Elle Billman

Background: Individual‐ and population‐level socioeconomic disadvantages contribute to unequal outcomes among childhood cancer survivors. Reducing health disparities requires understanding experiences of survivors from historically marginalized communities, including those with non‐English language preference.Procedure: We partnered with a community‐based organization (CBO) serving families of children with cancer in a rural region in California with low socioeconomic status and majority Hispanic/Latino (H/L) residents. We interviewed English‐ and Spanish‐speaking adolescent/young adult (AYA) childhood cancer survivors (≥15 years old, ≥5 years from diagnosis), parents, and CBO staff to evaluate post‐treatment needs and impact of CBO support. Data were analyzed qualitatively using applied thematic analysis. Themes were refined through team discussions with our community partners.Results: Twelve AYAs (11 H/L, 11 bilingual), 11 parents (eight H/L, seven non‐English preferred), and seven CBO staff (five H/L, five bilingual) participated. AYAs (five female, seven male) were of median (min–max) age 20 (16–32) and 9 (5–19) years post diagnosis; parents (nine female, two male) were age 48 (40–60) and 14 (6–23) years post child's diagnosis. Themes included challenges navigating healthcare, communication barriers among the parent–AYA–clinician triad, and lasting effects of childhood cancer on family dynamics and mental health. Subthemes illustrated that language and rurality may contribute to health disparities. CBO support impacted families by serving as a safety‐net, fostering community, and facilitating H/L families’ communication.Conclusions: Childhood cancer has long‐lasting effects on families, and those with non‐English language preference face additional burdens. Community‐based support buffers some of the negative effects of childhood cancer and may reduce disparities.

The continuous monitoring of arterial blood pressure (BP) is vital for assessing and treating cardiovascular instability in a sick infant. Currently, invasive catheters are inserted into an artery to monitor critically-ill infants. Catheterization requires skill, is time consuming, prone to complications, and often painful. Herein, we report on the feasibility and accuracy of a non-invasive, wearable device that is easy to place and operate and continuously monitors BP without the need for external calibration. The device uses capacitive sensors to acquire pulse waveform measurements from the wrist and/or foot of preterm and term infants. Systolic, diastolic, and mean arterial pressures are inferred from the recorded pulse waveform data using algorithms trained using artificial neural network (ANN) techniques. The sensor-derived, continuous, non-invasive BP data were compared with corresponding invasive arterial line (IAL) data from 81 infants with a wide variety of pathologies to conclude that inferred BP values meet FDA-level accuracy requirements for these critically ill, yet normotensive term and preterm infants.