went to the urinals and we went into the stall to finish what we started at the urinals. my dick was musty as fuck. hope you enjoy.”1 This fifty-seven-second scene brings the video to an orgasmic conclusion, as the two men, now standing inside one stall, jack themselves and each other off to completion, ejaculating in turn into the toilet bowl. In the next stall, a man stands to pee and flushes, seen only by his feet. We never see faces in the two videos, which afford us mere snippets of the men at play: black, with tight athletic abdomens, dressed casually in sweatpants, jeans, and sneakers. From neanea14’s profile, we get an expanded sense of an attractive twenty something very interested in public sex, public masturbation, and the act of recording himself. Much of his erotic circuit seems to follow the route of the northern New Jersey Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) train itinerary, with similar encounters recorded at the Journal Square stop in Jersey City and elsewhere. Much could be said of the sometimes charming, sometimes troubling erotic subjectivity that neanea14 charts over the course of his fifty short videos, all posted to XTube between approximately 2013 and 2016. As a proud versatile bottom and self-identified Christian, his stated turn-ons include mustiness and men of all varieties, with the exception of “fat guys and Caucasian men.” As an exemplar of Black queer autopornography, he represents do-it-yourself (DIY) culture work of the sort that still receives too little scholarly attention.2 The work of neanea14 also points toward the ways pornography proves useful at the intersection of urban history, film studies, and the history of sexuality, especially when traditional archives fail us. Both the production and the exhibition of porn offer rich resources for documenting precarious postindustrial erotics that too often go overlooked. Notably, neanea14’s “hit me up” geography does not include New York City—a mere three stops and ten minutes past Journal Square on the PATH, and so easily accessible for him. Instead, it comprises a North Jersey nexus of Jersey City, Bayonne, Newark, Hoboken, and East Orange. Nor is neanea14 the only DIY pornographer working in this space; XTube user deesoul87 offers Penn Station Head (2011), seventy-five seconds of blow-job footage riskily shot on an elevator inside Newark Penn Station.3 Clearly, Newark affords space for pleasure and desire. One would not know it from the existing scholarship on the city, however. In the dominant national symbolic economy, Newark remains an overdetermined metonym of urban decay, eternally trapped in the shadow of 1967’s long hot summer and its incessant renarrativization everywhere from PBS to Philip Roth novels.4 When anthropologist Ana Ramos-Zayas [End Page 176] studied how Newark was rendered legible to Brazilian and Puerto Rican immigrant communities, she found that blackness registered as an affect, defined through aggression, which in turn became the “meta-narrative of emotion in Newark.”5 In this reading of the city, otherwise-marginalized groups partook of hegemonic consensus. Indeed, postindustrial blackness seems to foreclose the sort of urban erotics bestowed on other cities. To pluck from eclectic historiographies for effect: eighteenth-century Philadelphia begins with Sex among...

Нобелова награда за постижения в областта на икономическите науки за 2017 г.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Swedish National Bank Prize for Excellence in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel to Richard Thaler "for his contributions to behavioural economics". Richard Thaler1 was born on 12 September 1945 in East Orange, New Jersey, USA. He defended his doctoral thesis on 'How much does it cost to save a life: a market valuation' in 1974 at the University of Rochester, USA.

