Michael Berbaum

University of Illinois Chicago | UIC · School of Public Health

Severe early childhood caries (S-ECC) is a common disease within marginalized pediatric populations. S-ECC is often treated under general anesthesia to facilitate extensive treatment in young children, but treatment does not address etiology of an infectious disease that is rooted in health behaviors. Without behavior changes related to toothbrushi...

Promoting Seniors’ Health with Home Care Aides (Pro-Home) is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a gentle physical activity program for frail older adults conducted in a community-based long-term services and supports (LTSS) delivery setting. Pro-Home is a hybrid effectiveness-implementation study, which aims to examine (1) the effectiveness of...

This research assessed oral health behaviors changes in urban families with young children during the stay-at-home period of the COVID-19 pandemic (Nov 2020–August 2021). Survey data on oral health behaviors were collected in homes at three points before COVID-19, and via phone during COVID-19. A subset of parents and key informants from clinics an...

This research assessed oral health behaviors changes in urban families with young children during the stay-at-home period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Survey data on oral health behaviors were collected in homes at three points over one year before COVID-19, and then via phone during COVID-19. Multivariate logistic regression was used to model tooth b...

Background: Evidence-based strategies to improve outcomes in minority children with uncontrolled asthma discharged from the emergency department (ED) are needed. Objectives: This multicenter pragmatic clinical trial was designed to compare an ED-only intervention (decision support tool), an ED-only intervention and home visits by community healt...

Background Among all racial/ethnic groups, people who identify as African American/Blacks have the second highest colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence in the USA. This disparity may exist because African American/Blacks, compared to other racial/ethnic groups, have a higher prevalence of risk factors for CRC, including obesity, low fiber consumption,...

A Mediterranean Diet and intentional weight loss each positively affect cognitive functioning. Combining both could produce synergistic effects on cognition. The purpose of this study is to compare a Mediterranean diet lifestyle intervention with and without caloric restriction versus control on cognition, lifestyle, and cardiometabolic disease. In...

Objectives To compare the effect of a Mediterranean Diet with (Med-WL) or without caloric restriction (Med-A) for intentional weight loss (IWL) versus a typical diet control (TDC) on cognition, lifestyle and cardiometabolic health. Methods A randomized clinical trial of obese, predominately non-Hispanic black, older adults was conducted between Ju...

Background: Latinos are the fastest growing minority group of the older adult population. Although physical activity (PA) has documented health benefits, older Latinos are less likely to engage in leisure time PA than older non-Latino whites. Dance, popular among Latinos, holds promise as a culturally relevant form of PA. Purpose: To describe se...

Background Physical activity (PA) is a promising method to improve cognition among middle-aged and older adults. Latinos are at high risk for cognitive decline and engaging in low levels of PA. Culturally relevant PA interventions for middle-aged and older Latinos are critically needed to reduce risk of cognitive decline. We examined changes in cog...

The majority of mental, emotional, and behavioral (MEB) disorders have an initial onset before age 24, with 20% annual incidence, and with major depressive disorder (MDD) being the most common MEB. Health systems may be able to reduce costs by transitioning from the current treatment-focused model for MDD to a prevention model. However, evidence is...

Regular participation in physical activity benefits older adults physically and mentally. However, the availability and assessment of physical activity programs that are safe and appropriate for homebound older adults at risk for nursing home admission are limited. Here we describe the protocol for a randomized controlled trial that examines the ef...

This comparative effectiveness trial compared the longer-term effectiveness (12 and 18 months) of the standard Fit & Strong! physical activity program to Fit & Strong! Plus, which combined physical activity and dietary weight loss. Outcomes were weight, diet quality, physical activity, osteoarthritis symptoms, performance measures, and anxiety/depr...

Background Integrating primary care has been proposed to reduce fragmented care delivery for patients with complex medical needs. Because of their high rates of morbidity, healthcare use, and mortality, patients with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) may benefit from increased access to a primary care medical home. Objective To evaluate the effect o...

There is a need to disseminate evidence-based childhood obesity prevention interventions on a broader scale to reduce obesity-related disparities among underserved children. The purpose of this study was to test the comparative effectiveness of an evidence-based obesity prevention intervention, Hip-Hop to Health (HH), delivered through Expanded Foo...

Background and objectives: We compared the effectiveness of standard Fit & Strong! (F&S!; targets physical activity [PA]) to Fit & Strong! Plus (F&S! Plus; targets PA and dietary weight loss) on weight, diet quality, and PA outcomes. Research design and methods: We randomly assigned 413 overweight older adults with OA to the F&S! or F&S! Plus pr...

While home foreclosure can lead to mental and physical health declines in persons experiencing the foreclosure, whether neighborhood foreclosures can affect the health of other residents is debatable. Using a racially/ethnically diverse sample of Chicago metropolitan area residents linked to foreclosure data from 2008 to 2014, we assessed whether e...

