ABSTRACT
Background: 'Stepping Stones' program is a cluster RCT aimed to improve parental competencies for early childhood development of children under 2 from rural India. Backed by Grand Challenges Canada, Saving Brains, this initiative focuses on multiple aspects of Early Childhood Development to enhance children's cognitive potential in their first 1000 days. This program aims to empower primary caregivers to promote overall child development. On March 22, 2020, India went into lockdown due to the Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis has profound implications for the care and early childhood development intervention programs. In India, millions of children have limited access to nurturing care. Poverty and low education influence parent's ability to give their children the best start in early life. This further affects a child's development, health, well-being, and school readiness. Caregiver's knowledge about child development and their ability to gain and practice those skills is needed for stimulating a home environment conducive for early child development. This paper aims to study the effect of family-centered programs on caregivers and their children during COVID-19. Methods: This Cluster Randomized Trial was implemented in rural areas of India. Clusters were randomly divided into intervention and control arms. A total of 326 parents of children aged from 0 to 2 years were recruited through a phone survey. The intervention group received a family-centered parenting program for children aged 0-2 years for 6 months through e-platform. The control group received routine care. The baseline and end-line data on developmental scores of children were collected, and developmental scores were analyzed. Parents were assessed and analyzed for changes in knowledge and skills about child development. The effect of the intervention on the child development outcomes is analyzed. All analyses were performed using the STATA version 14. Results: At the endpoint, caregivers from the intervention group had significantly higher scores on knowledge for responsive parenting than those from their control arm. The statistically significant effect of the intervention was reflected on the home environment, mother-child interaction, motor, language, and socio-emotional development. Conclusion: During COVID-19, a family-centered parenting program has shown to be an effective approach for improving parents' competencies and confidence to improve their children's developmental scores.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 virus was first reported in December 2019 in China. Since then, it has created havoc on global level by causing health and financial crisis. The novel corona virus is continuously evolving into new variants of virus and still spreading in every part of the world. The virus is spread mostly by the droplets transferring from the infected person to an uninfected person. The only direct method of preventing such transfer of droplets can be done by washing of hands, avoiding contact with nostrils, eyes and mouth. Only complete vaccination of citizens can help in containment of virus till then use of face mask and social distancing has been made mandatory by authorities. This project proposes a contactless face mask detection model based on machine learning and image processing technology. It will follow the protocols of social distancing. This project will be helpful in accurately identifying whether a person is wearing a mask properly or not. This model can be easily installed in the entrance of ATMs, malls, educational institutions, offices and in the entrance of public offices. Being a contact less model it will effectively reduce the need of having a manual way of detection and will reduce the spreading of disease to further people. It is highly effective and cheap model as all the tools required for this project are free of cost and easily available online. Proposed model can be easily used on low end computers like Raspberry Pi. The model will encourage people to continuously wear mask in correct manner. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The incidence of Depression, Anxiety and stress among the general population is steadily increasing due to outbreak of COVID-19 across the globe. Beyond the risks of COVID-19, concerns have been expressed to have mental effect on the general population due to COVID-19 lock down. The emotional impact is more among individuals with pre-existing medical diseases like hypertension, Coronary Artery Disease, Diabetes (DM) and psychiatric illness. The lockdown results in health anxiety, this can manifest as maladaptive behaviours (repeated medical consultations, avoiding health care even if genuinely ill, hoarding particular items);at a broader societal level, it can lead to mistrust of public authorities and scapegoating of particular populations or groups. There are very few data from India studying mental impact of lockdown due to COVID 19 among general population. In our study, we will assess DAS among rural population who are accompanying the Non-COVID 19 patients at a tertiary care rural hospital of central India in the era of lock down.