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This paper describes the adaptation of an open-source ecological momentary assessment smartwatch platform with three sets of micro-survey wellness-related questions focused on i) infectious disease (COVID-19) risk perception, ii) privacy and distraction in an office context, and iii) triggers of various movement-related behaviors in buildings. This platform was previously used to collect data for thermal comfort, and this work extends its use to other domains. Several research participants took part in a proof-of-concept experiment by wearing a smartwatch to collect their micro-survey question preferences and perception responses for two of the question sets. Participants were also asked to install an indoor localization app on their phone to detect where precisely in the building they completed the survey. The experiment identified occupant information such as the tendencies for the research participants to prefer privacy in certain spaces and the difference between infectious disease risk perception in naturally versus mechanically ventilated spaces. © 2022 17th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, INDOOR AIR 2022. All rights reserved.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) and its member States are currently in the process of negotiating a new multilateral treaty on pandemic preparedness and re-sponse. At the same time, the existing international legal framework regulating global health emergencies – the International Health Regulations (IHR) – are being revised. Overall, substantive proposals made so far for inclusion into the new treaty/revised IHR provide for a further centralisation of control over, and management of, the collectivity of all human bodies through increased digitally-based biomedical surveillance at WHO level to detect potential health threats in order to rapidly adopt, coordinate, and implement global medical and non-medical emergency countermeasures. This contribution shows that this substantive focus is driven by the Global Health Security (GHS) doctrine that has dominated WHO's, its member States', and its public-private partners' response to Covid-19. This is problematic because it will not only entrench the GHS doctrine further into international health law but also endorse and routinise many of the securitised global medical and non-medical coun-termeasures adopted in response to Covid-19 for responses to future health threats. (Emerging) evidence shows, however, that these countermeasures have been ineffective and resulted in far-reaching interferences with people's human rights in virtually every country around the world. By way of example, this is illustrated with an analysis of three GHS-in-formed medical and non-medical Covid-19 countermeasures: lockdowns, constant bio-surveillance, and the fast-track development, global promotion, distribution, and admin-istration of investigational vaccines. The contribution ends with a call on those responsible for the treaty negotiation and IHR revision processes to take due account of WHO's and its member States' human rights duties and responsibilities for human rights in these processes;and to question the exclusive focus on centrally managed, technocratic, biomedical ap-proaches to pandemic preparedness and response. © 2022, Duncker und Humblot GmbH. All rights reserved.
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BACKGROUND: Quality of Life-Aged Care Consumers (QOL-ACC) is a new older-person-specific quality of life instrument designed for application in quality assessment and economic evaluation in aged care. The QOL-ACC was designed from its inception with older people receiving aged care services ensuring its strong content validity. Given that the QOL-ACC has already been validated in home care settings and a preference-weighted value set developed, we aimed to assess feasibility, construct validity and reliability of the QOL-ACC in residential aged care settings. METHODS: Individuals living in residential aged care facilities participated in an interviewer-facilitated survey. The survey included the QOL-ACC, QCE-ACC (quality of aged care experience measure) and two other preference-based quality of life instruments (ASCOT and EQ-5D-5L). Feasibility was assessed using missing data and ceiling/floor effects. Construct validity was assessed by exploring the relationship between the QOL-ACC and other instruments (convergent validity) and the QOL-ACC's ability to discriminate varying levels of self-rated health and quality of life. Internal consistency reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha (α). RESULTS: Of the 200 residents (mean age, 85 ± 7.7 years) who completed the survey, 60% were female and 69% were born in Australia. One in three participating residents self-rated their health as fair/poor. The QOL-ACC had no missing data but had small floor effects (0.5%) and acceptable ceiling effects (7.5%). It demonstrated moderate correlation with ASCOT (r = 0.51, p < 0.001) and EQ-5D-5L (r = 0.52, p < 0.001) and a stronger correlation with the QCE-ACC (r = 0.57, p < 0.001). Residents with poor self-rated health and quality of life had significantly lower scores on the QOL-ACC. The internal consistency reliability of the QOL-ACC and its dimensions was good (α = 0.70-0.77). CONCLUSIONS: The QOL-ACC demonstrated good feasibility, construct validity and internal consistency reliability to assess aged care-related quality of life. Moderate correlations of the QOL-ACC and other instruments provide evidence of its construct validity and signifies that the QOL-ACC adds non-redundant and non-interchangeable information beyond the existing instruments. A stronger correlation with the QCE-ACC than other instruments may indicate that quality of life is more intimately connected with the care experience than either health- or social-related quality of life in residential aged care settings.
