Journal of Medical Internet Research - International Scientific Journal for Medical Research, Information and Communication on the Internet

Mentoring to develop research skills is an important strategy for facilitating faculty success. The purpose of this study was to conduct an integrative literature review to examine the barriers and facilitators to mentoring in health-related research, particularly for three categories: new investigators (NI), early-stage investigators (ESI) and underrepresented minority faculty (UMF). PsychINFO, CINAHL and PubMed were searched for papers published in English from 2010 to 2020, and 46 papers were reviewed. Most papers recommended having multiple mentors and many recommended assessing baseline research skills. Barriers and facilitators were both individual and institutional. Individual barriers mentioned most frequently were a lack of time and finding work–life balance. UMF mentioned barriers related to bias, discrimination and isolation. Institutional barriers included lack of mentors, lack of access to resources, and heavy teaching and service loads. UMF experienced institutional barriers such as devaluation of experience or expertise. Individual facilitators were subdivided and included writing and synthesis as technical skills, networking and collaborating as interpersonal skills, and accountability, leadership, time management, and resilience/grit as personal skills. Institutional facilitators included access to mentoring, professional development opportunities, and workload assigned to research. Advocacy for diversity and cultural humility were included as unique interpersonal and institutional facilitators for UMF. Several overlapping and unique barriers and facilitators to mentoring for research success for NI, ESI and UMF in the health-related disciplines are presented.

Context: Few researchers have examined the views of important stakeholders in football student-athletes' spheres of influence and whether their views map well in a systems approach to understanding concussion-reporting behavior (CRB).Objective: To examine the extent to which stakeholders' beliefs about what influences football players' CRBs reflect system-level influences that go beyond individual-level factors.Design: Qualitative study.Setting: Four National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I university athletic programs.Patients or Other Participants: A total of 26 individuals (athletic directors = 5, athletic trainers [ATs] = 10, football coaches = 11).Data Collection and Analysis: Semistructured interviews with stakeholders were transcribed and analyzed using the socioecological model according to the Miles and Huberman coding methods.Results: Stakeholders largely identified individual-level factors (attitudes), followed by exosystem-level factors (university policies and support for ATs), with fewer microsystem- and mesosystem-level factors (coach influence and communication between coaches and ATs, respectively) and almost no macrosystem-level factors (media influence, cultural norms about aggression and toughness in football).Conclusions: Promising evidence indicates growing stakeholder awareness of the importance of exosystem-level factors (eg, medical personnel and CRB policies) in influencing CRB rates. However, frontline stakeholders and policy makers may benefit from practices that bridge these influences (eg, coach involvement and communication), allowing for a more integrated approach to influence student-athletes' willingness to improve their CRBs.

Purpose: Receiving weight loss advice from a health-care provider has been associated with more weight loss efforts and greater odds of achieving weight loss. However, whether patients seek help from their provider or other health professional with weight loss after receiving advice from them to lose weight is largely unknown. Design: Cross-sectional data from the 2011 to 2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Sample: A total of 3862 overweight/obese adults. Measures: Questionnaires asked whether participants received advice to lose weight, and whether they sought health professional’s assistance with weight management. The NHANES 2011 to 2012 was the most recent year both questions were asked. Analysis: Accounting for NHANES sampling and design, frequency distributions characterized demographics and proportions. Logistic regressions estimated odds of seeking weight loss help by demographics. Results: Of 3682 overweight/obese adults, 1908 were told they were overweight or recommended to lose weight. Of 1908 people, 68% reported weight loss efforts, but only health 10.9% sought a health professional’s help (dietician/nutritionist 4.7%, personal trainer 3.0%, doctor 2.8%). Females, people with health insurance and high health-care utilization had 1.5 to 3.5 times greater odds of seeking help; age, ethnicity, and income were not significantly associated with seeking help with weight management. Conclusion: In a nationally representative sample, only 10.9% of overweight/obese adults told to lose weight by a provider sought help from a health professional with weight loss. This underscores the opportunity for greater health professional involvement with weight management beyond giving recommendations.

Research productivity is expected of academic faculty, and mentoring can facilitate it. This paper presents a framework for using mentoring to develop researchers in health disciplines.We utilized ...