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Background: According to national prevalence data, SCD has an estimated economic burden of $2.98 billion per year in the United States and caring for a child with sickle cell disease (SCD) carries its own financial burden, resulting in higher healthcare costs and unintended days lost from employment. Social experiences are known to impact health outcomes in the general pediatric population. These experiences can be examined through the construct of social determinants of health (SDOH), the "condition in which people are born, grow, work, live and age" that impact their health. Since the WHO has designated COVID-19 a pandemic in January 2020, many families in the US have suffered financially, and during the shutdowns, there was a record number of jobs lost. The objective of this study was to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on financial and employment status of SCD Families Methods: This study was part of the larger CNH Sickle Cell Disease Social Determinants of Health study that was IRB approved. Caregivers of children with SCD completed a 30-question survey reporting their experiences with SDOH that included Demographics, USDA Food Security Scale, the We Care housing screening tool, and the validated COVID-19 Employment Status/COVID-19 related household finances survey in RedCap during clinic visits and hospitalizations Results: 99 caregivers of SCD patients responded to our survey (82.5% Female, 17.5% Male) (N=97). 93.9% identified as African-American, 3% identified as Hispanic or Latinx, 1% identified as "other". Of respondents, 66% were insured through on Medicaid and 33% had private insurance. Twenty-six percent endorsed food insecurity and 2724% relied on low-cost food. Thirty-one percent lived in an apartment, 67.768% lived in a home, 1% lived in shelter or transitional housing. Sixteen percent lived in subsidized or public housing. Thirty-seven (36.8%) percent reported at least once they were being unable to pay the mortgage or rent on time at least once, 9% (8.5%) reported living with other people because of financial difficulties, 55.2% reported their home not being heated, 7.2% reported being evicted from their home and 3.1% lived in an emergency shelter or transitional housing. 6.1% had an educational level of high school graduation or less, 42.2% were college graduates or completed additional post-graduate education (N=98). Two weeks prior to the pandemic, 61.5% worked full time, 13.5% worked part time, 6.3% were unemployed with only 2.1% working from home of the 96 caregivers who responded to this question. 15.5% (N=12 of 77) reported losing their job or were furloughed during the pandemic;34.4% (N=33 of 96) reporting at least one household member losing a job or a significant amount of income. Twenty-five percent (N=21 of 83) reported it was difficult to get work/school done because of the home environment. 36.4 % (N=35 of 96) reported household income was significantly less since February 2020. 53% (N=52 of 97) worried their household income has been or will be negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, 48.9% (N=47 of 96) worried the value of their assets (housing, savings, other financial assets) has been or will be negatively impacted by COVID-19 and its effects. Since February 2020, 9.8% (N= 9 of 97) received unemployment insurance, 30.9% (N=29 of 94) received SNAP or food stamps, 16.5% (N= 15 of 91) received from the food pantry, 6.6% (N=6 of 90) applied for temp ass.
