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The new competency-based medical education undergraduate curriculum (CBMC) was launched for the 2019 admission batch of MBBS students. The programme is designed to create an “Indian Medical Graduate” (IMG) possessing the requisite knowledge, skills, attitudes, values and responsiveness, so that the graduate may function appropriately and effectively as a physician of first contact with the community while being globally relevant. Given that implementation of this curriculum is still in its infancy across the country, we stand to gain from a unified approach to its implementation. Phase I of the curriculum includes anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry along with professional and personal development modules. Biochemistry enjoys an enviable position in the medical curriculum as it explains the molecular basis of diseases. We present an appraisal of the curriculum in Biochemistry by reviewing the components against Harden’s six themes which are considered when planning or developing a curriculum. Further, five core components of CBME are selected on the basis of three research papers to characterize underlying assumptions of CBME to suggest ways of logical implementation for achieving the competencies expected of the Indian Medical Graduate. The insight gained shall help students to be equipped with competencies which they shall be able to use in their day- to- day work, which shall ultimately help benefit patient care and the society at large.

Although Kerala was the first state in India to report COVID cases, it was well prepared drawing on its past experience in managing effectively the Nipah outbreak and Kerala floods. It knew and initiated the measures required for containment because of its prior experience with mobilizing community-based groups, involvement of local-self government in decentralized planning, and participation in the containment and relief measure as well as a system-ready health system and infrastructure. The measures taken to \"flatten the curve\" that is unique to Kerala and the determinants of success are described in detail as \"what worked\" using the framework we developed post the Nipah outbreak containment experience. These are being shared with the hope that the insights these measures undertaken by the state provide can be used elsewhere to translate and replicate components that work.

Water data play a crucial role in the development and assessment of sustainable water management strategies. Water resource assessments are needed for the planning, management, and the evaluation of current practices. They require environmental, climatic, hydrologic, hydrogeologic, industrial, agricultural, energy, and socioeconomic data to assess and accurately project the supply of and demand for water services. Given this context, we provide a review of the current state of publicly available water data in the United States. While considerable progress has been made in data science and model development in recent years, data limitations continue to hamper analytics. A brief overview of the water data sets available at the federal level is used to highlight the gaps in readily accessible water data in the United States. Then, we present a systematic review of 275 websites that provide water information collected at the state level. Data platforms are evaluated based on content (ground and surface water, water quality, and water use information) along with the analytical and exploratory tools that are offered. Wev discuss the degree to which existing state‐level data sets could enrich the data available from federal sources and review some recent technological developments and initiatives that may modernize water data. We argue that a national water data portal, more comprehensive than the U.S. Energy Information Administration, addressing the significant gaps and centralizing water data is critical. It would serve to quantify the risks emerging from growing water stress and aging infrastructure and to better inform water management and investment decisions. Plain Language Summary Water data are essential to describe the state of our resources. They enable the assessment of risks, the evaluation of management decisions, and the design of infrastructure. To adequately manage water, it is necessary to have information not only on climate, the environment, the rivers, and the aquifers but also on the dams and canals that store and divert water, the use of water, and the laws that affect the attribution and distribution of water. Current data limitations stand out as the Achilles heel to promote a sustainable and resilient water management. After a brief overview of the shortcomings of the current readily accessible federal water data, we present results from a systematic review of 275 websites hosting water information collected at the state level. We categorize and evaluate the data platforms based on content (ground and surface water, water quality, water use, and water finance) along with the tools that are offered to interpret and make use of the data. We conclude with a discussion on the degree to which the reviewed data sets at the state level could address the gap in federal data sets. We argue that a national water data portal is critical to understand the growing water risks from extensive use, climate, and aging infrastructure and to better inform water management. Key Points We discuss key data gaps in ground and surface water, quality, use, and financial data that hinder water management in the United States We review state‐level approaches to online platform for water data, analytics, visualization, and projections, identifying content and tools We conclude with recommendations for the development of a national water data portal to inform public and private decisions