Racial Profiling Report: Bloomfield Police and Bloomfield Municipal Court

Seton Hall Law School’s Center for Policy & Research selected Bloomfield, New Jersey as a setting for a study of potential racial profiling in its police practices. The results revealed a persistent and disproportionate representation of African Americans and Latinos in the courtroom as compared to their representation in either Bloomfield itself or in the State of New Jersey. Bloomfield, New Jersey is, in many ways, demographically representative of New Jersey itself. According to the most recent census data available, its population of 47,315 is roughly 60% white, 18.5% African American, and 24.5% Latino. In comparison, New Jersey's population is 68.6% white, 13.7% African American, and 17.7% Latino. Bloomfield is ringed on the north, east and west by towns that resemble its demographic makeup. Bloomfield’s southern border, however, is a different story: Newark is 26.3% white, 52.3% African American and 33.8% Latino; East Orange is 4% white, 88.5% African American and 7.9% Latino. The study entailed hundreds of observations of court appearances for traffic offenses and a small number of other minor offenses in Bloomfield Municipal Court, conducted by a team of trained Seton Hall Law School students for 70 hours over the course of a month. Students also scrutinized a database of 9,715 tickets issued to unique drivers in Bloomfield during a 12-month period immediately preceding the courtroom observations. The individuals with Spanish surnames who were cited in the Bloomfield ticket database closely approximated the Latino percentage observed in court appearances. Given the demographics of both Bloomfield and New Jersey generally, the expected representation in the courtroom would have been around 60% white. Strikingly, the observers reported the inverse, plus: instead of 60% white, African-Americans and Latinos accounted for an astounding 78% of court appearances (43% African American, 35% Latino, 20% White, and 2% other) (n=799). Remarkably, this racial disproportion was found not only across the board but in various subgroupings -- including Bloomfield itself whose African American and Latino residents accounted for 73% of Bloomfield residents observed before the court, as compared with only 24% white. Similarly, a racial disproportion in ticketing also existed across the five predominantly white border towns. Although the numbers are small (n=39), 64% of those with residences in the predominantly white border towns were African American or Latino while only 33% were white. Much of the explanation for the racial distribution of tickets is undoubtedly due to the issuance of citations to residents of the cities of Newark and East Orange. The borders of these cities with Bloomfield were overwhelmingly targeted by the Bloomfield Police. To determine areas of police targeting, the database of tickets from the year immediately prior to the observation aspect of the study, was also analyzed for patrolling patterns. Where it could be determined where the traffic stop occurred (which was in some 67% of the cases), the overwhelming majority -- 88.33% -- were in the third of Bloomfield nearest to Newark and East Orange. Added to the courtroom observation data showing a greatly disproportionate number of tickets issued to African Americans and Latinos (78%), this pattern of citations compels the conclusion that African Americans and Latinos are, collectively, Bloomfield Police’s target group. Indeed, Bloomfield Police policing patterns suggest a de facto “border patrol.” By plotting out ticket incidence and frequency, one can see what essentially amounts to a “wall” of police erected against the Newark and East Orange border areas and their predominantly African American and Latino residents. This pattern of police citations also resulted in a dramatic subsidy of Bloomfield by African American and Latinos, in large part from residents of Newark and East Orange. For each individual charged, the average cost was $137 plus any surcharges imposed. That suggests that, for African Americans and Latinos, as a group, 7,566 tickets and a total paid to Bloomfield Municipal Court of more than $1,000,000. From the residents of East Orange and Newark who, at 29% of the observed total, received 2,910 tickets, Bloomfield Municipal Court would have received nearly $400,000. The annual budget of the Court is about $500,000, suggesting a substantial “profit” from this pattern of law enforcement, most of it from nonresidents of Bloomfield, and heavily weighted on the backs of African Americans and Latinos as a group. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Municipal Court’s budgeted salaries were projected to have more than doubled in 2015, from $350,600 in 2014 to an estimated $760,794 in 2015.

HPV Vaccination Completion and Compliance with Recommended Dosing Intervals Among Female and Male Adolescents in an Inner-City Community Health Center.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination continues to lag behind other adolescent vaccines, especially in areas with pervasive disparities in HPV-related cancers. The purpose of this study was to examine HPV vaccine completion and dosing intervals among low-income adolescents in urban areas. The study included electronic health record data on HPV vaccination for 872 adolescents who received at least one dose of the HPV vaccine. Only 28.4% completed the 3-dose series. For the whole sample, HPV vaccine completion was higher for non-English speakers and among adolescents seen at Newark-South and East Orange sites. Completion was higher among non-English speaking female and Hispanic adolescents, females seen in Newark-South and East Orange sites, and insured Black adolescents. Completion was also dramatically lower among non-English speaking Black adolescents seen at Newark-North, Irvington, and Orange sites (12.5%) compared to other Black adolescents (22.0-44.4%). The mean dosing intervals were 5.5 months (SD = 4.6) between dose 1 and 2 and 10 months (SD = 6.1) between dose 1 and 3. Longer durations between vaccine doses were found among uninsured adolescents and those seen at Newark-North, Irvington, and Orange sites. Non-English speakers had longer duration between dose 1 and 3. Further, durations between dose 1 and 3 were dramatically longer among insured adolescents seen at Newark-North, Irvington, and Orange locations for the whole sample (M = 11.70; SD = 7.12) and among Hispanic adolescents (M = 13.45; SD = 8.54). Understanding how the study predictors facilitate or impede HPV vaccination is critical to reducing disparities in cervical and other HPV-related cancer, especially among Black, Hispanic, and low-income populations.