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There is a growing concern about Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) in buildings as humans are spending longer in indoor environments, whether this is associated or not with climate change and vulnerability to extreme weather events. In the wake of the COVID pandemic, the need for indoor air quality control is likely to increase, the result of many adaptations in home environments to switch to remote work. In hot countries in the Global South, one of the alternatives is split A/C units with limited air renewal. While, odorless and colorless CO2, commonly generated by occupants through respiration, is among the relevant indoor air pollutants. The purpose of this study is to evaluate a low-cost, responsive air-renewal system in a climate chamber equipped with a standard split A/C unit. The results show the system's feasibility in curbing IAQ concerns and also highlight the risk of negative impacts on indoor thermal conditions and on energy consumption on using A/C. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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This chapter provides a glimpse into the conversation around the resources that university staff need to thrive in their work both on campus or through telework. The COVID-19 pandemic and shifting to working from home exposed disparities in resources for staff at the University of Utah many of which existed in the on-campus work environment as well. Institutions of higher education were no exception;most non-essential employees made the change from working on campus to a teleworking environment. Because most colleges and universities still operate from a brick-and-mortar setting and primarily offer in-person instruction, this change to serving students and carrying out job responsibilities from home was a huge and unexpected shift, and very little infrastructure was in place for addressing needs and providing essential tools and resources for employee thriving in a work-at-home environment. It is found that the move to working from home revealed a broad continuum where on one end staff had access to essential resources for thriving as new telecommuters, and on the other end staff struggled from one day to the next to maintain quality services for students and co-workers due to the lack of basic resources. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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As more homes become digitally connected the use of assistive technologies to support the operation in the home environment especially when one thinks of the elderly and the sick, our research shows that there is a gap in the literature with respect to the measure of the effectiveness of the use of these assistive technologies to support the home as a smart home. We conduct quantitative usability experiments supported by a conceptual human interaction framework to assess this effectiveness. We conduct as proof of concept these experiments with the use of a Google mini automated assistant and an internet ready light bulb sensor , to determine the responsiveness to the human voice, at different location proximities around the home, and the correctness to these responses to qualify the effectiveness argument. In this study the authors use their primary residence amidst the COVID19 pandemic to demonstrate the type of concerns. Our explicit contributions in this study are (i) A systematic review of the literature in this area (ii) the design of the smart home network environment with the google mini assistant and light ulb sensor that supports the human voice interactions (iii) Identify a suitable conceptual human interaction framework to support the use of the smart devices connected within the home users environment to support our experiments (iv) Provide critical case evaluation of the measure of effectiveness of the usability experiments supported by this conceptual framework. © 2023 IEEE.
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In recent years, the novel corona virus pandemic is raging around the world, and the safety of home environment and public environment has become the focus of people's attention [2]. Therefore, the research on disinfection robot has become one of the important directions in the field of machinery and artificial intelligence. This paper proposes a robot with the STM32 MCU as the core of disinfection, and is equipped with a variety of sensors and a camera vision, has the original cloud service management platform, the remote deployment of navigation, based on visual SLAM to realize high precision navigation and positioning, can realize to indoor environment autonomously route planning, automatic obstacle avoidance checking, disinfection, epidemic prevention function, at the same time can pass Bit computer software realizes remote control of robot, which has great development potential. © 2022 ACM.
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Purpose of Study: Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the medical field has witnessed increasing rates of mental health challenges. Several global and national studies demonstrated an increasing prevalence of anxiety and depression in our children and adolescence, for which the AAP, AACAP, and CHA made a declaration of national emergency in mental health. However, there is paucity of data on adolescents in military families, a population with unique stressors, medical access, and home environment. Given the preliminary studies showing that early life stressors may alter the effect of the pandemic on adolescent mental health, this study hopes to look at the initial effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on anxiety and depression in this unique population. Methods Used: This study is a retrospective chart review of 188 13-23 year olds seen for regular annual visits in both the year prior to March 2020 and the first year since March 2020. In this way, these patients serve as their own internal control. Mental health screeners are a routine part of these visits in this population. As such, the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 scores were collected to assess for anxiety and depression, respectively, in each of these time periods. Further covariates that were collected and analyzed include gender, age, coexisting mental health conditions, and BMI percentile. Summary of Results: There was no statistically significant difference in PHQ-9 and GAD-7 scores within this population in the first year of the COVID pandemic compared to the year prior. Furthermore, the overall prevalence of anxiety and depression saw only a minor increase (8% to 10% and 10 to 12%, respectively) as compared to national and global studies. Even when subdividing the population based upon gender, age, coexisting mental health conditions, and BMI percentile, there was still no significant difference seen in these two times periods. The only relevant statistical difference note were higher scores for anxiety and depression scoring in female compared to males. Conclusion(s): The dramatic increase in adolescent anxiety and depression that previous studies have demonstrated may not be an accurate reflection of the military population, as demonstrated by this study. Whether because of differing exposure to stressors, health care access, or household and community structures, the military adolescent population did not show as significant of an effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on their anxiety and depression. Limitations to our study include a selection towards patient's that come in for annual visits, who are likely to be a healthier subgroup. Further investigation is merited to see if anxiety and depression rates did change as the pandemic has further progressed and, if not, what protective factors may have prevented this.
