Caribbean health research has overwhelmingly employed measures developed elsewhere and rarely includes evaluation of psychometric properties. Established measures are important for research and practice. Particularly, measures of stress and coping are needed. Stressors experienced by Caribbean people are multifactorial, as emerging climate threats interact with existing complex and vulnerable socioeconomic environments. In the early COVID-19 pandemic, our team developed an online survey to assess the well-being of health professions students across university campuses in four Caribbean countries. This survey included the Perceived Stress Scale, 10-item version (PSS-10) and the Brief Resilient Coping Scale (BRCS). The participants were 1,519 health professions students (1,144 females, 372 males). We evaluated the psychometric qualities of the measures, including internal consistency, concurrent validity by correlating both measures, and configural invariance using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Both scales had good internal consistency, with omega values of 0.91 for the PSS-10 and 0.81 for the BRCS. CFA suggested a two-factor structure of the PSS-10 and unidimensional structure of the BRCS. These findings support further use of these measures in Caribbean populations. However, the sampling strategy limits generalizability. Further research evaluating these and other measures in the Caribbean is desirable.

Choosing Wisely Canada (CWC) is a national initiative designed to encourage patient-clinician discussions about the appropriate, evidence-based use of medical tests, procedures and treatments. The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians’ (CAEP) Choosing Wisely Canada (CWC) working group developed and released ten recommendations relevant to Emergency Medicine in June 2015 (items 1–5) and October 2016 (items 6–10). In November 2016, the CAEP CWC working group developed a process for updating the recommendations. This process involves: 1) Using GRADE to evaluate the quality of evidence, 2) reviewing relevant recommendations on an ad hoc basis as new evidence emerges, and 3) reviewing all recommendations every five years. While the full review of the CWC recommendations will be performed in 2020, a number of high-impact studies were published after our initial launch that prompted an ad hoc review of the relevant three of our ten recommendations prior to the full review in 2020. This paper describes the results of the CAEP CWC working group's ad hoc review of three of our ten recommendations in light of recent publications.

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The overall goal of this project is to determine whether timing of seasonal influenza vaccination affects the severity of illness in vaccinated individuals who are hospitalized with influenza. This will be assessed with the following aims: 1. To determine whether differences in demographic and clinical characteristics exist among patients with short duration between seasonal influenza vaccination and influenza-related hospitalization and those with longer duration. 2. To determine whether time between seasonal influenza vaccination and hospitalization is associated with the duration of influenza-related hospitalization. 3. To determine whether time between seasonal influenza vaccination and hospitalization is associated with the rate of influenza-related ICU admission among patients hospitalized with influenza. 4. To determine whether time between seasonal influenza vaccination and hospitalization is associated with the rate of influenza-related death among adults hospitalized with influenza. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: The Influenza Hospitalization Surveillance Network (FluSurv-NET) is a surveillance platform of influenza-related hospitalizations through the CDC Emerging Infections Program (EIP). FluSurv-NET conducts active surveillance for influenza-related hospitalizations of both children and adults in selected counties in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, New Mexico, New York, Tennessee, and Utah with a total catchment population of over 27 million people (~9% of the US population). Using this platform, we will retrospectively evaluate four influenza seasons using FluSurv-NET data to look at the timing of influenza vaccination and severity of illness among patients with influenza-related hospitalization. We will conduct a multivariate analysis to assess for differences in severe outcomes including duration of hospitalization, ICU admission, and death among patients with varying lengths of time between influenza vaccination and influenza-related hospitalization. Separate analyses will be performed among different age groups and influenza type/subtypes, as well as specific seasons as a surrogate for most common circulating strain. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: We hypothesize that patients with chronic medical conditions and those at the extremes of age will have a longer duration between vaccination and hospitalization as they are more likely to get vaccinated earlier. We also hypothesize that patients with longer duration between seasonal influenza vaccination and hospitalization will have a longer duration of hospitalization and a higher rate of other severe outcomes (e.g., ICU admission, death). Such data would suggest that immune protection wanes during the influenza season. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Limited data suggest that vaccine-induced influenza immunity may wane during the influenza season. It is not known whether the impact of influenza vaccination upon severity of disease might wane with increasing time between vaccination and influenza infection. In contrast to many previous studies evaluating vaccine effectiveness which have assessed medically-attended influenza illness as a primary outcome, our dataset is a large cohort of hospitalized patients which allows us to assess rare yet critical outcomes such as ICU admission and death. This study will also have a substantially larger amount of pediatric data than previous studies, which will provide the opportunity to determine whether timing of vaccination affects children and adults differently. Improving our understanding of whether influenza vaccine-induced protection might wane over time could ultimately impact U.S. influenza vaccination policy resulting in decreased morbidity and mortality attributed to influenza each season.