Appropriateness of Upper Gastrointestinal Endoscopy in Patients With Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD): A Single-Center Experience

Introduction: GERD accounts for a large number of outpatient clinic visits and is the most common diagnosis of all presenting GI related complaints. The diagnosis is often made clinically but upper endoscopy is commonly used in its diagnosis and management. In this study, we sought to examine the appropriateness of upper endoscopy in patients with GERD in our center according to guidelines. Methods: We reviewed the records of patients diagnosed with GERD at the East Orange VA Medical Center from 01/2012 to 01/2013 for demographics, duration of symptoms, failure of treatment (twice daily PPI therapy for at least 6-8 weeks with lifestyle changes), presence of alarm symptoms (dysphagia, odynophagia, persistent vomiting, >5% weight loss, GI bleeding, anemia) and reasons for upper endoscopy if performed. Performing endoscopy was judged inappropriate in patients with GERD who did not meet any of the following criteria: failure of medical treatment, presence of alarm symptoms or screening for Barrett’s esophagus (> 50 year old Caucasian males with symptoms >5 years). Fisher’s exact test was used to analyze the influence of demographics on the appropriate use of upper endoscopy. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS. Results: There were 101 patients diagnosed with GERD. Ninety-six had sufficient data for review and were analyzed. Median age was 77 (42-98) years. 49% (47) of patients had endoscopy performed. Among them, 83 (39%) of endoscopies were defined as appropriate. Among the 49 patients who did not have endoscopies, an endoscopy would have been appropriate in 16 (32.7%) of them according to guidelines. On univariate analysis, there was no significant difference by age, race or sex as an influence on appropriate use of upper endoscopies. Conclusion: Upper endoscopy is the most widely used investigative procedure for GERD but its limitations and potential for overuse should be recognized. At our center, 17% of endoscopies performed for the management and treatment of GERD were inappropriate. More studies are needed to explore factors associated with inappropriate use of upper endoscopy in the management of GERD.Table 1: Indications for Upper Endoscopy in Patients With GERD

Oral d-amphetamine increases sensitivity to negative consequences on an associative learning task in cocaine users

Oral d-amphetamine increases sensitivity to negative consequences on an associative learning task in cocaine users

Endothelin-1 Activation of the Endothelin B Receptor Modulates Pulmonary Endothelial CX3CL1 and Contributes to Pulmonary Angiogenesis in Experimental Hepatopulmonary Syndrome

Hepatic production and release of endothelin-1 (ET-1) binding to endothelin B (ETB) receptors, overexpressed in the lung microvasculature, is associated with accumulation of pro-angiogenic monocytes and vascular remodeling in experimental hepatopulmonary syndrome (HPS) after common bile duct ligation (CBDL). We have recently found that lung vascular monocyte adhesion and angiogenesis in HPS involve interaction of endothelial C-X3-C motif ligand 1 (CX3CL1) with monocyte CX3C chemokine receptor 1 (CX3CR1), although whether ET-1/ETB receptor activation influences these events is unknown. Our aim was to define if ET-1/ETB receptor activation modulates CX3CL1/CX3CR1 signaling and lung angiogenesis in experimental HPS. A selective ETB receptor antagonist, BQ788, was given for 2 weeks to 1-week CBDL rats. ET-1 (±BQ788) was given to cultured rat pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells overexpressing ETB receptors. BQ788 treatment significantly decreased lung angiogenesis, monocyte accumulation, and CX3CL1 levels after CBDL. ET-1 treatment significantly induced CX3CL1 production in lung microvascular endothelial cells, which was blocked by inhibitors of Ca(2+) and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MEK)/ERK pathways. ET-1-induced ERK activation was Ca(2+) independent. ET-1 administration also increased endothelial tube formation in vitro, which was inhibited by BQ788 or by blocking Ca(2+) and MEK/ERK activation. CX3CR1 neutralizing antibody partially inhibited ET-1 effects on tube formation. These findings identify a novel mechanistic interaction between the ET-1/ETB receptor axis and CX3CL1/CX3CR1 in mediating pulmonary angiogenesis and vascular monocyte accumulation in experimental HPS.

Why Are Veterans Declining Colorectal Cancer Screening at the East Orange Veterans Administration?

Why Are Veterans Declining Colorectal Cancer Screening at the East Orange Veterans Administration?

