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Influenza vaccine is universally recommended for pregnant women during any trimester of pregnancy. In light of this recommendation, a comprehensive literature review was conducted to examine the available evidence regarding influenza vaccine efficacy and effectiveness during pregnancy. A comprehensive Medline search identified potentially relevant articles published between January 1, 1964 and February 1, 2013. Articles were selected that specifically evaluated the efficacy and effectiveness of maternal influenza vaccine in protecting women and infants from influenza infection. These were reviewed with a particular focus on the methods used to confirm influenza infection. Ten of 476 articles met the inclusion criteria. None of the six studies evaluating maternal outcomes were randomized controlled studies using a laboratory-confirmed influenza diagnosis to measure vaccine efficacy. Two studies included reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction confirmation; four relied solely on clinical outcomes. The reported vaccine effectiveness (VE) ranged from -15 to 70 %. Seven studies examined the potential for maternal vaccination to protect infants. Four of these applied some form of laboratory confirmation, with VE ranging from 41 to 91 %. Vaccination against infectious disease is an unparalleled public health success. However, studies to date demonstrate that influenza vaccine provides only moderate protection from influenza infection in pregnant women. This review found broad heterogeneity among studies, with no uniform outcome measured and little data based on laboratory-confirmed influenza, leading to wide-ranging estimates of effectiveness. Rigorously designed studies assessing clearly defined outcomes are needed to support the development of reasoned public health policy about influenza prevention in this population.

The authors surveyed faculty (n = 239) at three diverse institutions to probe perceived motivations for and barriers to involvement in undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative activity (URSCA) across scholarly disciplines. URSCA mentors were significantly more likely than nonparticipants to express proficiency in involving students in their research/creative activities, to acknowledge student contributions to their scholarly work, and to state that URSCA mentoring should be considered in personnel decisions. More than half perceived that their institutions did not place sufficient value on mentoring URSCA. Results suggested that institutional URSCA cultures could be enhanced by building mentoring into faculty workload, tenure materials, and promotion documents; using early, course-based research to improve student readiness; providing faculty development on research mentoring aimed at underrepresented disciplines; and seeking novel funding sources targeted at faculty-mentored URSCA.

Background/Objective: Substance P (SP) has been reported to have immunoregulatory properties including effects on many of the mediators involved in anti-tumor immunity. In this study, we investigated the effect of SP on tumor development in a murine model of melanoma. In addition, we examined the role of natural killer (NK) and T cells in SP-mediated modulation of tumor growth. Materials and Methods: Mice were implanted with mini-osmotic pumps that delivered a continuous infusion of either SP or PBS over a 14-day period. Five days following implantation, animals received K1735 melanoma cells and tumor growth was monitored. The role of NK and T cells in SP-mediated protection was examined by antibody depletion studies. To determine if cells from SP-treated animals could delay tumor growth in animals in the absence of exogenous SP infusion, splenocytes from mice treated with SP were adoptively transferred into SCID mice. Results: In vivoSP treatment led to a significant delay in tumor growth. When animals were depleted of NK or T cells, this protective effect was lost. Adoptive transfer of cells from SP-treated animals led to a significant protective effect on tumor growth in SCID mice. Conclusion: Pretreatment of mice with SP provides protection against K1735 tumor growth, and this protection requires both T cells and NK cells. SP-mediated tumor protection can be transferred by the adoptive transfer of cells from SP-treated animals into animals that do not receive exogenous SP. These studies suggest a model in which in vivo SP treatment prior to tumor challenge primes immune mediators to prevent or delay tumor establishment.

Introduction A diversity of colleges and universities in the United States now offer undergraduate majors and minors in public health, global health, and other areas related to population health [1]. While several recent papers have described undergraduate global health programs at selected sets of institutions [2-5], and enumerated the graduate global health programs in North America [6, 7], no previous papers have attempted to systematically identify and characterize all of the undergraduate global health education programs in the United States. The Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) pools expertise from 185 member institutions to support global health training, research, practice, and advocacy. One of the goals of CUGH is to support excellence in global health education by developing resources for curriculum design, teaching, and learning. A working group within CUGH that represented diverse institutions and disciplinary backgrounds sought to identify all undergraduate educational programs in global health being offered during the 2019-20 academic year. Minors were the most commonly offered global health programs at the undergraduate level [1], so we categorized the curricula being used by minors, evaluated the content of required foundational courses, and examined the types of applied learning experiences that are required. This paper presents the results of this systematic process and the related recommendations for undergraduate global health learning. Methods We acquired a list of all 4324 colleges and universities that were included in the 2018 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (version 7, released 24 May 2019) produced by the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research. Of these schools, 2486 award bachelor's degrees. We searched the website of each of these 4-year institutions during the 2019-2020 academic year to determine whether the school appeared to offer a major, minor, concentration, field, certificate, or other program in global health or a closely related field. Many schools provide a list of majors and minors in an easily accessible location on their websites. When we were unable to locate such a list, we consulted the school catalog or