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Using a survey of and financial data for Japanese small- and medium-enterprises (SMEs), this paper examines the determinants of firms' use of the business support programs provided by the Japanese government during the COVID-19 pandemic and their effect. With respect to the determinants, we obtain the following three findings: First, firms were more likely to have obtained subsidized loans, grants, or subsidies the more their sales had fallen during the pandemic, suggesting that funds flowed to firms that were adversely affected by the pandemic. Second, the likelihood that firms obtained funds was higher if their credit scores were lower or if they were classified as "zombies” and/or "low-return borrowers” before the pandemic, suggesting that the government programs also helped firms that had been under-performing before the pandemic. Third, firms were more likely to receive funds if they had a stronger relationship with their main bank before, suggesting that bank relationships play an important role in firms' access to government programs. Regarding the causal effects, we obtain the following three findings: First, except for the subsidies for employment adjustment, the support programs increased the cash holdings of user firms. Second, subsidized loans from private financial institutions lowered exit rates, while none of the programs had a significantly positive effect on employment relative to non-users (or in absolute terms). Third, the credit scores and profit-to-sales ratio of firms that used the support programs decreased and the likelihood of such firms being a zombie and/or a low-return borrower increased. Overall, our findings provide a cautionary tale in that the business support programs produced mixed results in that they may have prevented business failures but have also helped to prop up firms that are not viable in the long run. © 2022 Elsevier Inc.
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In the event of a coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic, those in need will be helped through a government aid program known as the Village Cash Direct Assistance beneficiary fund (abbreviated BLT). Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has spread to nearly every corner of the globe, citizens' activities around the world have been hindered, especially those involving employment to support life's basic needs. The local economy suffers as a result of people losing their jobs. They have no idea how they will pay for the necessities of life. So, in order to help the locals, the government set up a Village BLT fund support program. Limag Village is one of the settlements that plans to ask for help. When the final decision is made, the village head will choose from the list of households that fit the criteria. A decision support system is one option for achieving clear and exact findings based on the strategy utilized. For a ranking-based decision-support system, the VIKOR approach (Vise Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje) is an excellent choice. In order to reduce the amount of time spent on guesswork when choosing which communities will benefit from BLT Desa money, this study aims to examine and quantify the results of decisions made using criteria that match those criteria. With the use of the following five criteria: profession (K1), number of dependents (K2), social safety net (K3), medical history (K4), and family card (K5): (K5). The results show that the VIKOR approach is able to obtain ranking values from the ten samples it was applied to.. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.
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Digitalization enables significant opportunities for individuals as well as for society as a whole. However, the number of "offliners"remains high. It is true that pressure to use social media has increased in recent years, especially as a result of the Corona pandemic, as many shops and authorities had closed and in many cases appointments could only be made online. However, the so-called "age gap"has only decreased slightly in recent years. Previous support programmes by the state for older people using more internet services had only moderate success. But not everyone can use digital media, and many do not want to. However, it must be asked whether it is the right of every individual not to use digital media. What do we do with those? Caritas in Luxembourg has revived what itself is an "old idea": the establishment of a "writer"- here: the establishment of a "digital writer". © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
Using a survey of and financial data for Japanese small- and medium-enterprises (SMEs), this paper examines the determinants of firms’ use of the business support programs provided by the Japanese government during the COVID-19 pandemic and their effect. With respect to the determinants, we obtain the following three findings: First, firms were more likely to have obtained subsidized loans, grants, or subsidies the more their sales had fallen during the pandemic, suggesting that funds flowed to firms that were adversely affected by the pandemic. Second, the likelihood that firms obtained funds was higher if their credit scores were lower or if they were classified as “zombies” and/or “low-return borrowers” before the pandemic, suggesting that the government programs also helped firms that had been under-performing before the pandemic. Third, firms were more likely to receive funds if they had a stronger relationship with their main bank before, suggesting that bank relationships play an important role in firms’ access to government programs. Regarding the causal effects, we obtain the following three findings: First, except for the subsidies for employment adjustment, the support programs increased the cash holdings of user firms. Second, subsidized loans from private financial institutions lowered exit rates, while none of the programs had a significantly positive effect on employment relative to non-users (or in absolute terms). Third, the credit scores and profit-to-sales ratio of firms that used the support programs decreased and the likelihood of such firms being a zombie and/or a low-return borrower increased. Overall, our findings provide a cautionary tale in that the business support programs produced mixed results in that they may have prevented business failures but have also helped to prop up firms that are not viable in the long run.