War Related Illness and Injury Study Center (WRIISC): A Multidisciplinary Translational Approach to the Care of Veterans With Chronic Multisymptom Illness

INTRODUCTION Chronic multisymptom illness (CMI) is defined as the presence for at least 6 months of one or more of the following three symptom complexes: musculoskeletal pain, general fatigue, and mood or cognitive problems. CMI has been documented after armed conflicts since the Civil War and unfortunately has surfaced again as Veterans return from the theaters of operation in Afghanistan and Iraq. CMI is a complex chronic health condition where symptoms may vary depending on a Veteran’s era of deployment and the presence of other comorbid disorders. Because of the disparate nature of the symptoms, Veterans with CMI often see many providers in multiple specialties, resulting in poorly coordinated or conflicting treatment plans. Further, clinical research on CMI is in its infancy with few established treatments. Without a more systematic approach to the evaluation of these efforts, evidence-based best practices will remain elusive. We and others argue that an interdisciplinary and translational approach, moving research from basic science to clinical applications, is optimal to improve the care of patients. Current understanding of best practices includes the need for timely and accurate recognition of CMI in primary care; the development and implementation of a multidisciplinary management plan that facilitates self-management of symptoms; and scheduled oversight of this plan by health-care personnel with diverse skills. Bringing a multidisciplinary team of providers, researchers, and educators together to evaluate Veterans improves the care of the individual Veteran and provides system-wide benefits. TheWar Related Illness and Injury Study Centers (WRIISCs), conceptually related to theVeteransHealth Administration’s (VHA’s) Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT) initiative, represent examples of the Veterans Affairs (VA) multidisciplinary, translational approach to CMI. In 2001, in response to a Congressional mandate, the VA Office of Public Health implemented the WRIISCs to focus on the post-deployment health concerns of Veterans and their unique health-care needs. The WRIISC mission is “to develop and provide expertise for Veterans and their health care providers through clinical evaluation, research, education, and risk communication.” The four-pillared approach is implemented across the WRIISC program at three VA Medical Center sites: East Orange, NJ; Washington, DC; and Palo Alto, CA.

Are We Following Guidelines for Colorectal Cancer Screening in Resident Clinics at East Orange Veterans Administration?

Are We Following Guidelines for Colorectal Cancer Screening in Resident Clinics at East Orange Veterans Administration?

Safer Outside: A Qualitative Exploration of Homeless People's Resistance to Homeless Shelters

Unsheltered or “street” homeless are an under-researched subset of the homeless population although they account for 37% of the total number of homeless people. The current study examines the lives of homeless people who reside in camps in the woods of East Orange County, Florida. Data for this study were collected via five focus groups with a total of 39 unsheltered homeless people. It is clear from this research that unsheltered homeless people have unique needs that differ from those of the sheltered homeless and that social services will need to change many aspects of the way services are provided to address these unique needs.

Kenneth P. Johnson, MD (1932–2011)

Kenneth P. Johnson, MD, one of the pioneers in the use of disease-modifying therapies in the management of multiple sclerosis (MS), died in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 3, 2011, at age 79. Ken grew up in Jamestown, New York, the son of an engineer and a nurse. He received his BA from Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey, in 1955 and his MD from Thomas Jefferson University Medical School in 1959. He completed a medicine internship and began neurology residency at Buffalo General Hospital, but left to enter the Navy in 1961. After completing his service at the Portsmouth Virginia Naval Hospital in 1963, he moved to the Case Western Reserve University, where he finished his neurology residency and then a neurovirology fellowship with Dr. Richard T. Johnson. His first publication was in Science and he continued to produce important research in neurovirology leading to his promotion to the …

The Use of Proton Pump Inhibitors in the Outpatient Setting

Purpose: Determine how often PPIs are being prescribed without an appropriate ICD-9 code indication. Methods: All patients prescribed a PPI were queried from the East Orange VA outpatient database over a 90 day period. From this group, all patients concurrently taking NSAIDs or Steroids were excluded. The resultant group was then queried to see which ones had an ICD-9 code that would merit a PPI prescription based on FDA diagnoses for the use of PPIs. Over 100 ICD-9 codes were identified that would merit a PPI prescription. Results: The total number of patients on a PPI in our study was 4154. Of this group the number of patients on a PPI with an appropriate ICD-9 code was 2963 (71.4%). The number of patients on a PPI without an ICD-9 code was 1191 (28.6%). Conclusion: Our study showed that PPIs are being prescribed without clear indications. The overuse of PPIs in the outpatient setting may contribute to the increase incidence of osteoporosis. More recently, studies show that PPIs interfere with the activity of other medications, such as Clopidogrel. Thus, use of PPIs is worrisome for patients on multiple medications. Physicians in the outpatient setting need to be better educated about the harmful effects of PPIs, and should use other anti-acids before considering PPIs.Table: Results

