Revitalizing the Irish Army Reserve Post-Commission on the Defence Forces: Moving from the Single Force Concept to a Total Force Policy

The security implications of Brexit, the potential resurgence of violence in Northern Ireland, a Defence Forces personnel retention crisis, cyber-attacks against governmental infrastructure, the Covid-19 Pandemic, and the Russo-Ukrainian War have all created significant challenges for the Defence Forces at a time when both the Permanent Defence Forces and the Reserve Defence Forces are at their lowest respective strengths in the history of the State. With naval vessels unable to put to sea due to crew shortages and the Air Corps similarly unable to defend Irish airspace, the discussion of defence reforms in Ireland has never been more heightened, especially with the 2022 publication of the long-awaited Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces. Amounting to the most in-depth introspective analysis of Irish defence since the foundation of the State, the Commission's Report advocated sweeping reforms across the Defence Forces;tripling defence spending, reforming command and control arrangements, additional naval vessels, purchasing modern fighter interceptors, and "the revitalisation of the Reserve Defence Force.” The creation of a Reserve "that can seamlessly train, operate and deploy with the Permanent Defence Force, nationally and internationally, " was one of the Commission's five core recommendations.In light of this, this chapter argues for the revitalization of the Army Reserve by moving away from the current Single Force Concept to a Total Force Policy. It proposes a new force structure for the Reserve, de-coupled from that of the Army, with the Reserve transitioning from a languishing infantry-dominated force to a vital specialist and skills focused component of the Defence Forces. This chapter proposes a solution to a legacy Irish defence problem, a reimagined Army Reserve tailored to counter real-world threats and challenges, the reasoning underpinning it, the contribution it could make to the Defence Forces, and the policy and legal requirements required to transition to it. The Commission on the Defence Forces argues for revitalizing the Army Reserve, herein lies one iteration of what that could look like. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.

Social Media is not a Health Proxy: Differences Between Social Media and Electronic Health Record Reports of Post-COVID Symptoms

The COVID-19 pandemic transformed many aspects of health and daily life. A subset of people who were infected with the virus have ongoing chronic health issues that range in type of symptom and severity. In this study, we conducted a qualitative assessment of self-reported post-COVID symptoms from patients' electronic health records (EHR, n=564) and a randomized collection of Reddit and Twitter posts (n=500 for each). We show the inconsistencies in what types of symptoms are shared between platforms in addition to assessing the severity of the symptoms and how social media characterizations of post-COVID do not tell a complete story of this phenomenon. This research contributes to CSCW health literature by connecting digital traces of post-COVID with EHR data, critiquing the use of social media as a health proxy and points to its potential to add context to the analysis of traditional health data extracted from the EHR. © 2023 ACM.

Coproducing Support Together: Sustainable and Reciprocal Civic Disaster Relief during COVID-19

COVID-19 changed society in terms of employment, food security, and mental health, affecting all segments of the population. Surging demands for a wide range of support could not be met solely by government-led disaster assistance that experienced breakdowns in the initial phase of the pandemic. The nature of the pandemic as a global, long-haul disaster necessitated sustained, diverse, and extensive civic disaster relief to complement government response. In this paper, we explore how civic disaster relief groups carry out online and offline coordination activities to engage different actors and their positive effects on individuals and local communities, drawing on interviews with civic disaster relief organizers and volunteers in the United States. We interpret our findings with the lens of coproduction that can increase the sustainability, diversity, and extent of civic relief efforts. We then suggest design implications for coproducing disaster relief and discuss the importance and benefits of involving stakeholders who are less likely to be engaged in producing relief. © 2023 ACM.

The Evolution and Evaluation of Matthew's Friends KetoCollege, A Training Programme for Professionals

Objective: Matthew's Friends KetoCollege is a unique training programme developed by an international board of expert medical and dietetic mentors who specialise in ketogenic diet (KD) therapies. Established in 2016, KetoCollege aimed to meet the demand for credible, unbiased training, improving delegates confidence with KD and enabling them to enhance the service provided to their patients. It offers training in the scientific background and practical aspects of the implementation of KD therapies for international professionals new to KD or those requiring a refresher. Here we aimed to evaluate the programme and look to future development. Method(s): KetoCollege is a 3-day education programme of lectures, workshops and networking, run yearly since 2016, approved by the British Dietetic Association and Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. It quickly adapted to the COVID pandemic restrictions and moved online in the past 2 years. Delegates complete an evaluation form, providing feedback which informs future developments. Result(s): KetoCollege has trained 885 professionals from 51 countries across seven programmes. Participant evaluations report improved knowledge, understanding and confidence with KD therapy. Delegates develop ideas and set goals to inform local service development and changes to clinical practice. Feedback consistently identifies the need for a follow-on advanced education programme in KD therapies to address more complex topics, advanced fine tuning and clinical case scenarios. Conclusion(s): KetoCollege is a unique, unbiased and well-respected education programme which successfully enhances delegates' knowledge and confidence to implement KD therapies. This enhances accessibility to KD therapies for families and adults internationally. KetoCollege Advanced is currently under development, ready for launch in 2023 in response to delegate feedback.

