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The COVID-19 pandemic changed our lives, forcing us to reconsider our built environment. In some buildings with high traffic flow, infected individuals release viral particles during movement. The complex interactions between humans, building, and viruses make it difficult to predict indoor infection risk by traditional computational fluid dynamics methods. The paper developed a spatially-explicit agent-based model to simulate indoor respiratory pathogen transmission for buildings with frequent movement of people. The social force model simulating pedestrian movement and a simple forcing method simulating indoor airflow were coupled in an agent-based modeling environment. The impact of architectural and behavioral interventions on the indoor infection risk was then compared by simulating a supermarket case. We found that wearing a mask was the most effective single intervention, with all people wearing masks reducing the percentage of infections to 0.08%. Among the combined interventions, the combination of customer control is the most effective and can reduce the percentage of infections to 0.04%. In addition, the extremely strict combination of all the interventions makes the supermarket free of new infections during its 8-hour operation. The approach can help architects, managers, or the government better understand the effect of nonpharmaceutical interventions to reduce the infection risk and improve the level of indoor safety.
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College students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) face challenges searching for jobs, often lacking communication and social skills needed during formal interviews. The COVID-19 pandemic complicates interviews, forcing students to search online and attend virtual interviews. This study used a multiple probe design across participants to examine the acquisition of literacy-based behavioral interventions (LBBIs) on virtual job interviews. Using a video conference platform, students answered interview questions from researchers acting as employers. LBBIs were customized, incorporating students' input. Results indicated that LBBIs were effective for teaching and maintaining virtual job interview skills, and across novel employers. The findings have implications for using LBBIs to teach virtual job interview skills to students with IDD, and for researchers including these students in remote instruction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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During pandemics, effective interventions require monitoring the problem at different scales and understanding the various tradeoffs between efficacy, privacy, and economic burden. To address these challenges, we propose a framework where we perform Bayesian change-point analysis on aggregate behavior markers extracted from mobile sensing data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results generated by 598 participants for up to four months reveal rich insights: We observe an increase in smartphone usage around February 10th, followed by an increase in email usage around February 27th and, finally, a large reduction in participant's mobility around March 13th. These behavior changes overlapped with important news events and government directives such as the naming of COVID-19, a spike in the number of reported cases in Europe, and the declaration of national emergency by President Trump. We also show that our detected change points align with changes in large scale external sources, including number of COVID-19 tweets, COVID-19 search traffic, and a large-scale foot traffic data collected by SafeGraph, providing further validation of our method. Our results show promise towards the feasibility of using mobile sensing to understand communities' responses to public health interventions. © 2022 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
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Background: COVID-19 booster vaccine uptake rates are behind the rate of primary vaccination in many countries. Governments and non-governmental institutions rely on a range of interventions aiming to increase booster uptake. Yet, little is known how experts and the general public evaluate these interventions. Methods: We applied a novel crowdsourcing approach to provide rapid insights on the most promising interventions to promote uptake of COVID-19 booster vaccines. In the first phase (December 2021), international experts (n = 78 from 17 countries) proposed 46 unique interventions. To reduce noise and potential bias, in the second phase (January 2022), experts (n = 307 from 34 countries) and representative general population samples from the UK (n = 299) and the US (n = 300) rated the proposed interventions on several evaluation criteria, including effectiveness and acceptability, on a 5-point Likert-type scale. Findings: Sanctions were evaluated as potentially most effective but least accepted. Evaluations by expert and general population samples were considerably aligned. Interventions that received the most positive evaluations regarding both effectiveness and acceptability across evaluation groups were: a day off work after getting vaccinated, financial incentives, tax benefits, promotional campaigns, and mobile vaccination teams. Interpretation: The results provide useful insights to help governmental and non-governmental institutions in their decisions about which interventions to implement. Additionally, the applied crowdsourcing method may be used in future studies to retrieve rapid insights on the comparative evaluation of (health) policies. Funding: This study received funding from the Austrian Science Fund (SFB F63) and the University of Vienna.