Ampere, New Jersey [History

The manufacture of large rotating electrical equipment in North America during the early 20th century was usually associated with the names General Electric and Westinghouse. Lesser known companies also engaged in that business included the Stanley Company of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and the Crocker-Wheeler Company of Ampere, New Jersey. The name was first ap plied by Crocker-Wheeler to a railroad station located in East Orange, New Jersey, just to the west of Newark and about 11 mi (18 km) west of Manhattan (New York City). This station provided for train service to Manhattan via the Lackawanna Railroad (the DL&W) and the Hudson Tubes, today known as the PATH (Port Authority Trans Hudson) trains (see Figure 1). This name, of course, was in honor of Prof. Andre-Marie Ampere (1775 1836) for whom the unit of electric current was named.

THE PROGRESS MOVEMENT AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: THE ZION NON-PROFIT CHARITABLE TRUST

One of America's greatest leaders arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1950 to begin what would become one of the nation's most successful community development initiatives, the Movement. Born in Charleston, West Virginia, on 16 October 1922, the young Rev. Leon Howard Sullivan spent time as assistant pastor at Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, under the leadership of Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and in East Orange, New Jersey, as pastor of the First Baptist Church before coming to Philadelphia. When the 28-year-old minister accepted the position as pastor of Zion Baptist Church, the first hint of his audacity and forward thinking was when he asked the church's board of deacons to pay on his behalf a $100 membership fee for the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. One deacon who was on the board at the time recalled how stunned the board members were at this request. When asked about it, Sullivan responded, Chamber of Commerce has advance knowledge of major economic trends, and membership would allow me to take immediate action on actions potentially beneficial to the congregation and our people. Thus from the beginning Rev. Sullivan was considered an unusual preacher. Indeed, several years ago one preacher confided to this writer that initially he did not respect Sullivan's approach because hardly heard him preach about Jesus in his sermons, it was always about money and economics. Today, that preacher is a convert and has incorporated Sullivan's economic approach in his ministry. One might ask: Why did Rev. Leon Sullivan concentrate on economics as the basis for African Americans realizing full citizenship, along with civil and political rights? Sullivan himself traced this particular concern to the sermon he delivered to his congregation on 15 June 1962. One day I preached a sermon at Zion Baptist about Jesus feeding the five thousand with a few loaves and a few fishes. Everybody put in their little bit and you had enough to feed everybody with some left over. So I said, that is what I am going to do with the church and the community. I said, am going to ask 50 people to put $10 down for 36 months of loaves and fishes and see if we could accumulate resources enough to build something that we would own ourselves. (1) The response was overwhelming and over 200 families joined the plan that Sunday morning and that was the beginning of the that formed the basis of his far-reaching community economic development programs. The funds contributed to the 10-36 Plan accumulated rapidly and Sullivan launched Zion Investment Associates (ZIA), which after 1977 was renamed the Investment Associates, a for-profit corporation that would undertake income-generating projects. At the end of thirty-six months, subscribers would receive shares of the common stock and would be entitled to participate in yearly shareholders' meetings. Given the lack of access to adequate housing in Philadelphia's racially divided neighborhoods, in 1964 ZIA's first investment was in an apartment complex. This was the beginning of the Progress Movement in Philadelphia. It was followed by the building of Zion Gardens, a middle income apartment complex in North Philadelphia. Financed by ZIA with assistance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and a loan from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), this $1 million project was completed in 1966. The next project funded by ZIA through funds generated from the investors in the 10-36 Plan was the building of a shopping center in North Philadelphia, Progress Plaza. Working with the Philadelphia Council for Community Development (PCCD), a private group focused on economic development, and the Philadelphia Recovery Authority, a municipal department, Sullivan was able to obtain prime land on Broad Street, near Temple University. To get the project started, the ZIA went to the local branch of First Pennsylvania Bank to seek out a construction loan. …