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The onset of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic forced higher education institutions to abruptly transition to remote services and online learning. Students with a foster care background are a subgroup of students who have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, as were the campus-based programs (CSPs) designed to support them. The purpose of this study was to learn about the impact of the pandemic on CSPs and CSP participants. Focus groups were conducted with CSP administrators and separately with CSP students from two- and four-year colleges in California. The first theme that emerged from the data focused on challenges exacerbated by the pandemic, with six subthemes zeroing in on breaks in social connections, academic disruptions, technology woes, gaps in basic needs, employment challenges, and the toll on mental health. The second theme described participants' responses, including their creative and collaborative actions. Administrators quickly adapted service delivery, formed partnerships with new units and organizations to ensure students' needs were met, and found creative ways to stay connected with students during a time of pervasive isolation. Students talked about their own efforts to access resources, connect with peers, and use of strategies to manage challenges such as burnout and depression. A second subtheme highlighted the ways participants displayed resilience, such as creating boundaries to manage their own self-care and leaning on each other for support. The findings from this study increase our understanding of the experiences students faced during the pandemic and shed light on implications moving forward to support students with foster care histories in higher education.
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Android phones are one of the most common accessories used all over the world. Although once a luxury, it has now become a basic need for all generations. It is a multipurpose tool that can be used for all sorts of necessities and entertainment. Through our android app corona care, a mobile phone can be a helping hand for health care. This app can help prevent the deadly virus known as COVID-19 through plasma donation, consultation with doctors, setting up appointments, predicting corona risk assessment from symptoms using the Gaussian Naive Bayes method of predicting the risk percentage, providing emergency health services and updating users about the safety instructions about Covid-19. Our application consists of most features needed in a mHealth application that can provide necessary medical assistance to each and every household. © 2021 IEEE.
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The outbreak of the COVID-19 has brought unprecedented challenges for people’s daily life, including family caregivers of older adults with dementia. In addition to the multiple difficulties for daily life and health management, in-person services and support programs for cognitive impairment patients and their caregivers have been called a halt due to frequent quarantine requirements. This pilot study examined a Tele-Savvy Caregiver Program (TSCP) provided by six pairs of undergraduate social work students for 36 informal caregivers of dementia patients. In-depth interviews were used to identify the outcome and feedback from both service recipients and service providers of the online intervention program. Results showed that the program significantly reduced the caregivers’ emotional burden by increasing their disease literacy, reflecting caregiver roles, obtaining stress relief techniques, gaining strengths perspective, establishing social support networks, and reducing stigma. The online intervention experience also improved the social work students as service providers’ disease literacy, practice skills, critical thinking, self-esteem and professional confidence, and sense of social responsibility. This study illustrated that social service and support could be delivered online for caregivers of dementia patients during this challenging pandemic time. Meanwhile, the online intervention program could contribute to a meaningful learning experiences for undergraduate social work students. Therefore, the expanding of this online intervention program in larger population might benefit more needy groups. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Individuals just released from prison, or returning citizens (RCs), face high mortality rates during the reentry period, with cardiovascular disease (CVD) being a leading cause. Peer mentors can support RCs' health, but they traditionally work in person, which may not always be feasible, particularly during pandemic outbreaks such as COVID-19. We used human-centered design to build a prototype of RCPeer, a web/mobile application (app) to support peer-led reentry efforts through CVD risk screening, action planning, linkage to resources addressing reintegration needs (e.g., housing, transportation), and goal-setting. We assessed feasibility, acceptability, and usability of RCPeer using mixed-methods. System Usability Scale (SUS) scores were 68 for peers and 66 for RCs, indicating good usability. Qualitative data suggests that RCPeer can support reentry tasks through RCs and peers sharing data, strengthen RC-peer relationships, and facilitate RCs meeting their goals. Future work is needed to enhance usability for RCs with limited technology experience.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Cardiovascular Diseases , Mobile Applications , Telemedicine , COVID-19/epidemiology , Humans , PandemicsABSTRACT
PURPOSE: Telephone coaching and health apps are effective means to support subjects with diabetes. Patient support programs (PSP) on type 2 diabetes are scanty, and none has been conducted in Italy. In a pilot phase, conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, we aimed to examine the feasibility and acceptance of such program. METHODS: The "BE THere for diabetes CARE" (BETHCARE) project is a real-world PSP conducted through telephone and digital coaching system to provide educational and emotional support to Italian adults with diabetes receiving long-acting basal insulin degludec. This pilot phase was conducted in 11 centres that enrolled a total of 63 patients (89% with type-2 diabetes). Counselors contacted patients to define a set of emotional, physical and nutritional targets, and monitoring calls were performed on a monthly basis. Data were collected on socio-demographic and anthropometric characteristics, selected clinical information, quality of life, achievement of targets and patient satisfaction. RESULTS: Fifty-eight subjects (92%) chose to participate by telephone and 5 (8%) by mobile app. Most participants (ie, ≥80%) evaluated counselors' calls "useful/very useful", duration of calls "adequate/adequately long", were satisfied with the educational pathway and declared to be more confident in diabetes management after the program. About half of participants were confident to maintain their targets after the PSP. Achievement of nutritional targets improved during counseling, from a mean score of 1.56 at week 1 to 1.88 at week 16 (p-value = 0.03). No significant variations in the achievement of emotional and physical targets emerged. Mean patients weight decreased from 84.9 kg (week 1) to 84.3 kg (week 4) and then levelled off (84.2 kg, week 16). CONCLUSION: This project demonstrated the feasibility and patient appreciation of a PSP in diabetes care, which is particularly important for a chronic disease of the elderly and during a pandemic period when face-to-face counseling is problematic.