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COVID-19 impacted the entire world, including the partnership between English learners' (EL) families and schools. The purpose of the study was to analyze and evaluate the impact of remote learning on EL families and how family-school partnerships were enabled or disabled in the remote learning environment. In this study a questionnaire was distributed to EL parents via social-media, 80 of which met the criteria and completed the survey. An embedded, mixed method, research design was used. SPSS was used to evaluate the quantitative data using descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVAs, and t-tests. Blending, including deductive and inductive coding, was used to evaluate the qualitative data. Findings indicated communication and helping students learn at home had the highest average of means, followed by Parenting, Volunteering, and Decision-Making. The findings also indicated that there was no significant statistical difference in the survey responses for parent's education, employment status, years living in the United States, English language level, and EL parent meeting attendance in relation to family-school partnerships during remote learning. Additional findings revealed technology assistance, non-technical supports, the role of parents, and teaching children responsibility helped EL parents feel supported in their efforts to be engaged. Furthermore, technology issues, instructional issues, culture and language barriers, socioemotional issues, and parental challenges were identified as perceived challenges reported by EL families in supporting their children to learn at home while engaged in remote learning. Finally, findings indicated schools' provision of basic needs, technical and instructional support, communication, and planning assistance were ways parents felt most supported in their partnership with their children's school amidst COVID-19. These findings provide valuable insight to policy-makers, administrators, Department of Education and educators, as they can use the information to understand the resources EL families need to effectively partner with their children's school during times of remote learning. This information can provide additional insight so that curriculum developers in higher education and continuing education can review and refine curriculum to address any areas in which additional support may be needed to ensure that home school partnerships with EL families maximize learning opportunities for EL students. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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Ambient noise causes annoying difficulty for listeners, especially in online learning and work-from-home environments such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this work was to employ the neural network to mitigate such ambient noise in the online environment. The software was designed, implemented, and tested on 4 types of noise. The algorithm used was a fully connected network. The results indicated that the standard fully connected network might not be an effective solution for a specific situation. Nonetheless, the processing time was very low, making it possible for real-time application on standalone devices. The implementation using leaky ReLu, creating leaky networks, offered slightly better results in English speeches, i.e. an average of 1.382 and 0.4389 in the PESQ and STOI, respectively. The Thai leaky networks, on another hand, exhibited an average of 3.111 and 0.7096 in PESQ and STOI, respectively. © 2022 IEEE.
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Starting in early 2020, with the spread of the Covid 19 virus, the home environment has been designated an elective shelter, marking the boundary against potentially threatening outdoor space. Life inside the domestic enclosure, necessary to prevent the risk of contagion and to protect everyone's health, inevitably coincided with the exclusion from participation in a series of public meeting occasions, clearly affecting daily life and also urging the world of art, design and architecture to offer solutions aimed at encouraging adaptation to the emergency situation. Into this scenario comes the experience of The House Floats, in Louisiana. In February 2020, celebrations for Mardi Gras, the New Orleans carnival, contributed to the accelerated spread of coronavirus disease. Faced with the prescription to stop the 2021 carnival festivities, the answer comes in the initiative of a series of artists and designers: the facades of entire neighborhoods where the traditional parade takes place are temporarily transformed into staged masks inspired by floats. The occasion of interaction between the facade and the "mask” takes the form of the insertion of installations, with results that from time to time deny or amplify the compositional characteristics of the facade. In any case, the dynamic character of the parades of allegorical floats is replaced by the fixity of a prepared representation. Starting from the analysis of the above-mentioned case study, the paper proposes a new interpretation focused on the topic of the "allegorical facade”, interpreted as a design strategy capable of educating to social respect and to the community well-being. Through the methods of architectural survey and drawing, this paper focuses on the analysis of the relationship between the refuge and the sign, attributing to the latter a clear value in the processes of reconstruction of the city, both from a physical and an identity point of view. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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School-based telebehavioral health is one avenue to increase students' access to mental health services, especially for students who are less likely to access traditional community mental health settings due to a lack of transportation to distant sites, financial resources, and other barriers. With the shortage of child behavioral specialists in Kansas' rural and underserved communities, the Telehealth ROCKS (Regional Outreach to Communities, Kids, and Schools) program was created to address student behavioral health needs at school through telehealth. Since 2018, this program has provided approximately 1,600 mental health appointments. With public health mandates and a shift to online school, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a rapid telehealth transition from services in rural supervised school settings to direct-to-consumer services in homes. The authors describe the challenges and opportunities experienced during this transition across telebehavioral health specialties: (a) developmental/autism assessments, (b) developmental behavioral interventions to address problem behaviors, (c) child and adolescent psychological services, (d) medical complexity services, and (e) child and adolescent psychiatry. The authors then describe the overall transition from school-based to home-based services based on national Guidelines for Evidence-Based Child Telebehavioral Health domains: Patient Appropriateness, Crisis Management/Safety, and Logistics/Administrative Protocols. This experience and lessons learned can inform other school-based telemental health programs considering expansion to home-based services. The authors also discuss evolving telehealth policy and the reimbursement environment, with continued relevance due to continued COVID-19 outbreaks impacting school services and future public health emergencies affecting schools. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) Impact Statement This report shares lessons learned when rapidly transitioning the Telehealth ROCKS rural telebehavioral health services from the supervised school setting to the unsupervised home setting during the COVID-19 pandemic to meet escalating student behavioral health needs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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During the COVID-19 pandemic many restrictions were implemented to prevent the spread of the disease. These restrictions included working from home (WFH) and self-isolation. However, this situation had a negative impact on our mental health, causing depression and anxiety in many employees around the world. In this context, we hypothesized that our home spaces could become a catalyst of positive emotions through the use of technology-supported home environments, which use cyber-physical systems to reduce mental health symptoms during the lockdown. We used a qualitative approach, through interviews and cultural probes, to understand the experience of people who were forced to work from home during the lockdown. Additionally, we used a design science approach to explore technology-supported solutions that could enhance our home spaces. The result is a system that mixes analog and digital elements to create interactive rooms, which have a positive impact on people's well-being. © 2022 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
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Background: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically changed the health and wellbeing of children. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between the home environment and the environmental characteristics on 5-18 years old children health in Iran. Method: An online survey was conducted among parents of children aged 5 to 18 living in large cities in Iran in 2021. The statistical population of this cross-sectional study was 500 people. In this survey, questionnaires on the quality of the home environment, exterior and interior landscapes of homes, and the Child Health Questionnaire (CHQ) were used to investigate the relationship between the home environment and environmental characteristics on 5-18 years old children health during the COVID-19 pandemic. The t-test and analysis of variance were used in SPSS 24, and the structural equation modeling (SEM) was utilized in AMOS 24 for analyzing the data. Results: The average age of respondents was 37.13 ± 7.20, and that of children was 11.57 ± 3.47. 73.02% of the families were covered by insurance, and 74.08% of them lived in the metropolis. In addition, 65.04% of the families complied with the restrictions of the quarantine period. A share of 31% of the families live in villas, and 55% paid more attention to cleaning their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic than before. A positive and significant statistical relationship (ß = 0.414, p < 0.001) was observed between the residence environment and child health. Thus, explained 17.5% of variations in child health. Conclusion: The results showed that the children who lived in homes with an exterior landscape in nature had better health. In addition, the 5-18 years old children whose home landscape was a garden, compared to the other two groups (yard, balcony), had better health. Gardens are a potential source of health and not necessarily replaced by other natural environments, thus providing them along with green space is one of the crucial issues that should be considered.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Child Health , Child , Humans , Child, Preschool , Adolescent , Cross-Sectional Studies , Pandemics , Iran/epidemiology , COVID-19/epidemiologyABSTRACT
Advances in information and communications technology have contributed to the spread of telework, which has been underway since the early 2000s. During the COVID-19 pandemic, telework became more than just an alternative to the traditional office: it became a strategic means of survival for many companies. Given its importance, in the last two decades, the scientific community has shown increased interest in the factors that affect successful telework. However, knowledge on this subject remains fragmented and disparate. This study aims to synthesise the literature on successful telework and consolidate its success factors into a framework that provides conceptual and holistic knowledge on the topic. Our findings demonstrate that telework is affected by factors categorised into five groups: technological materials, non-technological materials, teleworkers, teleworker work environment and teleworker family environment. A number of these factors has causal links, while some have become irrelevant and given way to new factors over time. Some have been confirmed to have an overall positive effect on telework. In addition to proposing a theoretical perspective and future research avenues, this study presents some HRM implications to help managers and policymakers make telework more effective.