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BACKGROUND: This review examined the effectiveness of behavioral interventions for adults with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) triggered by physical injury or medical trauma. It discusses implications in support of rehabilitation management for COVID-19 survivors diagnosed with PTSD. METHODS: This study adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines and the Interim Guidance from the Cochrane Rapid Reviews Methods Group. The authors searched for randomized control trials in PubMed, Embase, and CENTRAL databases up to 31 March 2021. RESULTS: Five studies (n = 459) met the inclusion criteria. Each study measured a different comparison of interventions. The certainty of the evidence was judged to be very low for all outcomes. Post-traumatic stress disorder symptom reduction was found to be in favor of trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy, cognitive therapy, and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Cognitive function improvements were observed in favor of the cognitive processing therapy control intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, there is uncertainty about whether behavioral interventions are effective in reducing PTSD symptoms and improving functioning and quality of life when the disorder is triggered by a physical or medical trauma rather than a psychological trauma. Further research should investigate their efficacy in the context of rehabilitation management and gather evidence on this population.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Cognitive Behavioral Therapy , Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic , Adult , Behavior Therapy , Cognitive Behavioral Therapy/methods , Humans , Quality of Life , Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic/psychologyABSTRACT
COVID-19 pandemic is fueling digital health transformation-accelerating innovations of digital health services, surveillance, and interventions, whereas hastening social contagion of deliberate infodemic. The USA and many other countries are experiencing a resurgent wave of the COVID-19 pandemic with vaccination rate slowdown, making policymaking fraught with challenges. Political leaders and scientists have publicly warned of a "pandemic of the unvaccinated," reinforcing their calls for citizens to get jabs. However, some scientists accused elites of stigmatizing the unvaccinated people and undermining the moral pillars of public health. Following the PRISMA-ScR guidelines, we first reviewed the nuances of stakeholders involved in the ongoing debates and revealed the potential consequences of divisive pronouncements to provide perspectives to reframe extensible discussions. Then, we employed the convergent cross mapping (CCM) model to reveal the uncharted knock-on effects of the contentious tsunami in a stakeholders-oriented policymaking framework, coupled with rich metadata from the GDELT project and Google Trends. Our experimental findings suggest that current news coverage may shape the mindsets of the vaccines against the unvaccinated, thereby exacerbating the risk of dualistic antagonism in algorithmically infused societies. Finally, we briefly summarized how open debates are conducive to increasing vaccination rates and bolstering the outcomes of impending policies for pandemic preparedness.
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Attitude to Health , COVID-19 Vaccines , COVID-19 , Mass Vaccination , COVID-19/prevention & control , Humans , Pandemics/prevention & control , Public OpinionABSTRACT
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by cortical dementia and irreversibly progressive developments leading to a vegetative state and, finally, to death. Although many aspects of its etiology, diagnosis and treatment still remain obscure and the current approach to the disease mostly suffers from limited and low-efficiency therapeutic means, nevertheless, recent interventions have aimed at improving patients' quality of life through nonpharmacological approaches, including animal-assisted therapy (AAT), arousing growing interest. In order to assess the physiological and neuropsychological effects of AAT on AD, 24 residents of a rest house in northern Italy were enrolled. The intervention consisted of one 45-minute AAT session per week over ten weeks. Twelve residents (six AD and six non-AD) received AAT and twelve (six AD and six non-AD) were controls. In order to evaluate the physiological and clinical effect of AAT on AD residents, three cardiac parameters, including the systolic and diastolic blood pressure and heart rate, were measured. Moreover, the neurocognitive and depressive states were assessed by the Mini Mental State Examination and the Geriatric Depression Scale, respectively. Analyses were performed by a four-way ANOVA model (including two ways for repeated measures) considering each main effect and interaction possible in the design. Our findings, despite the small sample size, suggest that AAT has a positive significant effect on physiological parameters and neurocognitive impairment, while no effect was observed on the depression level.