Background Young adulthood is an important period for smoking cessation; however, there is limited evidence of smoking-cessation interventions for young adults. The aims of this study were to identify evidence-based smoking-cessation strategies for young adults, examine gaps in the literature regarding smoking cessation among young adults, and discuss methodological issues/challenges related to smoking-cessation studies for young adults. Methods Studies tested interventions for smoking cessation among young adults (18 to 26 years old), excluding pilot studies. Five main search engines were used, including PubMed, the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), EMBASE, PsycINFO, and Web of Science. The search was conducted for articles published from January 2009 to December 2019. Intervention characteristics and cessation outcomes were reviewed, and methodological quality was evaluated. Results A total of 14 articles met inclusion criteria, including randomized controlled studies and repeated cross-sectional studies. Interventions included the following: text messaging (4/14, 28.6%), social media use (2/14, 14.3%), web-or app-based intervention (2/14, 14.3%), telephone counseling (1/14, 7.1%), in-person counseling (3/14, 21.4%), pharmacological (1/14, 7.1%), and self-help booklet (1/14, 7.1%). The intervention duration and frequency of contact with participants differed and yielded varied outcomes. Conclusions Multiple interventions have been examined to aid young adults in achieving smoking cessation. While several approaches seem promising, at the present time, the published literature is inconclusive about the type of intervention that is most effective for young adults. Future studies should compare the relative effectiveness of these intervention modalities.

Background: The community medicine department of our medical school, in addition to addressing its mandate to prepare undergraduate students for primary care and graduate students for careers in public health, administers several community-based interventions. An international organization involved with improving health of female factory workers globally invited us to partner in their efforts locally. We used the Precede-Proceed model to design an intervention to deliver the desired project outcomes. Activities: Recognizing that this partnership with industry would provide a learning opportunity to our Master's degree program students, we involved them in a needs assessment survey in order to make an educational diagnosis to identify the influencing and reinforcing factors. Our faculty and students interfaced with a multidisciplinary team including mid-level factory managers, health-care staff, and peer health educators within the textile industry. Outcomes: Through this industry-academia collaboration, our health professions training institution was able to provide supplementary experiential learning opportunities to students in our Master's degree in Community Medicine program by involving them in all the project stages from planning based on health needs assessment, to module design, implementation, and program evaluation along with interdisciplinary teams from the textile industry. Students then reflected on their learning experience using a modified Kolbe's experiential learning cycle to improve their performance when they replicated the intervention with the next factory under the same project. Conclusion: The use of PRECEDE-PROCEED model in the industry-academia collaboration and Kolb's framework provided supplementary experiential learning opportunities for deliberate practice, receiving feedback, and reflecting on their learning to our Master's in Community Medicine degree students.

The purpose of the present review is to examine the new competency-based undergraduate curriculum in community medicine against the established frameworks and criteria and suggest the way forward for achieving competencies expected of the Indian Medical Graduate (IMG). The new Graduate Medical Education Regulations, 2018, is based on Harden's concept of the curriculum. Hence, we reviewed the components of new curriculum against Harden's conceptualization of various components of the curriculum, and since it claims it is competency-based, we used Tyler's Goal/Objective-Based Evaluation. The new undergraduate curriculum has shown a move toward integration of course content and defined the competencies in more measurable terms. However, it appears that the earlier information-based curriculum corresponding to book chapters (\"topics\") has been modified to specify higher cognitive domains with no explicit link between the IMG level curriculum outcomes to subject level intended learning outcomes (ILOs). The mechanism to link ILOs to assessment is also not clear and so needs more clarity. The assessment system hinted at in the current document is mostly based on the existing conventional system of 50% as pass cutoff, etc., against criterion-referenced assessment applicable to competencies that need to be performed. Furthermore, there is no guidance on the creation of educational opportunities and environment for students and faculty - perhaps it is left to \"Curriculum Implementation Support Programme (CISP) Workshops.\" Hence, the need for preparing a roadmap/blueprint to learning experiences and assessment methods and levels and milestones to be reached at various phases of MBBS and during internship is required.

Asia Pacific region has been witnessing numerous public health emergencies in recent years with the Nipah outbreak in North Kerala (2018), India, needs special mention. Threats posed and experiences gained have compelled health systems to draft frameworks nationally and internationally for preparedness, outbreak response, and recovery. Our failure to obtain comprehensive guiding frameworks for application in the Indian context for Ebola, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Influenza A (H1N1), and Nipah outbreaks led us to the search outside India for frameworks that have worked in the past. A thorough review of the WHO, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Malaysian framework was done to identify explicit components and replicable objectives to the national context. In the absence of a specific framework, Nipah recovery and response experience that worked in Kerala outbreak (2018) was compared against novel H1N1 (2015) guidelines at national level. This article provides the groundwork and insights as a value addition toward an India-specific framework of action for response and recovery for Nipah outbreaks in future.