Democratising large scale instrument-based science through e-Infrastructure

Modern scientific instruments are becoming essential for discoveries because they provide unprecedented insight into physical or biological events - often in real time. However, these instruments may generate large amounts of data, and increasingly they require sophisticated e-infrastructure for analysis, storage and archive. The increasing complexity and scale of the data, processing steps and systems has made it difficult for domain scientists to perform their research, narrowing the user base to a select few. In this paper, we present a framework that democratises large-scale instrument-based science, increasing the number of researchers who can engage. We discuss a prototype at the University of Queensland. The system is illustrated through two case studies, one involving light microscopy imaging of the innate immune system, and the other electron microscopy imaging of the SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins. © 2022 IEEE.

YouTube Videos as Data: Seeing Daily Challenges for People with Visual Impairments during COVID-19

COVID-19 pandemic has spread globally and affected a large number of people. Previous studies collected online survey and interview data to raise awareness of requirements from people with visual impairments (PVI) under the COVID-19 pandemic, however, little has been observed in PVI's daily activities due to the suspension of face-to-face fieldwork. In this study, we utilized an innovative data source-YouTube videos to fill the vacancy of observation data in this specific topic. Compared to previous studies, we got more voices involved and gained a richer dataset by considering both videos from the visually impaired community where PVI are primary authors and news media videos where PVI are involved as active participants. Eventually, we collected 24 videos created by the visually impaired community and 27 videos from the news media community, where 57 PVI were depicted. This study uncovered the problems causing pandemic-related challenges and suggested the need for explicit guidelines that can make the prevention protocols accessible and inclusive for PVI, as this study indicates that accessibility can be easily missed under unforeseen situations like the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022 ACM.

Cultural Influences on Chinese Citizens' Adoption of Digital Contact Tracing: A Human Infrastructure Perspective

Digital contact tracing is an ICT approach for controlling public health crises. It identifies users' risk of infection based on their healthcare and travel information. In the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries implemented digital contact tracing to contain the coronavirus outbreak. However, the adoption rates vary significantly across different countries. In this study, we investigate Chinese people's adoption of digital contact tracing. We aim at finding the influence of Chinese culture on people's attitudes and behaviors toward the technology. We interviewed 26 Chinese participants and used thematic analysis to interpret the data. Our findings showed that Chinese culture shaped citizens' interactions with the digital contact tracing at multiple levels;driven by the culture, Chinese citizens accepted digital contact tracing and contributed to making digital contact tracing a socio-technical infrastructure of people's daily lives. We also discuss such cultural influences with the growing literature of human infrastructure and crisis informatics. © 2022 ACM.

Exploring and Promoting Diagnostic Transparency and Explainability in Online Symptom Checkers

Online symptom checkers (OSC) are widely used intelligent systems in health contexts such as primary care, remote healthcare, and epidemic control. OSCs use algorithms such as machine learning to facilitate self-diagnosis and triage based on symptoms input by healthcare consumers. However, intelligent systems' lack of transparency and comprehensibility could lead to unintended consequences such as misleading users, especially in high-stakes areas such as healthcare. In this paper, we attempt to enhance diagnostic transparency by augmenting OSCs with explanations. We first conducted an interview study (N=25) to specify user needs for explanations from users of existing OSCs. Then, we designed a COVID-19 OSC that was enhanced with three types of explanations. Our lab-controlled user study (N=20) found that explanations can significantly improve user experience in multiple aspects. We discuss how explanations are interwoven into conversation flow and present implications for future OSC designs.

Using Local Community to Ease Long Haul Uncertainty During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in an era of unprecedented hardship worldwide, bringing uncertainty to new levels as people’s routines were disrupted and what was once considered normal was called into question. Citizens initiated online local communities to support information-seeking amidst the pandemic. In this paper, we explore what types of information were sought and how people engaged in uncertainty reduction with others in their area during the initial phase of COVID-19. We conducted content analysis on a pandemic-relief online local community. We found that people leveraged local networks to get updates about timely situations in local areas, clear confusion around local COVID-19 regulations, and seek confirmation on emerging social norms. However, there existed inaccurate information exchange about regulations and conflicting opinions on social norms. We provide design suggestions to increase the potentials of uncertainty management through online local communities. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Local Community Support for Tangible Food Aid during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic is a long-haul disaster that has brought forth extreme hardship, in particular food insecurity. Local citizens across the United States created online groups to facilitate mutual aid, a form of community-based disaster relief. In this paper, we are interested in how online mutual aid groups addressed food insecurity through facilitating various community-based initiatives. We interviewed mutual aid group organizers in the United States and found that online groups contributed immediate food relief as well as laid the groundwork for long-term food security. These findings have implications for community resilience in the wake of an ongoing disaster. © 2021 ACM.

