Worry About COVID-19, Acquiring Health Information, and Communication Resilience Processes: Creating Resilience During the First Wave of the U.S. Pandemic.

Integrating concepts from the communication theory of resilience (CTR) with theories of health information management and media-stimulated interpersonal conversation, this study investigates associations between worry about COVID-19, acquiring health information from government, news, and personal sources, and enactment of resilience processes. Findings from a representative sample (N = 600) of Floridians show that the extent to which people worried that they or their loves ones might contract COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic predicted the extent to which they reported getting health information from a range of news (e.g. national and local newspapers) and personal (e.g. family, friends/coworkers) sources. A serial multiple mediator model found that worry about COVID-19 was associated with acquiring information about COVID from news sources, which predicted getting information about COVID from personal sources, which in turn predicted enactment of resilience processes. Discussion centers on the role that emotions as well as information management at multiple levels (e.g. media, close relationships) play in people's attempts to enact resilience in the context of a public health emergency.

The Care (Re)Turn in French and Francophone Studies Introduction: Caring Relations

Having interviewed women in order to study their moral development and understanding of morality, Gilligan argues that, for women, "the logic underlying an ethic of care is a psychological logic of relationships, which contrasts with the formal logic of fairness that informs the justice approach", that is, men's approach to moral judgment.3 It bears noting, however, that she is not offering an essentialized understanding of the categories of women and men or feminine and masculine;she brings to light the effects of social developments or constructs which lead to these differing approaches to morality. [...]in Joining the Resistance (2011), Gilligan revisits her foundational text and adds that, "[a]s long as human qualities are divided into masculine and feminine, we will be alienated from one another and from ourselves. For those who must risk close-proximity contact with others-in public transport, at work, as carers themselves-the most widespread precaution taken to safeguard their health against the virus is the extensive use of surgical face masks. Alexandre Gefen, in his influential study Réparer le monde: la littérature française face au xxie siecle, has argued that the beginning of the twenty-first century has witnessed a significant "turn" in French literature, with the emergence of "une littérature qui guérit, qui soigne, qui aide, ou, du moins, qui 'fait du bien'".9 Featuring a cast of "individus fragiles", this new form of literature has sought to "faire face au monde, agir, remédier aux souffrances, nous aider a mieux vivre dans nos existences ordinaires".10 Gefen's 2017 study features in a social, cultural and intellectual landscape in France in which care occupies a prominent place.

Building A Resilient Tomorrow: How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption

Hill and Martinez-Diaz conclude their chapter on health by advocating greater disease surveillance, predictive capabilities, early-warning systems, and the use of climate vulnerability assessments by medical facilities. Previously, he was with the U.S. Department of the Treasury as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy and Environment, responsible for overseeing multilateral climate and environmental funds, work on climate finance, and leading on climate change elements of international negotiations. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of World Medical & Health Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Are all blood-based postal sampling kits the same? A comparative service evaluation of the performance of dried blood spot and mini tube sample collection systems for postal HIV and syphilis testing.

OBJECTIVES: We comparatively evaluated two HIV and syphilis blood sampling kits (dried blood spot (DBS) and mini tube (MT)) as part of an online STI postal sampling service that included tests for chlamydia and gonorrhoea. We aimed to see how the blood collection systems compared regarding sample return rates and result rates. Additionally, we aimed to observe differences in false-positive results and describe a request-to-result ratio (RRR)-the required number of kit requests needed to obtain one successful result. METHODS: We reviewed data from an online postal STI kit requesting service for a client transitioning from MT to DBS blood collection systems. We described service user baseline characteristics and compared kit requests, kit and blood sample return rates, and the successful resulting rates for HIV and syphilis for MT and DBS. Pearson's χ2 and Fisher's exact test were used to determine statistical differences, and statistical formulae were applied to produce CIs for differences in proportions. RESULTS: 5670 STI postal kit requests from a Midlands region were reviewed from 6 September 2016-2 January 2019 (1515 MT and 4155 DBS). Baseline characteristics between the two groups were comparable (68.0% female, 74.0% white British and 87.5% heterosexual, median age 26 years). Successful processing rates for DBS were 94.6% and 54.4% for MT (p<0.001) with a percentage difference of 40.2% (95% CI 36.9% to 43.4%). The RRR for MT was 2.9 cf. 1.6 for DBS. False-positive results for MT samples were 5.2% (HIV) and 0.4% (syphilis), and those for DBS were 0.4% (HIV) and 0.0% (syphilis). CONCLUSIONS: This comparative analysis demonstrated the superior successful processing rates for postal DBS collection systems compared with MT. Reasons for this included insufficient volumes, high false-positive rates and degradation of blood quality in MT samples. A postal sampling service using DBS to screen for HIV, syphilis and other blood-borne viruses could be a viable alternative.