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According to The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (2020), Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is an evidence-based three-tiered framework to improve and integrate all data, systems, and practices affecting student outcomes every day. PBIS creates schools where all students succeed. PBIS may not be as practical to maintain discipline in inner-city elementary schools as educators perceive. This qualitative study sought to understand the consistency of PBIS implemented by administrators and teachers in urban schools from kindergarten through five (K-5). The study's limitations were that the researcher conducted the study at the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in the United States. Many educators lost employment due to the pandemic of the virus and some had their workload increased by implementing virtual learning led by the instructional technology in the transition from in-class instruction to virtual instruction. The circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically impacted the limitation of the research study. The increased workload and loss of employment impacted the study and limited the investigation by having a low turnout with participants as well as the search for participants. The qualitative research findings in this study indicated the direct correlation between the lack of family involvement, support, inconsistencies, and the impact of PBIS in schools. The data suggested that more research needs to be conducted to dive deeper into the specific PBIS strategies and tools which need to be implemented in the funding, demographics of staff and students, and the schools' training program. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
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BACKGROUND: Although Latino men have the highest prevalence (45%) of obesity among all men in the United States, traditional weight loss interventions have not effectively engaged this hard-to-reach and diverse group. Offering choices among technology-mediated weight loss interventions may offer advantages. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to examine Latino men's preferences among 3 weight loss intervention options. We also examined whether attendance in group sessions (videoconference and in person) and weight loss differed according to intervention choice. METHODS: Latino men (n=200; mean age 47.3, SD 11.8 years) participated in a comparative effectiveness trial based on primary care and were randomized to receive the 1-year HOMBRE (Hombres con Opciones para Mejorar su Bienestar para Reducir Enfermedades Crónicas; English translation: Men With Options to Improve Their Well-being and Reduce Chronic Disease) intervention. HOMBRE is a weight loss intervention that offers 3 delivery options. During an orientation session, a trained bilingual coach helped men select 1 of the 3 intervention options that differed in coach, peer support, and available language. We used canonical discriminant analysis to assess multivariate associations of demographic, clinical, employment, cultural, and technology use and access factors with men's intervention choices. We used generalized linear models to estimate weight loss at 6, 12, and 18 months for men in each intervention option. RESULTS: Among Latino men, 28% (56/200) chose videoconference groups, 31% (62/200) chose web-based videos, and 41% (82/200) chose in-person groups. The canonical discriminant analysis identified 1 orthogonal dimension that distinguished between men who chose an in-person group and men who chose web-based videos. Men who were older, spoke Spanish, and did not use a computer frequently had a higher probability of choosing in-person groups versus web-based videos. For men who selected a group delivery option, 86.9% (107/123) attended ≥25% of the sessions, 83.7% (103/123) attended ≥50% of the sessions, and 73.2% (90/123) attended ≥75% of the sessions, with no differences by type of group (videoconference or in person). Men who chose videoconference and in-person group sessions lost significantly more weight at 6 months (both P<.001) and 18 months (P=.02 and P=.04, respectively) than those who chose web-based videos. Men who chose in-person group sessions also lost significantly more weight at 12 months (P=.008) than those who chose web-based videos. CONCLUSIONS: There were significant differences according to demographic, employment, cultural, and technology use factors between men who chose 1 of the 3 intervention options. Men who chose one of the group-based options (videoconference or in person) lost significantly more weight than those who chose web-based videos. Providing options that accommodate the diversity of Latino men's preferences is important for increasing engagement in behavioral interventions. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03092960; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03092960.
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Essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic face heightened levels of anxiety and depression due to increased work demands, lack of adequate personal protective equipment, fear of contracting the virus, and fear of spreading it to loved ones. This is a time of urgent need for mental health support for workers affected by the pandemic crisis. Clinicians may employ empirically supported interventions derived from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and related therapies. Psychological First Aid, an evidence-based crisis intervention, may be utilized to emphasize basic needs and support, but is intended as an acute disaster intervention. Given that a pandemic is an ongoing and prolonged stressor, additional CBT-informed interventions are likely needed to fully support essential workers during these times. It is recommended that clinicians help essential worker clients meet their basic needs by modifying health and sleep habits where possible and helping them advocate for their needs using interpersonal effectiveness skills. Empathic listening, validation of the crisis at hand, and values clarification can aid the therapeutic relationship, help them feel a renewed sense of purpose and meaning in their careers and with their families, and facilitate behavior change consistent with chosen values. Self-monitoring through a daily diary can help clients focus their thoughts and recognize maladaptive patterns in their thoughts and behaviors. In tandem with these techniques, behavioral activation and coping strategies including relaxation, distress tolerance, and acceptance promote engaging in positive and adaptive activities. Finally, therapists can help clients reduce anxiety related to the pandemic by helping them limit information intake.
