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One-third of adults are now obese, and children's obesity rates have climbed from 5 to 17 percent in the past 30 years. The causes of the nation's obesity epidemic are multi-factorial, having much more to do with the absence of sidewalks and the limited availability of healthy and affordable foods than a lack of personal responsibility. The broad societal changes that are needed to prevent obesity will inevitably affect activity and eating environments and settings for all ages. Many aspects of the obesity problem have been identified and discussed; however, there has not been complete agreement on what needs to be done to accelerate progress. Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention reviews previous studies and their recommendations and presents five key recommendations to accelerate meaningful change on a societal level during the next decade. The report suggests recommendations and strategies that, independently, can accelerate progress, but urges a systems approach of many strategies working in concert to maximize progress in accelerating obesity prevention. The recommendations in Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention include major reforms in access to and opportunities for physical activity; widespread reductions in the availability of unhealthy foods and beverages and increases in access to healthier options at affordable, competitive prices; an overhaul of the messages that surround Americans through marketing and education with respect to physical activity and food consumption; expansion of the obesity prevention support structure provided by health care providers, insurers, and employers; and schools as a major national focal point for obesity prevention. The report calls on all individuals, organizations, agencies, and sectors that do or can influence physical activity and nutrition environments to assess and begin to act on their potential roles as leaders in obesity prevention.

Medical libraries have had to swiftly change the way they connected their clients to instruction services starting Spring of 2020. The focus of this article is on the instructional services of [hospital library] pre and post 2020 and it will also provide insights into what hospital libraries in Canada have been doing, what they are succeeded at and working on. This paper will describe the design, implementation, and outcomes of a Quality Improvement (QI) project and concludes by exploring the changes recommended to enhance online instructional services in an urban research and teaching hospital library environment.   The QI project led the team to prioritize three areas for improvement: a peer feedback system that has been designed to support instructors in building their confidence and skills; monthly the Instruction Team will debrief any workshops using the peer feedback data, attendance information, instructor feedback, and attendee evaluations. The workshops offered will expand beyond the typical hour-long, one-off workshop sessions to other formats. The results of the QI process have produced many ideas that could be used to improve the design and delivery of online instruction and confirmed that libraries in hospitals across Canada are encountering similar barriers around time, staffing capacity, technology, and training. 

Social media plays a significant role in adolescents’ lives, with both positive and negative effects. Implementing interventions to mitigate the negative aspects and enhance the positive ones could improve adolescents’ well-being. Unfortunately, there is a scarcity of evidence-based interventions available. To fill this gap, we have developed a school-based program based on combining evidence-based and consensus-based approaches, incorporating input from adolescents, school personnel, researchers, and municipal advisers. This paper describes the program’s content and principles, and presents the results from a pilot evaluation, which assesses feedback from pupils and teachers, thereby informing potential enhancements and the program’s overall significance. The intervention description encompasses theoretical perspectives, behavior change techniques, and procedural details. Pupils (n = 266; 16+ years) evaluated the program concerning satisfaction, relevance, importance, and usefulness through a questionnaire. Additionally, exploratory focus group interviews were conducted with seven teachers and eleven pupils to gather their perspectives on the program’s relevance, impact, and potential changes to the theme-based teaching. Results from the pilot showed an average score of 7.3/10 for overall satisfaction with the program. Sub-questions assessing perceived relevance, engagement, and usefulness averaged between 6.7 and 7.5. Gender differences were observed, with boys tending to rate the program lower than girls. In focus group interviews, the pupils expressed increasing awareness of their own and others’ social media use, that the topic was important and exciting, and that the program generally worked well. The pupils’ evaluation indicates the need for this kind of program described in this study. Plain Language Summary Social media is a big part of adolescents’ lives and may have both positive and negative effects. We want to find ways to make the negative effects less and the positive effects stronger so that adolescents feel better overall. Since there are few proven methods to address this, we created a program for schools that combines different approaches and ideas from adolescents, teachers, researchers, and community workers. In this paper, we explain what the program is about and how it was received by pupils and teachers to make it even better. We provide a detailed program description and theories about how it can impact their well-being to make sure that other people can understand and replicate our program, to avoid wasting time and resources on ineffective interventions. We asked pupils questions to see what they thought about the program. We also talked to teachers and pupils in small groups for more detailed feedback. The results showed that pupils were generally satisfied with the program. They thought it was relevant, engaging, and useful. Boys rated it slightly lower than girls. In the conversations with teachers and pupils in focus groups, they told us that the program made them more aware of how they use social media and its impact. Overall, the pupils’ evaluation of the program showed a need for this kind of intervention. However, we still need to evaluate the program’s potential positive effects.

Background: The Health Sciences Library and the Bachelor of Health Sciences (Honours) Program (BHSc) at McMaster University worked together to build a multi-year information literacy (IL) curriculum embedded within the program under a suite of courses called Praxis Pathways. Description: Praxis Pathways consists of four Threads. Thread 4: Information Literacy is the focus of this case report. The authors will describe the multi-year embedded IL curriculum, which is scaffolded to build both IL skills, such as database searching, and introduce students to key conceptual conversations in IL,  production and dissemination. Outcomes: BHSc program graduates in 2023 will be the first to have completed all four years of the Praxis Pathways courses, including the IL program developed and delivered by the library. The authors will describe how the impact of the program will be evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively going forward. Conclusion: Embedded librarianship for multi-year, scaffolded IL education in undergraduate programs continues to be a rarity, despite the acknowledgement that one-shot instruction has several limitations. The authors present this case report to share how they embedded a for-cred IL curriculum in an undergraduate program that looks beyond the one-shot, skill-based tutorial and focuses on developing adaptive, information-literate lifelong learners.