Introduction: Death and/as Relationality

1 Exploring the "eerie uncomfortable feeling"—resulting from a combination of grief, distress, and apprehension—that, for many, has characterized our co-existence with a global pandemic, the author of the article interviewed three social psychologists on the subject of "the existential anxiety caused by reminders of our own mortality." If SARS-CoV-2 has performed any useful function, it has at least accelerated a process that began to develop in the 1970s, by forcing us to confront our psychological, cultural, and possibly even neurological propensity to deny death.2 The daily press conferences, news bulletins, and social media feeds, each containing an update on the latest death tolls, have rendered mortality shockingly salient. Catherine Ceylac's 2018 book À la vie à la mort, which brings together fourteen leading French artists, writers, and personnalités who share with Ceylac—and the reader—their thoughts on absence, loss, pain, and beliefs in the context of losing a loved one, provides an illustration of France's recent public conversation on death.4 The topical debates taking place in France on euthanasia, following the 2018 decision of the Assemblée consultative du Conseil économique, social et environnemental (CESE) to adopt a recommendation that people suffering from an incurable disease "en phase avancée ou terminale," and whose pain is classified as "inapaisable," should have the right to benefit from a "sédation profonde explicitement létale," offer further compelling evidence that France is reconsidering its relationship with death.5 The socio-cultural shifts towards talking and thinking about death are all the more remarkable since, as Ceylac observes, Western cultures have traditionally been reticent, even anxious, about the subject: "Par peur de l'inconnu, du mystère, du vide abyssal, la mort, en Occident, est taboue, on en parle en baissant la voix, à demi-mot, de peur qu'elle nous contamine" (Ceylac 10). Citing figures from Strasbourg that show that, whereas in 1840, 15% of the population died in hospital, that figure rose to 30% by the time of World War One and stands at 75% today, Anne Carol has written extensively on the "révolution récente" in cultural practices of dying in modern France.10 Many important consequences have resulted from the cultural shift towards what is termed a "medicalized death.

Social media and vaccine hesitancy.

BACKGROUND: Understanding the threat posed by anti-vaccination efforts on social media is critically important with the forth coming need for world wide COVID-19 vaccination programs. We globally evaluate the effect of social media and online foreign disinformation campaigns on vaccination rates and attitudes towards vaccine safety. METHODS: Weuse a large-n cross-country regression framework to evaluate the effect ofsocial media on vaccine hesitancy globally. To do so, we operationalize social media usage in two dimensions: the use of it by the public to organize action(using Digital Society Project indicators), and the level of negative lyoriented discourse about vaccines on social media (using a data set of all geocoded tweets in the world from 2018-2019). In addition, we measure the level of foreign-sourced coordinated disinformation operations on social media ineach country (using Digital Society Project indicators). The outcome of vaccine hesitancy is measured in two ways. First, we use polls of what proportion ofthe public per country feels vaccines are unsafe (using Wellcome Global Monitor indicators for 137 countries). Second, we use annual data of actual vaccination rates from the WHO for 166 countries. RESULTS: We found the use of social media to organise offline action to be highly predictive of the belief that vaccinations are unsafe, with such beliefs mounting as more organisation occurs on social media. In addition, the prevalence of foreign disinformation is highly statistically and substantively significant in predicting a drop in mean vaccination coverage over time. A 1-point shift upwards in the 5-point disinformation scale is associated with a 2-percentage point drop in mean vaccination coverage year over year. We also found support for the connection of foreign disinformation with negative social media activity about vaccination. The substantive effect of foreign disinformation is to increase the number of negative vaccine tweets by 15% for the median country. CONCLUSION: There is a significant relationship between organisation on social media and public doubts of vaccine safety. In addition, there is a substantial relationship between foreign disinformation campaigns and declining vaccination coverage.