My son Isaac has Down syndrome. He was born in 2015, within a year of me receiving tenure at Simpson College. The experience of being his mother has had a profound effect on me as a mathematician. Having been with him through eleven surgeries over sixteen hospitalizations, I wanted to learn about his medical complexities and, more generally, about coordinated health care for those with chronic illness. To accomplish these goals, I've looked to my teaching and research. In the spring of 2016, I designed a sophomore-level mathematical modeling course on the respiratory system. In the summer of 2016, I led a group of three undergraduates to utilize location analysis as a means of understanding patient access in the health care system. We used p-median and maximal covering models to investigate patient access to Down syndrome specialty care clinics in the United States. More recently, together with a graduate student in medical anthropology and a handful of undergraduates in mathematics, I've initiated a project on family perspectives of attending a Down syndrome specialty clinic. Through teaching and research, I've used math as my superpower to help understand and improve health care for individuals with Down syndrome.
B and T cells, with their extremely diverse antigen-receptor repertoires, have the ability to mount specific immune responses against almost any invading pathogen 1,2. Understandably, such intricate abilities are controlled by a large number of molecules involved in various cellular processes to ensure timely and spatially regulated immune responses 3 . Here, we describe experimental procedures that allow rapid isolation of highly purified murine lymphocytes using magnetic cell sorting technology. The resulting purified lymphocytes can then be subjected to various in vitro or in vivo functional assays, such as the determination of lymphocyte signaling capacity upon stimulation by immunoblotting 4 and the investigation of proliferative abilities by 3 H-thymidine incorporation or carboxyfluorescein diacetate succinimidyl ester (CFSE) labeling 5-7. In addition to comparing the functional capacities of control and genetically modified lymphocytes, we can also determine the T cell stimulatory capacity of antigen-presenting cells (APCs) in vivo, as shown in our representative results using transplanted CFSE-labeled OT-I T cells.
Patients with Down syndrome (DS) have significant specialized healthcare needs.Our objective was to understand what families of patients with DS perceive to be the most pressing gaps in health care, barriers to attendance at a DS specialty clinic, and what they thought a specialty healthcare clinic for people with DS ought to include as part of the clinical package. A qualitative survey was distributed nationally through the online platform SurveyMonkey. We divided respondents into two groups: those who attended a DS specialty clinic (n = 141) and those who did not (n = 100). Data were cleaned and analyzed in RStudio 3.6.3. Results demonstrate that families value mental health services, therapies (e.g., physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy), developmental specialists, dietitians, and educational advocates. Lack of clear advertisement, especially within low-income communities, a lack of awareness of DS specialty clinics, and travel time to clinics constituted significant barriers to care. These findings are arguably of benefit to those who direct DS specialty clinics because they offer direction for resource allocation in a time of increasing healthcare costs and financial scrutiny.
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