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Biomedical subjects

D Shotton

Publications and source records attributed to D Shotton.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Use of community health needs assessment for regional planning in country South Australia.

This study examined the impact of community health needs assessments used in country South Australian health service planning between 1995 and 1999. Data were collected from regional health planning officers during a Search Conference and a series of Delphi rounds. The needs assessments were found to vary from regionally to locally driven approaches. Locally driven approaches ensured local involvement but the process was slower and required more effort from the planner. It was also felt that locally driven approaches could exacerbate tension between a community's imperatives and the regional focus of regional decision-makers. In the overall regional budgets, the reallocation of health service funds according to the needs assessment findings was only small because of difficulties in refocusing from traditional clinical services in the short term. In contrast, the impact on health service thinking about population health issues was thought to have been more significant, for example, in the development of regional women's health plans. The use of community health needs assessments was useful, but for greater impact these should not now be so 'broad-brushed', but be more focused on feasible changes that health services could support. Other priority-setting techniques, such as marginal analysis, should also be used to determine where maximum health gains can be obtained.

Community Health Planning↗
PubMed1989

Confocal scanning microscopy: three-dimensional biological imaging.

Confocal scanning optical microscopy, arguably the most significant in biological light microscopy in this decade, enables one to obtain quantitative non-invasive optical sections through labelled biological specimens, virtually free from out-of-focus blur. A set of these optical sections collected at a series of focal levels through an object constitutes a three-dimensional image which may then be processed digitally for display as a computer reconstruction, a stereo pair or an animation sequence.

Animals↗
PubMed1978

The shape of spectrin molecules from human erythrocyte membranes.

Purified spectrin dimers and tetramers have been directly visualized by low-angle shadowing. The 9-S heterodimer is an asymmetric flexible molecule about 1000 A in length, its constituent monomer polypeptides forming two strands which in many molecules are individually visible, lying partially separated from one another or twisting round each other in a loose double helix. The 12-S tetramer is formed by the end-to-end association of two heterodimers, without overlap. The protein bears no physical resemblance to myosin.

Erythrocyte Membrane↗
PubMed1978

Appearance and distribution of surface proteins of the human erythrocyte membrane. An electron microscope and immunochemical labeling study.

We have used freeze-etching, before and after immunoferritin labeling, to visualize spectrin molecules and other surface proteins of the human erythrocyte membrane. After intramembrane particle aggregation was induced, spectrin molecules, identified by labeling with ferritin-conjugated antispectrin, were clustered on the cytoplasmic surface of the membrane in patches directly underlying the particle clusters. This labeling pattern confirms the involvement of spectrin in such particle aggregates, as previously inferred from indirect evidence. Ferritin-conjugated antihapten molecules, directed against external and cytoplasmic surface proteins of the erythrocyte membrane which had been covalently labeled nonspecifically with the hapten p-diazoniumphenyl-beta-D-lactoside, were similarly found in direct association with such intramembrane particle aggregates. This indicates that when spectrin and the intramembrane particles are aggregated, all the major proteins of the erythrocyte membrane are constrained to coaggregate with them. Although giving no direct information concerning the freedom of translational movement of proteins in the unperturbed erythrocyte membrane, these experiments suggest that a close dynamic association may exist between the integral and peripheral protein components of the membrane, such that immobilization of one component can restrict the lateral mobility of others.

Erythrocyte Membrane↗