Subject(s)
Quality of Life , Female , Humans , Aged , Aged, 80 and over , Male , Feasibility Studies , Reproducibility of Results , Australia , Cost-Benefit AnalysisABSTRACT
Waves of COVID-19 have been managed successfully within US, EU, Southeast Asia and Latin America, however, South Asia and Sub-saharan Africa still suffer new variants and EU fights with UK and United States of ,,new waves of old disease", postcovide or long covide syndrome. The aim of this communication and research is to prepare our auditors for the size and extent of postcovid systems and the importance of non-doctors and non-medicine experts in management of its consequences.
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The COVID-19 pandemic continues to exert influence on the scientific community: circumstances have forced academics to engage more frequently in technology-mediated activities, including their participation in remote and virtual conferences. In this article, we contemplate immersive virtual environments: we verify researchers’ motivations and constraints in the context of online conferences, and discover in what elements of such conferences researchers wish to participate in virtual reality (VR). A survey was administered using a computer-assisted web interview (CAWI) questionnaire among the sample of 1,575 academics with the POL-on database as the sampling frame. The results indicate that individuals’ contrasting needs and attitudes toward technology determine the degree to which they look favourably upon both remote conferencing and VR. Immersive virtual environments appear to satisfy the need for socialization;ordinary remote conferences fulfil the need for security and the achievement of fundamental conference goals, such as establishing collaboration and publishing research results. Conferences that are hosted remotely must be relevant to the needs of researchers and meet their discrete expectations;only then will such events prove valuable enough that researchers are willing to continue participating in them after the pandemic subsides. © 2022, The Author(s).
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School burnout is affecting more and more adolescents. In order to develop appropriate preventative measures, the problem more than ever requires a detailed understanding of the mechanisms operating on students’ capacity to adapt to circumstances rendered particularly difficult by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (COVID-19). In the absence of an explanatory framework in the field of school health, the JD-R model of work-related stress constitutes an original prism for reading the quality of pupils’ adaptation to their school environment. The aim of this research is on the one hand to observe the predictive links between the different variables operationalized in the school JD-R model and on the other, to test the adequacy of this model against the data in schools acutely affected by the COVID situation. A total of 470 middle school, high school and 1st year BTS students agreed to participate in the longitudinal study. They were administered six scales spread over three measurement periods. The results of the predictive path analyses reveal that the hypotheses assumed are to a good degree verified. However, even if the model as a whole does not fit the data well, in their essence, the results point to the importance of strengthening students’ own resources as well as those present within the school. Copyright © 2022 Oger, Broc, Martin-Krumm, Le Roux, Muller and Tarquinio.
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Transparency brings important subsidies for the dissemination of information, helps to control and verify what has been done, helping in different aspects, such as that experienced during the pandemic caused by Covid-19. Her too acts so that information related to the disease is available for access and viewing by all interested parties, providing the necessary support for the entire population. Thus, this research aims to identify how the municipalities of Rio Grande do Sul treated transparency in relation to Covid-19 in the year 2020, through a descriptive, documentary, quantitative analysis, from the transparency portals of the 497 municipalities in the state, through a binary evaluation checklist, which makes it possible to calculate the Covid-19 Transparency Index from the municipal perspective (ITC-M). This aspect brings a contribution of originality to the methodology used, in addition to employing this perspective in a new moment that is being experienced, given the pandemic context of Covid-19. From this, it was noticed that most municipalities have a low index, where many locations do not meet any requirements analyzed, with no transparency in relation to Covid-19. However, three municipalities have a higher index in relation to the dissemination of data, attending to all the issues addressed, contributing considerably in relation to transparency. Yet, much still needs to be done in relation to the dissemination of information, which can contribute to transmit knowledge about different perspectives to the whole society. © 2022 Centro Universitario de Brasilia. All rights reserved.