Introduction Asthma is one of the serious health problems among children, accounting for a major proportion of lost school days due to absenteeism, decreased academic performances, and lesser social interactions. It can impair a child's activities like playing sports and also their sleeping pattern with frequent school absenteeism. In South India, only a few school-based studies to determine the prevalence of asthma have been carried out, and even fewer studies are done in community settings in rural areas of Tamil Nadu. Hence, this community-based study was done to find out the prevalence of asthma among children aged 5-10 years in rural areas of Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. Aim & objective To estimate the prevalence of asthma among children aged 5-10 years in rural areas of Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. Materials and methods A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in rural areas of Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. A sample of 726 children from the randomly selected seven villages were studied. The sample size was calculated for a finite population. The standardized International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) questionnaire and calibrated instruments were used as data collection tools. Ethical approval was obtained. Data entry was done in Microsoft Excel and analyzed using the SPSS 19.0 version. The \"t\" test was used to compare the mean difference between the quantitative variables and the chi-square test was used to test the association between categorical variables. P-value <0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results The overall prevalence of self-reported asthma was 5.1%. Boys had 1.7 times higher prevalence compared to girls. The prevalence of possible or suspected cases of asthma using the ISAAC screening questionnaire was 20.9%. In univariate analysis, the risk of having asthma among children is significantly higher among those with a positive family history of asthma. Conclusion The study found that the prevalence of self-reported asthma in rural settings is low (5.1%). However, our study also identifies a large number of children (20.9%) with symptoms suggestive of asthma using the ISAAC questionnaire that need the attention of a specialist for early diagnosis and care for reducing morbidity and episode severity.

Climate change poses a significant threat to crop production, particularly in tropical and semi-arid regions. Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench), a resilient C4 cereal, has high photosynthetic efficiency and abiotic stress tolerance, making it a key crop for food, fodder, and feed security. This study evaluated agronomic and physiological traits influencing the yield performance of 20 sorghum varieties under field conditions in Kerala, India. The data were analyzed using a randomized block design (RBD) in GRAPES software, and a principal component analysis was performed in R. Variety CSV 17 exhibited the highest grain yield (GY) (3760 kg ha−1) and harvest index (HI) (43), with early flowering, early maturity, a high chlorophyll content (CHL), and minimal nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium uptake. Conversely, CSV 20 produced the highest stover yield (22.5 t ha−1), associated with greater leaf thickness (LT), lower canopy temperature, taller plant height (PH), increased leaf number (LN), and extended maturity. Leaf temperature (Tleaf) was negatively correlated with the quantum yield of photosystem II (ΦPSII) and panicle length (PL), which were strong predictors of grain weight. The principal component analysis revealed that PC1 and PC2 explained 21% and 19% of the variation in the grain and stover yield, respectively. Hierarchical partitioning identified the potassium content (K%), CHL, Tleaf, leaf area index (LAI), ΦPSII, and LT as key contributors to the GY, while the SY was primarily influenced by the LN, nitrogen content (N%), maturity duration, PH, and ΦPSII. These findings highlight the potential of exploiting physiological traits for enhancing sorghum productivity under summer conditions in Kerala and similar environments.

Background: Adolescence is a period of transition where independence in thinking and behavior is established and food choices that are made are followed for several years, and this can influence their health in adulthood. Hence, understanding the eating habits are necessary to plan effective nutritional interventions in adolescents. Objectives: The main objective of the study is to find out the extent of malnutrition among rural adolescents as well as evaluate their eating habits against recommended dietary food groups and to compare eating habits across gender and age groups. Methods: A cross-sectional study was done among 1425 adolescents from 13 rural schools from 2014 to 2015, and the variables considered in this study were age, sex, body mass index (BMI), and the eating habits of the adolescents. Results: Undernutrition was seen among 23% and overweight/obesity among 8% of adolescents. The habit of taking milk and milk products, fruits, and green leafy vegetables were very poor among the adolescents. Significant association was found between eating habits and BMI. Furthermore, late adolescents had better eating habits, and significant gender difference was seen in certain eating habits. Conclusions: The study shows that it is possible to understand the gaps in eating habits of adolescents, and this can be used to plan tailor-made nutritional interventions to adolescent groups as their eating habits are different and have long-term nutritional and health implications.