Patients with chronic kidney disease have a high disease burand may benefit from primary care services and care coord A medical home model with direct access to primary care services is one approach that may address this need, yet has not been examined. As a substudy of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) patient-centered medic...

Purpose To present the rationale, methods, and cohort characteristics for 2 complementary “big data” studies of residential environment contributions to body weight, metabolic risk, and weight management program participation and effectiveness. Design Retrospective cohort. Setting Continental United States. Participants A total of 3 261 115 vete...

This is the introduction to a series of articles will be published over the next year in JMCC on statistical issues which commonly arise in types of studies published in the journal. Each article will cover a specific statistical topic and be prefaced with a typical related question that is likely to arise in laboratory and biomedical studies. Ther...

Objectives: The prevalence of osteoarthritis (OA) has increased in the US. We report on a comparative effectiveness trial that compares Fit & Strong!, an existing evidence-based physical activity (PA) program, to Fit & Strong! Plus, which combines the Fit & Strong! intervention with a weight management intervention. Methods: Participants include...

Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of clinical pharmacists and community health workers (CHWs) in improving glycemic control within a low-income ethnic minority population. Methods: In a two-arm 2-year crossover trial, 179 African-American and 65 Hispanic adult patients with uncontrolled diabetes mellitus (hemoglobin A1c [HbA1C] of 8% or...

As aging societies strive to strengthen home and community-based services systems, home care aides (HCAs), also called personal care assistants, play increasingly important roles for frail older adults. In the current home care paradigm of “passive care”, HCAs provide prescribed help with daily activities, rather than actively stimulate older clien...

Purpose: Regular physical activity (PA) benefits older adults. However, frail older adults lack opportunities to be physically active. This pilot study aimed to test and enhance the feasibility of a PA program delivered by home care aides (HCAs) for community-dwelling older adults in a Medicaid-funded home care setting and to generate preliminary...

We evaluated how regulatory support services provided by University of Illinois at Chicago’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science may reduce Institutional Review Board (IRB) turnaround times. IRB applications were categorized by receipt of any regulatory support and amount of support received. Turnaround time included total turnaround time...

Among children with asthma, black children are two to four times as likely to have an emergency department (ED) visit and die from asthma, respectively, compared to white children in the United States. Despite the availability of evidence-based asthma management guidelines, minority children are less likely than white children to receive or use eff...

Background: Experiencing a false positive (FP) screening mammogram is economically, physically, and emotionally burdensome, which may affect future screening behavior by delaying the next scheduled mammogram or by avoiding screening altogether. We sought to examine the impact of a FP screening mammogram on the subsequent screening mammography behav...

Introduction: Using a quasi-experimental design, we implemented the Patient-Centered Medical Home for Kidney Disease (PCMH-KD), a comprehensive, multidisciplinary care team to improve quality of life and healthcare coordination for adult chronic hemodialysis (CHD) patients. This paper highlights our experience in the first two years of the study.W...

In health studies, questionnaire items are often scored on an ordinal scale, for example on a Likert scale. For such questionnaires, item response theory (IRT) models provide a useful approach for obtaining summary scores for subjects (i.e., the model’s random subject effect) and characteristics of the items (e.g., item difficulty and discriminatio...

Study objective: To determine whether a relationship exists between medication adherence to angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) and angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) and distance to dispensing pharmacies and prescribers among an urban, public aid population with diabetes mellitus. Design: Retrospective cohort study using claim...

Changes in health care provide unprecedented opportunities for collaboration across research, education, and practice for the common goal of enhancing the well-being of older adults and their caregivers. This article describes how a pilot project, "Promoting Seniors' Health with Home Care Aides," has synergistic education, research and practice eff...

OBJECTIVE To examine the associations of several characteristics with patients’ trust in physician and the healthcare system. METHODS A prospective cohort of patients were followed after an exacerbation of heart failure at one of two Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals. Patients rated pre-visit and post-visit trust in physician and in the VA healthcar...

Background: Physical activity (PA) has documented health benefits, but older Latinos are less likely to engage in leisure time PA than older non-Latino whites. Dance holds a promise as a culturally appropriate form of PA that challenges individuals physically and cognitively. This paper describes a randomized controlled trial that will test the ef...

Background Beginning in 2009, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) revised its food packages and provided more whole grains, fruits, and vegetables and fewer foods with high saturated fat content. However, knowledge of the impact of this policy shift on the diets of WIC participants remains limited. Pur...

Results from several studies suggest that there is value in evaluating the association between nonclinical characteristics of patients and quality of life (QoL), but few studies have focused on brain cancer. The primary goal of this feasibility study was to explore the relationship between clinical factors and nonclinical factors and QoL in brain c...