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Tourism is a widely known concept as it is part of our modern lifestyle that we opt for useful and quality free time that provides us with the opportunity to relax and boost our energy. Our research focused on travel habits and the leisure activities people undertake during their trips, relying on answers provided by respondents aged 18-55. Most of the respondents said that they quite like to go on recreational journeys/tourism trips, with the most popular activities being nature walks, hiking, visiting places of historic interest, and viewing architecture and buildings. A quintessential role during these trips is played by relaxation and recharge, as well as restoring capacity for work. The most popular destinations in descending order were domestic attractions, neighboring countries, and other countries in Europe. Covid-19 had a major impact on destination choice;the number of outbound trips decreased, and beside the lowering frequency of inbound trips their length also shortened. As traveling is a popular holiday activity, it is particularly important to pay due attention to tourists’ travel motivations, assess their needs and habits so that they can be provided with the best possible experiences during their trips, and can return well rested and with renewed vigor to face their everyday challenges. © 2022 Editura Universitatii din Oradea. All rights reserved.
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The growth of invisible pathologies resulting from the psychological exhaustion of nursing professionals raises an alert to the lack of labor policies in institutions with a focus on prevention. This study aims to assess the perception of nursing professionals about mental illness in their work environment, enhanced by the current pandemic moment. It also aims to identify the actions that contracting health institutions adopt, as a preventive measure. This is a cross-sectional and descriptive study, in which the snowball technique was used, using the Google Forms® tool. The research complied with the ethical precepts of Resolution CNS 466/2012, being held in July and August 2020. 45 nurses and 56 nursing technicians answered the questions, with a prevalence of 85.14% being women. The high workload, the pressure in the work routine, the low pay and the precarious conditions for the exercise of the activity were the factors listed that most contribute to mental illness. Although 73 of the respondents did not leave work for prolonged periods, 30 were absent due to mental illness. It should be noted that 61 nursing professionals, who responded, are not aware of preventive initiatives for mental illness in their companies. This study reveals that the work environment, poor conditions for performing activities, work overload and fear of the unknown, such as the disease caused by the coronavirus, are considered the main factors that contribute to the mental illness of nursing professionals. Thus, it is essential that protective measures for self-care in mental health are offered by health institutions. © 2021 Slovak Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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Introduction: Vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 have been approved rapidly. Pivotal studies were conducted in healthy volunteers. Data in allo- HCT patients (pts) are lacking. Here, we examined antibody (AB) titers to COVID-19 vaccination with BNT162b (Comirnaty®) or mRNA-1273 (Moderna Covid-19 Vaccine®) in allo-HCT pts. Methods: Serial AB titers (IgG, IgA, IgM: prior to;1m after dose 1;1, 3, 6m post 2. vaccine) against 4 SARS-CoV-2 antigens (receptor-binding domain, spike glycoprotein subunit S1/S2, and nucleocapsid protein) were recorded with a multiplex AntiBody CORonavirus Assay (ABCORA) in allo-HCT pts and healthy controls. Results: So far 99 pts (median age 55y (range 18y-74y)) have been enrolled. Currently, AB responses for the 1m after dose 1 and dose 2 are available for 74 and 57 pts, respectively. Pts were grouped into those (A) 3-6m post-HCT (n=14 after 1. dose, n=11 after 2. dose);(B) 6-12m post- HCT (n=11 after 1. dose, n=10 after 2. dose);and (C) >12m post-HCT (n=49 after 1. dose, n=36 after 2. dose). In addition, AB responses are available for n=32 healthy controls (median age 38y) after the 1. dose, and n=10 after 2. dose. There was a statistically significant difference of the S1 AB levels (IgG, IgA, IgM) between the 4 groups after both the 1. and the 2. dose (ANOVA p-value< 0.001 and 0.003, respectively, Fig.1). After the 1. dose, median values of sum of S1 signals were 0.97 (1Q-3Q=0.82-1.14) in (A), 0.92 (0.78-1.27) in (B), 2.35 (0.90-33.7) in (C);and 57.1 (14.6-69.7) in the healthy group. After the 2.dose, median values were 3.84 (1Q- 3Q=1.32-15.3) in (A), 20.9 (1.28-69.9) in (B), 118 (8.74-313) in (C);and 195 (150-238) in the healthy group. Values >9.3 are considered to represent protective immunity according to ancillary studies. Conclusion: Allo-HCT pts early post-HCT displayed only low/no AB formation to vaccination. Such knowledge is of critical importance to allo- HCT pts and transplant physicians to guide treatment decisions regarding re-vaccination and social behavior during this pandemic. Analyses on the impact of pharmacological immunosuppression and graft-vs-host disease on immune responses to the vaccine are underway. (Figure Presented).