In this qualitative study, we explored the perspectives of 10 adolescents with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their experiences of bullying. Through individual semistructured interviews, they were asked to describe their understandings and experiences of bullying. Details of their experiences are described as well as the perceived impact on the students and their schooling. Data analysis revealed a number of common experiences including high rates of traditional bullying and more specifically verbal bullying, with fewer incidents of cyberbullying reported. In support of literature in the area, the results of the study indicate that bullying can be a significant inhibitor, which may prevent students with ASD from taking full advantage of their schooling. Listening to and reflecting on the voices and personal stories of adolescent students with ASD is critically important for developing more supportive approaches to their education and needs. The reports of bullying by students on the autism spectrum emphasises the need for more effective interventions and management strategies to be implemented in a whole-school approach as well as targeted strategies to prevent bullying experiences for this particular population of students.

All forms of bullying, physical, verbal, social, and cyber, are prevalent among youth worldwide. An especially vulnerable population for involvement in bullying is students with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although there are some studies that have investigated bullying in these students, many of these are beset by methodological issues. We surveyed 104 students with ASD on their bullying experiences in all 4 forms of bullying and examined their roles as victim, perpetrator, and bully-victim, comparing them with a group of typically developing students matched for age and gender. It was found that students with ASD reported significantly more traditional victimisation (physical, verbal, and social) than their typically developing peers. Cyberbullying victimisation was similar for the 2 groups. There were no differences between the groups on traditional bullying perpetration; however, typically developing students reported more cyberbullying perpetration behaviours. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.

Background: Consensus recommends early recognition of memory problems through multi-disciplinary assessment in memory clinics; however, little is known about the experiences of people accessing such services. The aim of this review was to synthesis empirical evidence on patient and carer experiences in the transition to dementia.

Methods: This review updates an earlier review (Bamford et al., 2004) on the topic of disclosure of the diagnosis of dementia. Key electronic databases were searched including OVID Medline, CINAHL, Web of Science, EMBASE, and Sociological Abstracts; this was supplemented by hand searching of reference lists and contact with experts in the field. Only papers published after 2003 were included.

Results: Of the 35 papers included in the review, only one study observed the process of disclosure and only two papers explored the effects on the person with dementia's health. The vast majority of people with dementia wished to know their diagnosis. The key challenges for the person with dementia were coming to terms with losses on multiple levels. Although there may be short-term distress, the majority of people with dementia do not appear to experience long-term negative effects on their psychological health. For family carers, becoming the main decision-maker and adjusting to increased responsibility were common concerns.

Conclusions: There is still little empirical research observing the process of diagnostic disclosure in dementia. Studies exploring the views of patients and their families suggest this should be an ongoing process with the provision of support and information tailored to individual needs. The term “Alzheimer's disease” appears to have more negative connotations than the word “dementia”.

Background. Expressed emotion (EE) is a measure of the family environment that is a well replicated psychosocial predictor of psychiatric relapse. Theoretical models of EE place heavy emphasis on the notion of control. We explored the extent to which high and low EE relatives made both attributions of control about patients and engaged in controlling behaviours.

Methods. Trained raters who were blind to information about EE coded interviews with 35 relatives of patients with schizophrenia and 42 relatives of patients with unipolar depression. Relatives were rated on two reliable scales that assessed relatives' tendencies to make illness controllability attributions and relatives' efforts to exert direct behavioural control over patients.

Results. In both the schizophrenia and depressed groups, high-EE relatives attributed more control to their ill family members than did low EE relatives. They also behaved in a more controlling manner. Examination of patients' clinical outcomes during a 9-month follow-up period revealed that high levels of behavioural control on the part of relatives significantly predicted relapse in patients with schizophrenia but not in patients with depression.

Conclusions. These findings support the attribution-based model of EE. They further suggest that controlling behaviours on the part of relatives may mediate the EE-relapse link in schizophrenia. Such behaviours may be important targets for modification in family-based interventions for schizophrenia.