We evaluated the effect of home telehealth on weight maintenance after a group-based weight loss programme. The home telehealth intervention comprised telephone counselling and home Internet-enabled digital video recorders (DVRs) with three channels of video programmes. The video content provided reinforcement and support to promote problem solving...

Background: In an ongoing study of racial/ethnic disparities in breast cancer stage at diagnosis, we consented patients to allow us to review their mammogram images, in order to examine the potential role of mammogram image quality on this disparity. Methods: In a population-based study of urban breast cancer patients, a single breast imaging sp...

Objective: The present study assessed the impact of the 2009 food packages mandated by the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) on dietary intake and home food availability in low-income African-American and Hispanic parent/child dyads. Design: A natural experiment was conducted to assess if the revised W...

Purpose: We examined whether quality of mammography interpretation as performed by the original reading radiologist varied by patient sociodemographic characteristics. Methods: For 149 patients residing in Chicago and diagnosed in 2005-2008, we obtained the original index mammogram that detected the breast cancer and at least one prior mammogram...

Background Given the increasing prevalence of diabetes and the lack of patients reaching recommended therapeutic goals, novel models of team-based care are emerging. These teams typically include a combination of physicians, nurses, case managers, pharmacists, and community-based peer health promoters (HPs). Recent evidence supports the role of pha...

Objective: To compare the diets of African American and Hispanic families in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) prior to the 2009 food package revisions. Methods: Mother-child dyads were recruited from 12 WIC sites in Chicago, IL. Individuals with 1 valid 24-hour recall were included in the analyses...

Loss of skeletal muscle strength is commonly seen with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The study aim was to determine the effects of comprehensive upper-body resistance training (8 different lifts) and a self-efficacy enhancing intervention in COPD with respect to muscle strength, symptoms, functional status and exercise adherence. Th...

African Americans continue to suffer disproportionately from cancer morbidity and mortality, with emerging evidence suggesting potential quality of life (QOL) disparities in the survivorship period. The objective of the study was to assess sociodemographic, clinical, and psychosocial factors associated with physical and mental health QOL (PHQOL and...

Most youth cessation treatment research consists of efficacy studies in which treatments are evaluated under optimal conditions of delivery. Less is known about the effectiveness of youth cessation treatments delivered in real-world, community based settings. A national sample of 41 community-based youth cessation programs participated in a longitu...

Background: Survival statistics commonly reflect survival from the time of diagnosis but do not take into account survival already achieved after a diagnosis. The objective of this study was to provide conditional survival estimates for brain tumor patients as a more accurate measure of survival for those who have already survived for a specified...

This study examined the effects of the Positive Action (PA) programme in Chicago Public Schools on problem behaviours among a cohort of elementary school students from grade three through grade five. Using a matched-pair, randomised control design with 14 elementary schools, approximately 510 fifth-graders self-reported lifetime substance use, seri...

Although widely available, little is known about the effectiveness of youth cessation treatments delivered in real-world settings. The authors recruited a nonprobability sample of 41 community-based group-format programs that treated at least 15 youth per year and included evidence-based treatment components. Data collection included longitudinal s...

Objective: To examine the relationship between the chances of potentially avoidable adult hospitalizations and whether or not an adult patient resides in a zip code that is a primary care shortage area adjusting for confounding factors. Methods: AHRQ has identified hospital admissions related to ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSCs). De-id...

Mounting evidence suggests that individuals smoke, in part, to regulate affective experience (e.g., tension reduction, mood enhancement). Implicit in such motives is the expectancy or belief that smoking will decrease negative affect and increase positive affect. The contribution of cognitively-driven expectancies to the initiation and continuation...

Heart failure (HF) disproportionately affects black compared to white Americans, and overall mortality from HF is greater among blacks. Paradoxically, mortality rates after a hospitalization for HF are lower in black than in white patients. These racial differences might reflect hospital, physician, and patient factors and could have implications f...

Use of direct observation to characterize neighborhood retail food environments is increasing, but to date most studies have relied on a single observation. If food availability, prices, and quality vary over short time periods, repeated measures may be needed to portray these food characteristics. This study evaluated short-term (2-week), within-s...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of an innovative intervention that utilized a certified medical assistant with specific diabetes training to work with a multidisciplinary diabetes care team to help provide basic diabetes education and self-care support in low-income minority populations with type 2 diabetes. Enrolled participan...

To determine the impact of a telemedicine system, the electronic intensive care unit (eICU), on ICU, and non-ICU mortality, total mortality, total and ICU-specific length of stay, and total hospital cost at two community hospitals. Observational study with one baseline period and two comparison periods (eICU wave one and eICU wave two). Each time p...

