ABSTRACT
Upon shutting down operations in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the movie industry assembled teams of experts to help develop guidelines for returning to operation. It resulted in a joint report, The Safe Way Forward, which was created in consultation with union members and provided the basis for negotiations with the studios. A centerpiece of the report was a set of heatmaps displaying SARS-CoV-2 risks for a shoot, as a function of testing rate, community infection prevalence, community transmission rate (R0), and risk measure (either expected number of cases or probability of at least one case). We develop and demonstrate a methodology for evaluating such complex displays, in terms of how well they inform potential users, in this case, workers deciding whether the risks of a shoot are acceptable. We ask whether individuals making hypothetical return-to-work decisions can (a) read display entries, (b) compare display entries, and (c) make inferences based on display entries. Generally speaking, respondents recruited through the Amazon MTurk platform could interpret the display information accurately and make coherent decisions, suggesting that heatmaps can communicate complex risks to lay audiences. Although these heatmaps were created for practical, rather than theoretical, purposes, these results provide partial support for theoretical accounts of visual information processing and identify challenges in applying them to complex settings.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is one of the leading causes of pregnancy-related death. Prenatal health care providers can offer critical screening and support to pregnant people who experience IPV. During the COVID-19 shelter-in-place order, mobile apps may offer such people the opportunity to continue receiving screening and support services. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to examine cases of IPV that were reported on a prenatal care app before and during the implementation of COVID-19 shelter-in-place mandates. METHODS: The number of patients who underwent voluntary IPV screening and the incidence rate of IPV were determined by using a prenatal care app that was disseminated to patients from a single, large health care system. We compared the IPV screening frequencies and IPV incidence rates of patients who started using the app before the COVID-19 shelter-in-place order, to those of patients who started using the app during the shelter-in-place order. RESULTS: We found 552 patients who started using the app within 60 days prior to the enforcement of the shelter-in-place order, and 407 patients who used the app at the start of shelter-in-place enforcement until the order was lifted. The incidence rates of voluntary IPV screening for new app users during the two time periods were similar (before sheltering in place: 252/552, 46%; during sheltering in place: 163/407, 40%). The overall use of the IPV screening tool increased during the shelter-in-place order. A slight, nonsignificant increase in the incidence of physical, sexual, and psychological violence during the shelter-in-place order was found across all app users (P=.56). Notably, none of the patients who screened positively for IPV had mentions of IPV in their medical charts. CONCLUSIONS: App-based screening for IPV is feasible during times when in-person access to health care providers is limited. Our results suggest that the incidence of IPV slightly increased during the shelter-in-place order. App-based screening may also address the needs of those who are unwilling or unable to share their IPV experiences with their health care provider.