Background: Academic institutions and libraries are familiar with Wikipedia. There is growing momentum in higher education for using Wikipedia as a learning tool in various contexts. These include, but are not limited to, the use of Wikipedia-based assignments to teach information literacy, science communication, evidence-based practice, and more. Although there is growing acceptance of Wikipedia’s value in the classroom, there are limited exemplars available for how it is applied in undergraduate health sciences education. Description: This program description describes a librarian instructed course in the Bachelor of Health Sciences Program at McMaster University in which students dedicate one academic term to learning about Wikipedia content production and making contributions to a health-related Wikipedia article of their choice. Outcomes: In the five iterations of this course that have been offered, undergraduate health sciences students have made significant contributions to 25 health-related articles in Wikipedia. They have added more than 120,000 words and over 2,000 references to high-quality literature. In class, conversations emerged about the meaningfulness of the editing Wikipedia, information literacy, and knowledge translation.

In the United States, health among racial and ethnic minorities, as well as poor people, is significantly worse than the overall U.S. population. Health disparities are reflected by indices such as excess mortality and morbidity and shorter life expectancy. Examining the Health Disparities Research Plan of the National Institutes of Health is an assessment of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Strategic Research Plan and Budget to Reduce and Ultimately Eliminate Health Disparities. It focuses on practical solutions to remedy the state of the current health disparity crisis. The NIH has played the leading role in conducting extensive research on minority health and health disparities for more than two decades. Although additional research is critical to facilitating a better understanding of the overarching social, economic, educational, and environmental factors that predispose groups to specific diseases and conditions, there is also a great need to translate the existing and new information into best care practices. This means increasing communication with affected populations and their communities. Examining the Health Disparities Research Plan of the National Institutes of Health presents solutions to improving the health disparities nationwide and evaluates the NIH strategy plan designed to actively correct and combat the ongoing health disparities dilemma.

This paper describes the search approach for preprints for a post–COVID-19 condition (i.e., long COVID) scoping review, including source selection, search strategy development, challenges, and insights throughout a project life cycle. With the growth of medical preprints since the COVID-19 pandemic, information professionals and researchers should be aware that preprints are a possible source of evidence and be prepared to manage them in evidence reviews for COVID-19 topics and beyond. Preprints are not peer reviewed but can include important evidence about emerging topics. Because of the importance of preprints to the first stage of the scoping review, a preprint search of Europe PubMed Central (PMC) was added. Europe PMC and similar aggregators combine multiple preprint servers and often have Boolean search, but sometimes limited search functionalities or export options. Strategy translation encountered challenges such as varying and inconsistent terminology for post–COVID-19 condition, a complex search, and negotiating large numbers of preprints with resource constraints. The final preprints search in Europe PMC identified more preprints for inclusion in from additional preprint servers. A summary of considerations will support information specialists conducting preprint searches for COVID-19 and other topics.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ontario-based Centre for Effective Practice (CEP) established the COVID-19 Resource Centre (CRC) in March 2020. This platform rapidly became a critical source of clinical and practice guidance for primary care providers, highlighting the importance of effective information synthesis during public health emergencies. The article discusses the development of the CRC, emphasizing the application of librarianship principles in navigating the challenges posed by the pandemic's information overload and the scarcity of evidence. It outlines the strategies for literature searching, appraisal, and evidence synthesis that were employed to ensure the content's accuracy and utility. The CRC's evolution is presented within the context of its goal to efficiently bridge the gap between evidence and clinical practice, underscoring the collaborative efforts and innovative methodologies that contributed to its success. The CRC has served as an invaluable resource, attracting close to 185,000 visitors from Ontario, across Canada, and internationally. According to survey feedback, 89% of users reported enhanced knowledge of COVID-19 evidence and policies, and 87% stated that the vaccine information directly informed their practice. These statistics underscore the CRC's role in supporting informed decision-making among healthcare providers. The CRC marked the CEP's first foray into real-time evidence-based tool development. Facing challenges of expanding information volumes, an unpredictable information landscape, and the need for swift adaptation to new developments, the CRC emerged as a critical resource, enhancing credibility for the CEP, and fostering new partnerships. This journey underscores the importance of librarianship skills-critical appraisal, evidence synthesis, and knowledge translation-in enhancing service delivery.

This article describes Prevent-Teach-Reinforce for Young Children (PTR-YC), a model based on extensive research that is designed for feasibility and effectiveness for treating challenging behaviors in classroom settings. This model is designed to meet the needs of children with and without disabilities who engage in challenging behavior that interferes with their learning and social development. This article contains a description of the PTR-YC model and presents a case study demonstrating the use of the model in an early childhood educational setting. The case study illustrates the PTR-YC process as implemented by a school-based team and presents the effectiveness of the procedures.

Introduction: This program description outlines our approach to re-developing our three-part series for graduate students on comprehensive searching for knowledge syntheses from in-person to online delivery using a flipped classroom model. The re-development coincided with our library's response to COVID-19. Description: This series followed a flipped classroom model where participants completed asynchronous modules built on Articulate Rise 360 before attending a synchronous session. Each week of content covered unique learning objectives. Pre- and post-class self-assessments were used to examine students' understanding of the materials. Outcomes: 152 unique participants registered for the series across two offerings in summer 2020. We observed high engagement with pre-work modules and active participation during synchronous sessions. Discussion: We found the flipped classroom approach to work well for our users in an online environment. Moving forward, we intend to continue with our re-developed online workshop series with minor modifications, in addition to in-person instruction.