With Help from Afar: Cross-Local Communication in an Online COVID-19 Pandemic Community

Crisis informatics research has examined geographically bounded crises, such as natural or man-made disasters, identifying the critical role of local and hyper-local information focused on one geographic area in crisis communication. The COVID-19 pandemic represents an understudied kind of crisis that simultaneously hits locales across the globe, engendering an emergent form of crisis communication, which we term cross-local communication. Cross-local communication is the exchange of crisis information between geographically dispersed locales to facilitate local crisis response. To unpack this notion, we present a qualitative study of an online migrant community of overseas Taiwanese who supported fellow Taiwanese from afar. We detail four distinctive types of cross-local communication: situational updates, risk communication, medical consultation, and coordination. We discuss how the current pandemic situation brings new understandings to crisis informatics and online health community literature, and what role digital technologies could play in supporting cross-local communication. © 2021 ACM.

Mandated Shutdowns, the Ratchet Effect, and The Barstool Fund

Perhaps the most contentious part of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been the decision by governments to mandate—or effectively mandate—the shutdown of certain businesses. The justification for doing so is broadly consequentialist. The public health costs of not shutting down are so great that potential benefits from allowing businesses to open are dwarfed. Operating within this consequentialist framework, this paper identifies an underappreciated set of social costs that are a product of the present public policy that pairs mandated shutdowns with government subsidies. Such policy is prone to being an instance of what Robert Higgs calls the ratchet effect. Given that ratchets tend to be both costly and sticky, it is best to avoid allowing them to come into existence. This paper identifies a way of circumventing this particular ratchet;namely, by replacing governmental subsidies with support from private charitable funds like The Barstool Fund. © 2021

Medical care disruptions during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic: the experience of older breast cancer survivors.

PURPOSE: Older cancer survivors required medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are limited data on medical care in this age group. METHODS: We evaluated care disruptions in a longitudinal cohort of non-metastatic breast cancer survivors aged 60-98 from five US regions (n = 321). Survivors completed a web-based or telephone survey from May 27, 2020 to September 11, 2020. Care disruptions included interruptions in seeing or speaking to doctors, receiving medical treatment or supportive therapies, or filling prescriptions since the pandemic began. Logistic regression models evaluated associations between care disruptions and education, medical, psychosocial, and COVID-19-related factors. Multivariate models included age, county COVID-19 death rates, comorbidity, and post-diagnosis time. RESULTS: There was a high response rate (n = 262, 81.6%). Survivors were 32.2 months post-diagnosis (SD 17.5, range 4-73). Nearly half (48%) reported a medical disruption. The unadjusted odds of care disruptions were higher with each year of education (OR 1.22, 95% CI 1.08-1.37, p = < 0.001) and increased depression by CES-D score (OR 1.04, CI 1.003-1.08, p = 0.033) while increased tangible support decreased the odds of disruptions (OR 0.99, 95% CI 0.97-0.99, p = 0.012). There was a trend between disruptions and comorbidities (unadjusted OR 1.13 per comorbidity, 95% CI 0.99-1.29, p = 0.07). Adjusting for covariates, higher education years (OR1.23, 95% CI 1.09-1.39, p = 0.001) and tangible social support (OR 0.98 95% CI 0.97-1.00, p = 0.006) remained significantly associated with having care disruptions. CONCLUSION: Older breast cancer survivors reported high rates of medical care disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic and psychosocial factors were associated with care disruptions. CLINICALTRIALS. GOV IDENTIFIER: NCT03451383.

The psychosocial impact of COVID-19 on pregnant and postpartum individuals: a mixed methods exploration