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Modelling social phenomena in large-scale agent-based simulations has long been a challenge due to the computational cost of incorporating agents whose behaviors are determined by reasoning about their internal attitudes and external factors. However, COVID-19 has brought the urgency of doing this to the fore, as, in the absence of viable pharmaceutical interventions, the progression of the pandemic has primarily been driven by behaviors and behavioral interventions. In this paper, we address this problem by developing a large-scale data-driven agent-based simulation model where individual agents reason about their beliefs, objectives, trust in government, and the norms imposed by the government. These internal and external attitudes are based on actual data concerning daily activities of individuals, their political orientation, and norms being enforced in the US state of Virginia. Our model is calibrated using mobility and COVID-19 case data. We show the utility of our model by quantifying the benefits of the various behavioral interventions through counterfactual runs of our calibrated simulation. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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This study explores the potential and challenges of applying behavioural interventions to promote micro-mobility adoption. Our online experiments with New York City residents showed that nudges and faming improved respondents’ willingness to adopt e-scooters significantly. Moreover, our experiments spanned over the pre-, during- and post- COVID-19 lockdown period in New York City. Findings from this natural experiment revealed that the effect of these behavioural interventions varied significantly during the pandemic, likely due to a heightened level of health consciousness and a new perspective regarding social interactions. Behavioural tools cannot be taken off-the-shelf and applied as a blanket policy. Individual and group characteristics have to be assessed to devise the pre-eminent behavioural interventions for a particular target audience. More experiments across a wide range of economic, social, cultural, and political settings are needed to guide the application of behavioural interventions in transportation studies. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd
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Seeking ways to encourage broad compliance with health guidelines during the pandemic, especially among youth, we test two hypotheses pertaining to the optimal design of instructional interventions for improving COVID-19-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. We randomly assigned 8376 lower-middle income youth in urban India to three treatments: a concentrated and targeted fact-based, instructional intervention; a longer instructional intervention that provided the same facts along with underlying scientific concepts; and a control. Relative to existing efforts, we find that both instructional interventions increased COVID-19-related knowledge immediately after intervention. Relative to the shorter fact-based intervention, the longer intervention resulted in sustained improvements in knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported behavior. Instead of reducing attention and comprehension by youth, the longer scientific based treatment appears to have increased understanding and retention of the material. The findings are instrumental to understanding the design of instruction and communication in affecting compliance during this and future pandemics.
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COVID-19 , Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice , Adolescent , Humans , India , Pandemics , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
STUDY OBJECTIVES: In the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic situation, we address the following important questions: (1) How can patients be identified for possible OSA while sleep clinic testing is temporarily unavailable or limited? and (2) What measures can be suggested to improve sleep health until proper diagnosis and treatment become safe and available again? METHODS: As a proxy for home or in-laboratory testing, validation of a symptom-based measure of OSA risk is presented, based on an ongoing larger prospective study of 156 family medicine patients with OSA (88 women, 68 men; mean age, 57 years) and 60 control participants (36 women, 24 men; mean age, 54 years) recruited from the community. Participants completed the Sleep Symptom Checklist (SSC) and a range of other self-report measures; primary care patients also underwent a polysomnographic sleep study. RESULTS: Results showed that (1) individuals with OSA reported more symptoms on the SSC related to insomnia, daytime symptoms, sleep disorders, and psychological maladjustment than did the control group (all P < .001), and (2) their sleep-related symptoms were significantly more severe than those of the control patients. In addition, several polysomnographic indices in recently diagnosed untreated individuals with OSA were significantly correlated with SSC measured sleep disorder symptoms, and SSC scores significantly distinguished participants with OSA from control participants. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that family practitioners can effectively prescreen patients for possible OSA by inquiring about 5 items that form the SSC sleep disorders subscale. If OSA is suspected, then we can recommend a range of behavioral techniques to improve symptoms. The current pandemic causes us to reflect that the provisional targeting of symptoms and guidance regarding mitigation strategies while waiting for specialist care could serve patients well at any time.