Cervical, breast, and colorectal cancer screening by COVID-19 booster and influenza vaccination status in a sample of women in Puerto Rico

Background: Recommendation by a healthcare provider is essential for women to seek preventative cancer screening. Research has shown patients are receptive to information about cancer screening given by health professionals administering influenza vaccines. Promotion of cancer screening during vaccination may be particularly important in Puerto Rico (PR), which, relative to the continental United States, has low cervical and colorectal cancer screening rates. Objective(s): This study aims to determine if receiving the influenza vaccine in the past year or ever receiving the COVID-19 booster is associated with an increased likelihood of women participating in cervical, breast, and colorectal cancer screening in the past year. Method(s): Women older than 18 are recruited weekly in different ongoing community outreach events throughout Puerto Rico as part of the Puerto Rico Community Engagement Alliance (PR-CEAL) against COVID-19 disparities. The PR-CEAL outreach team completes an online community survey as part of their field activities. Initial data was collected from February 17th 2022 through May 28th 2022, with data collection currently ongoing. Pearson chi2 test or Fisher exact test, as appropriate, was used to quantify the association between participation in cancer screening and vaccination status. Result(s): As of May 31st, 253 women with a median age of 59 had been recruited. Of these, 56.1% had received the influenza vaccine in the past year, and 52.6% had received a COVID-19 booster. Nearly 52% of women with the booster and 65% without the booster received cervical cancer screening (p-value =0.29). Women with the booster and those without the booster (75% each) received breast cancer screening (p-value = 0.99). Only 16.1% of women with the booster and 11.8% without the booster had received colorectal cancer screening (p-value = 0.99). Receipt of cancer screening according to influenza vaccine status was as follows: 59.3% vaccinated and 51.5% unvaccinated received cervical cancer screening (p-value = 0.35);31.4% vaccinated and 41.2% unvaccinated received breast cancer screening (p-value = 0.56);and 13.1% vaccinated and 9.3% unvaccinated received colorectal cancer screening (p-value = 0.46). Conclusion(s): No differences in receipt of cancer screening were found by influenza or COVID-19 booster vaccination status among adult women in Puerto Rico. Routine vaccination appointments may therefore represent a missed opportunity to promote cancer screening.

The COVID-19 Pandemic as a driver of education 5.0 at UAH Faculty of Pharmacy

Introduction: In March 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Madrid province, Spain, forced changes in the teaching and organisational methodologies of University educational centres in order to continue delivering knowledge contents that allowed students to acquire the competences and skills required by current regulations. Method(s): Different surveys were carried out on possible alternative teaching methodologies and strategies to be used by the teachers responsible for the different courses in the face of the pandemic situation. They explained to students how the teaching was going to proceed using different remote channels. Result(s): Different strategies such as the heuristic, discovery or playful method facilitated the teaching-learning process allowing students for the acquisition of useful knowledge, competences and skills for job placement. Innovative teaching methods were used, such as the inverted classroom or flipped classroom, cooperative learning, project-based learning or gamification, depending on the characteristics of the different disciplines. The results achieved so far have been, despite initial concerns and doubts, satisfactory, achieving the objectives and skills set at the beginning of the courses. The students have worked on specific, individual or cooperative projects, in which they have faced real problems in the context of service-learning, stimulating their critical thinking, communication, problem solving abilities, with a more practical and tangible dimension. Conclusion(s): The pandemic has accelerated the implementation of an Education 5.0 project, making teachers use resources that some but not all had used previously to promote effective and quality teaching. Combining the new technological tools with traditional educational methodologies helps teachers to achieve their teaching outcomes in a more effective way without losing sight to prepare students for lifelong learning far beyond the digital.

Evaluation of learning at UAH School of Pharmacy during the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction: The problem caused by the COVID-19 pandemic led teachers to use different tools to measure the learning process of students in a socially distanced context. For this reason, during the 2019-20 academic year, the teachers at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Alcal, Spain, had to come up against the challenge of establishing a consistent, systematic and rigorous online evaluation system to screen which students had the competences and skills demanded by current regulations. Method(s): A survey was designed using Google forms and addressed, from the Dean's office, to professors and lecturers of the five undergraduate courses, concerning the type of evaluation tools that they were going to use with the students in order to proceed with a sound evaluation, taking into account that data protection regulations had to be respected, rigorously. Result(s): Doubts were raised about integrity and ethics when carrying out the different online evaluation tests. News appeared in the media and social networks about how to know the correct answers in a questionnaire through its source code, by hiring experts who solve the exams, or doing the activities together using the versatility of social networks that allow simultaneous collective interaction, etc. In this survey, in addition to indicating the number of tests to be performed, the teachers informed the authors about the tools available for use: short answer questions, multiple choice tests, essay or interrelated concepts questions with clear evaluation rubrics, reflection on practical cases, open-book exams. Conclusion(s): All teachers learned and adapted quickly to the different assessment tools available on the Blackboard platform according to the characteristics of the course and considered that the pandemic has opened a critical window for innovative technology based-assessment methodologies.