We have compared the unique features of teen tobacco cessation programs developed internally by community-based organizations (N=75) to prepackaged programs disseminated nationally (N=234) to expand our knowledge of treatment options for teen smokers. Internally-developed programs were more likely offered in response to the sponsoring organization'...

Mixed models are used increasingly for analysis of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data. The variance parameters of the random effects, which indicate the degree of heterogeneity in the population of subjects, are considered usually to be homogeneous across subjects. Modeling these variances can shed light on interesting hypotheses in substan...

Background: The body of research on youth smoking cessation remains small, and previous work evaluating cessation treatment has been limited to research settings. The Helping Young Smokers Quit (HYSQ) initiative conducted the first evaluation of community-based youth smoking cessation programs. Methods: Baseline interviews with 878 youth (age 14-18...

Background. There is growing interest in understanding contributions of the neighborhood retail food environment to dietary behaviors. In this presentation, we will describe food options (food availability, selection, quality, and price) at retail food stores in five predominately African-American and Latino community areas in Southwest Chicago, an...

The study evaluated the ability of each item of the Test of Infant Motor Performance to separate children into developmental outcome groups. Ninety-six infants with typical development (n = 67), cerebral palsy (n = 10) or developmental delay (n = 8) participated. A retrospective study was conducted using an existing Test of Infant Motor Performance...

To assess the effects of age on responsiveness to self-hypnotic relaxation as an analgesic adjunct in patients undergoing invasive medical procedures. Secondary data analysis from a prospective trial with 241 patients randomized to receive hypnosis, attention, and standard care treatment during interventional radiological procedures. Growth curve a...

We collected data on a national sample of existing community-based tobacco cessation programs for youths to understand their prevalence and overall characteristics. We employed a 2-stage sampling design with US counties as the first-stage probability sampling units. We then used snowball sampling in selected counties to identify administrators of t...

Medical procedures in outpatient settings have limited options of managing pain and anxiety pharmacologically. We therefore assessed whether this can be achieved by adjunct self-hypnotic relaxation in a common and particularly anxiety provoking procedure. Two hundred and thirty-six women referred for large core needle breast biopsy to an urban tert...

The purpose of this study was to examine tooth-brushing frequency in 575 urban and nearby suburban African American children as part of a comprehensive risk-reduction study for students at high risk for violence, drugs, school delinquency, and unsafe sexual behaviors to determine which covariates predicted tooth-brushing frequency. Students were su...

The purpose of this research was to develop survey instruments to evaluate diabetes knowledge and self-efficacy in a diverse population, and investigate the psychometric properties of data obtained with these instruments using Rasch measurement. Two-hundred and fifty-five urban-dwelling participants with diabetes were recruited to complete surveys...

To assess how patients' underlying anxiety affects their experience of distress, use of resources, and responsiveness toward nonpharmacologic analgesia adjunct therapies during invasive procedures. Two hundred thirty-six patients undergoing vascular and renal interventions, who had been randomized to receive during standard care treatment, structur...

Gender differences in incidence of cardiac arrhythmias have been documented. It is generally believed that cardiac pathology provides an arrhythmogenic substrate but that a trigger such as sympathetic nervous system activation is required to initiate arrhythmias. This study was done to determine whether there is a sex difference in susceptibility t...

To evaluate a clinic-based multimedia intervention for diabetes education targeting individuals with low health literacy levels in a diverse population. Five public clinics in Chicago, Illinois, participated in the study with computer kiosks installed in waiting room areas. Two hundred forty-four subjects with diabetes were randomized to receive ei...

Impairment of children's motor performance might limit participation in family and community life. Therefore, identification of motor impairments is important in support of early intervention to prevent limitations in children's occupational performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine item performance on the Test of Infant Motor Performanc...

The purpose was to investigate whether an HIV-prevention curriculum and a health maintenance curriculum produced different rates of change in reported consistent condom use and to explore what mediating variables predicted reported consistent condom use over time. A longitudinal crossover research design with extended posttest observations was used...

Two urban churches received touch-screen computers with health education software installed. The software included a multimedia application on diabetes risk factor reduction tailored for African-American women. A "Computer Promoter" was recruited at each church to encourage computer use and provide basic technical support. After one year following...

A large study of risky pre-teen behavior provided an opportunity to examine self-reported toothbrushing frequency for stability over time and adequacy. 1115 metropolitan African-American children at risk for violence and drug use self-reported toothbrushing frequency in at least one of five measurement points from 5th to 8th grade as part of a larg...

The purpose of this secondary analysis was to assess whether alert behavioral states were associated with an increased number of feeding readiness behaviors (FRBs) and whether the number of FRBs were associated with subsequent feeding efficiency in healthy premature infants born between 29 to 35 weeks gestation. The data were collected as part of a...