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The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic forced many employees to work from home. The shift in work mode happened suddenly when people were grappling with major threats to health and life and were not well prepared for the new method of working. It resulted in greater demand on time with stay-in family members and blurring boundaries between work and life domains. This exploratory study aims at identifying the concerns and challenges of working from home during the pandemic situation. Data were collected from 155 full-time employees from the private sector, government, and semi-government organizations, who had the experience of working from home during the Corona pandemic situation. The sampling method was a combination of convenience sampling and snowball sampling. The study developed a new scale since the issues and concerns were unprecedented. Exploratory factor analysis resulted in five factors-work-life fusion, perceived organizational support, health concerns and resource constraints, reduced interactions with colleagues, and distractions of the home environment-that emerged as major concerns and challenges of working from home during the pandemic times. The study also showed that a significant difference existed between the perceptions of male and female employees with respect to only one factor, namely, reduced interaction with colleagues.
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This study investigates the experiential components of armchair travelling and their effect on the armchair travelers' responses, which include perceived authenticity, destination image, and behavioral intention, by using a mixed-method approach. A total of 414 survey responses collected through an online research panel were analyzed by conducting a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The analysis reveals that a sense of telepresence and copresence are the major factors, which generate authenticity and a positive destination image. Perceived ease of use influences building a favorable destination image, whereas self-other online interactions significantly create a sense of authenticity with the armchair travel experience. The content analysis for the qualitative data collected using an open-ended question shows that the armchair travelers gain vicarious travel experiences and resolve mental stress through armchair travelling. Based on the results, this study provides meaningful theoretical and practical implications to the armchair tourism literature and industry. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
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Introduction: The Covid-19 pandemic has progressed the use of digital technology in the NHS to enable remote working and reduce the risk of infection transmission in NHS settings (Hutchings 2020) Telehealth is the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to enable and support clinical health care, patient and professionals to provide care virtually (Clipper 2020). A research study published by BJOT (2020) identified that remote home visits were feasible depending on visitor abilities, training and visit standardisation (BJOT 2020). Environmental Home visits (EHV) are fundamental to the discharge process to enable identification of appropriate equipment for the safe and timely discharge of stroke survivors. According to the National Clinical Guidelines for Stroke, stroke survivors should be offered assessment and provision of equipment and adaptations (National Clinical Guidelines for Stroke, 2016). In response to the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure safe discharge and reduced direct face-to-face contact virtual environmental home visits (VEHV) on a stroke ward was developed. Method(s): Microsoft Teams was the technology platform used to facilitate VEHV. Visits were arranged with families and caregivers who had access to the technology and were able to understand the technology. Therapists directed the patient's home environment and asked the individuals completing the VEHV for appropriate dimensions and measurements and an environmental home visit document was completed. Result(s): VEHV were completed by both qualified occupational therapists and therapy assistants were then trained to be able to implement VEHV. The use of Microsoft Teams was found to be a suitable technology platform with families and care givers who were technology competent. However where patients families and care givers did not have access to the appropriate technology or were not sufficiently computer literate VEHV's were not appropriate. Conclusion(s): The VEHV were found to be time efficient, improved patient flow, enabled a number of VEHV to be completed in a day and reduced direct face-to-face contact during Covid-19 while still maintaining communication with patient families and care givers.