Objectives: To explore the psychosocial and behavioural responses of pregnant and postpartum individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to develop strategies for healthcare providers to support patients through a pandemic. Methods: Mixed-methods study of patients in an urban Toronto multidisciplinary Family Health Team who were between 20 weeks pregnant and 5 months postpartum from June to August 2020. Using a questionnaire and qualitative interviews, we explored psychosocial and behavioral impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including access to prenatal care, lifestyle changes, and strategies for mitigating distress. Results: Forty-seven pregnant (and 62 postpartum individuals responded (response rate 52%));12 semi structured interviews were completed. Respondents indicated a loss of freedom (93%), lonely/lack of support (66%), and nearly/totally housebound (63%). About half (46-54%) were worried/very worried for themselves ortheir baby contracting COVID-19 and 13% scored > 13 on EPDS indicating depression. Helpful strategies included keeping busy (86%), exercise (84%), and talking to their healthcare provider (79%). Qualitatively, participants expressed profound feelings of loss and persistent fear, anxiety, loneliness/isolation, and uncertainty. Adaptive behaviours included seeking mental health services, participating in online support groups, connecting with family/friends, avoiding information fatigue, and exercising. Maladaptive behaviours included overeating, becoming sedentary, and social isolation. Conclusions: Notwithstanding the “normal” stresses of pregnancy andparenthood, the added burden of pandemic-related stressors may impact parental mental health and relationships, parent-infant bonding, and infant development. Understanding psychosocial and behavioural responses to pregnancy during COVID-19 will enable healthcare providers to mitigate these impacts by providing appropriate supports.

COVID-19 Kindness: Patterns of Neighborly Cooperation during a Global Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, which began in late 2019, brought unprecedented impact to healthcare, the economy, and social structure, and infrastructures experienced breakdowns in the initial phase. Demands in social and material needs surged, and they could not be met solely by unprepared infrastructures. Although local communities complemented them in previous disasters, physical distancing measures to prevent the spread of the virus undermined human connection, and local communities had to come up with novel ways to provide support. To develop insights from such adaptations of local communities, we explored civic activities for immediate disaster relief in multiple local communities across the United States and interviewed civic initiative organizers and attendees. In this paper, we articulate our findings into pattern language, a schema of reusable solutions for recurring problems. We present two patterns for community-based disaster recovery and discuss the effectiveness of codifying civic activities for disaster relief into patterns. © 2021 ACM.

Making Space for Support: An Exploratory Analysis of Pandemic-Response Mutual Aid Platforms

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in an era of unprecedented hardship across the United States. In response, local community members leveraged mutual aid as a form of citizen-based, peer-to-peer care. In this paper, we are interested in teasing out significant design features that support the facilitation of mutual aid on online platforms. To this end, we conducted a scenario-based claims analysis of the two most widely used platforms for mutual aid, based on three primary user groups. Our analysis suggests that design for mutual aid platforms considers features which support request standardization and balanced visibility alongside validation and conversational interaction. © 2021 ACM.

Medical Care Disruptions During the First Six-Months of the COVID19 Pandemic: The Experience of Older Breast Cancer Survivors.

PurposeOlder cancer survivors required medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic despite infection risks, but there are limited data on medical care in this age group. METHODS: We evaluated care disruptions in a longitudinal cohort of non-metastatic breast cancer survivors ages 60-98 from five US regions (n=321). Survivors completed a web-based or telephone survey from May 27, 2020 to September 11, 2020. Care disruptions included self-reported interruptions in ability to see doctors, receive treatment or supportive therapies, or fill prescriptions. Logistic regression models evaluated bivariate and multivariate associations between care disruptions and education, medical, psychosocial and COVID-19-related factors. Multivariate models included age, county COVID-19 rates, comorbidity and post-diagnosis time. RESULTS: There was a high response rate (n=262, 81.6%). Survivors were 32.2 months post-diagnosis (SD 17.5, range 4-73). Nearly half (48%) reported a medical disruption. The unadjusted odds of care disruptions were significantly higher with more education (OR 1.23 per one-year increase, 95% CI 1.09-1.39, p =0.001) and greater depression (OR 1.04 per one-point increase in CES-D score, CI 1.003-1.08, p=0.033); tangible support decreased the odds of disruptions (OR 0.99, 95% CI 0.97-0.99 per one-point increase, p=0.012). There was a trend for associations between disruptions and comorbidity (unadjusted OR 1.13 per 1 added comorbidity, 95% CI 0.99-1.29, p=0.07). Adjusting for covariates, only higher education (p=0.001) and tangible social support (p=0.006) remained significantly associated with having care disruptions. CONCLUSIONS: Older breast cancer survivors reported high rates of medical care disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic and psychosocial factors were associated with care disruptions.

Experiencing the Transition to Remote Teaching and Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted universities around the world. In the two weeks following a shelter-in-place order, all the actors of the educational system were forced to transition to remote education. This shift required a new reliance upon technologies that these individuals might never have adopted at all, often with significant difficulties. In this paper, we present a qualitative study on a university-wide survey dataset describing student and faculty experiences of abruptly transitioning to remote teaching and learning during the spring 2020 semester at the Pennsylvania State University. We performed an inductive thematic analysis to identify the challenges and opportunities that arose during the transition. Our findings contribute to building better tools, curriculum, and supports for remote education, particularly during an unexpected crisis.