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The existence of Covid-19, which is sweeping the whole world, has caused Indonesia to make a policy to change the learning system that was previously face-to-face to online. As a result, students are prevented from interacting directly with their friends, making them bored and stressed. Increased stress levels can also be influenced by other factors, such as an unsupportive home environment and the number of tasks assigned with relatively few deadlines. In addition, other problems, from friends and family, are often a burden for students, significantly affecting stress levels and mental health. The data collection method used in this study uses observation and literature studies on object-oriented applications. This study uses the Waterfall method to make information systems in the designed application and Unified Modeling Language as the language used in analyzing needs. The application's design can explain in detail how this application will run, and the appearance of this application will be seen. So, the purpose of designing this application is expected to reduce stress levels by accommodating students who need counselling services. Based on the design of the Teman Berlindung that the author carried out, the author stated that there were many cases where college students had no space to tell stories or just a place to complain. Regarding mental health, Teman Berlindung is expected to be useful not only during the pandemic but can also be used in the long term and help students channel complaints to related parties. © 2022 IEEE.
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Background Inclusivity of children in research is vital, especially if findings are likely to impact services designed to promote their health and wellbeing. There are ethical concerns about using technology as a tool for data collection with children, which may explain a limited evidence base. The aim of this is to highlight experiences using this technology to encourage further research in this area. Method ALPS (the heArt sibLings imPact Study) explored experiences of children who had a brother/sister with congenital heart disease. ALPS took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, necessitating use of a virtual platform. Interviews were undertaken with 17 children aged 8-17 years on Zoom. Data were collected from children across the UK through charities between September 2020 and February 2021. Parents were gatekeepers to most contact with children prior to interview. A Quick Response (QR) code was added to adverts linking to a short YouTube video designed for children to easily access study information. Prior to gaining assent children were asked about their understanding of ALPS. Paper forms were sent prior to interview, signatures were witnessed online, and forms returned in self-addressed envelopes. Results Video interviews with children in their home environment helped to build rapport, as the researcher-initiated conversation about participants' surroundings including toys, books and photographs. Providing comfort during times of distress was more challenging but additional ethical provisions were planned to reduce any distress. This included parent presence after interview and contact after interview to check if support services were required for the child or family. Conclusion Using video interview platforms can be a useful way to limit participant and family burden and may be cost effective approach for research teams. Evidence based, secure and safe ways to gain meaningful assent and consent online should be explored further with this population.
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The Covid-19 pandemic carried Peru to confront many challenges in the public health system;we wonder about relationships at home during the quarantine period;even more when Peru has the challenge to reach de gender equality and decrease violence. Objective(s): To describe the distribution of the housework, dependent care and violence in home during the quarantine, according to gender. Method(s): This is a descriptive study where a virtual questionnaire was applied to an intentional sample of 1,124 males and females above 18 years of age from all over Peru between May and July 2020. Result(s): Although most of the respondents indicated that they had shared housework during the lockdown, females assumed more frequently these labors alone than males, difference that was statistically significant. Both, males and females accepted that home violence increased during the lockdown, but the difference did not reach statistical significance. Conclusion(s): During the lockdown both males and females shared homework, but females assumed more responsibilities than males, home violence was perceived increasing.Copyright © 2022 Revista Medica Herediana. All rights reserved.
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The aim of the study is to examine whether and how emotional intelligence and aggression vary with gender and urban-rural area in South Africa. A cross-sectional design was used. A total of 440 adolescents aged between 13-18 years old participated in the study. Stratified sampling method was used in the selection of participants. Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire and Aggression Questionnaire were used to measure emotional intelligence and aggression. The study hypotheses were tested using logistic regression analysis. Emotional intelligence varies with gender. Males managed other peoples emotions better while females managed and utilised their own emotions better. With female participants verbal aggression was higher, whereas males scored higher on physical aggression, anger aggression and hostile aggression. On the basis of location, urban adolescents were indicated to have the ability to perceive other's emotions and manage their own emotions, while rural adolescents results indicated a lesser propensity for the perception of others emotions and the management of own emotions. Both urban and rural adolescents indicated verbal aggression. Emotional intelligence and aggression vary with gender and location. Therefore, gender-specific characteristics, and location, could play a major role in how the behaviour is manifested. Based on these findings, it is concluded that intervention methods should be tailor-made to suit individual needs.