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BACKGROUND: The second victim phenomenon is common among nurses in intensive care units. Apart from quantitative studies, little is known about individual cases among those high-risk groups. This study evaluates the natural history and cause of second victim traumatization in Western Austria for the first time to tailor specific intervention. METHODS: A total of 20 guided interviews were conducted with intensive care nurses in Western Austria. All interviews were transcribed and analyzed with MAXQDA software. Evaluation followed the structuring qualitative content analysis scheme according to Kuckartz. RESULTS: The most frequent symptoms of the second victim phenomenon reported were feelings of guilt and problems with falling asleep. Coping with the second victim phenomenon was accomplished by conversations in private as well as among work colleagues. CONCLUSIONS: Intensive care nurses are exposed to many exceptional situations which have a high likelihood of resulting in second victim traumatization. As proximal psychosocial support is considered to be a main source of coping, wide-spread implementation of effective psychosocial peer support programs ought to be applied by medical organizations. Patient safety measures such as proactive and reactive clinical risk management (e.g., CIRS) should be linked to second victim support.
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Medical Errors , Psychological Distress , Austria , Critical Care , Humans , Patient SafetyABSTRACT
Researchers describe a need for increased access to and transitional support into STEM graduate education for low-income, academically talented, first-generation and/or underrepresented and minority (LIATFirstGenURM) students [1]. In October 2019, we were awarded an NSF scholarship grant to build infrastructure and provide support to low-income, academically talented, firs-generation, underrepresented, and minority (LIATFirstGenURM) graduate engineering students. As part of the internal evaluation of the program, we interviewed seven enrolled and funded graduate student beneficiaries to determine if they encountered any barriers during their recruitment and first semester of graduate study. Additionally, we asked them what support they valued most. We found that these students valued the organizational program support system, and as a result, we also found several opportunities to improve the system. In this paper, we share our findings and discuss implications for program updates. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
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This paper reports on a mathematics outreach programme, 'Bridging KS5 to University', which offered video materials to students aged 16+ during the school closures in spring/summer 2020 in Wales. The 13 videos, provided by the Further Mathematics Support Programme in Wales, ranging from 20 to 50 min long, included activities and exercises addressing mathematical topics outside the school curriculum, and engaging with them can thus be seen as enrichment activities. The study is primarily concerned with the ways in which students engaged with the materials and what motivated them to begin watching them and then continue to watch them. Interviews with students found that the students' behavioural and emotional engagement with the materials was much as might have been expected, but that their cognitive engagement was perhaps higher than expected. Considerations for developing further similar enrichment programmes for use in times of crisis, including equity issues, as well as for up-cycling the bridging programme for 'normal' times are also discussed. © 2021 The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. All rights reserved
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BACKGROUND: The number of persons with dementia is steadily growing, as is the number of individuals supporting persons with dementia. Primary caregivers of persons with dementia are most often family members or spouses of the persons with dementia, and they are more likely to experience increased stress and other negative effects than individuals who are not primary caregivers. Although in-person support groups have been shown to help buffer the negative impacts of caregiving, some caregivers live in isolated or rural communities and are unable to make the burdensome commitment of traveling to cities. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we developed a mobile smartphone support app designed for primary caregivers of persons with dementia, with the goal of reducing caregiver burden and easing stress. The app features a 12-week intervention, largely rooted in mindfulness-based self-compassion (MBSC), because MBSC has been linked to minimizing stress, depression, and anxiety. OBJECTIVE: The primary objectives of our program are twofold: to explore the feasibility of a 12-week mobile support program and to conduct an initial efficacy evaluation of changes in perceived caregiver burden, coping styles, and emotional well-being of caregivers before and after the program. METHODS: Our feasibility study used a 2-phase participatory pretest and posttest design, focusing on acceptability, demand, practicality, implementation, and efficacy. At phase I, we recruited 57 primary caregivers of persons with dementia (mean age 76.3, SD 12.9 years), comprising spouses (21/57, 37%), children (21/57, 37%), and friends or relatives (15/57, 26%) of persons with dementia, of whom 29 (51%) completed all measures at both pre- and postprogram. The content of the program featured a series of MBSC podcasts. Our primary outcome measure was caregiver burden, with secondary outcome measures including coping styles and emotional well-being. Daily ecological momentary assessments enabled us to ask participants, "How are you feeling today?" Phase II of our study involved semistructured follow-up interviews with most participants (n=21) who completed phase I. RESULTS: Our findings suggest that our app or program meets the feasibility criteria examined. Notably, participants generally accepted the program and believed it could be a useful resource. Emotional well-being increased significantly (P=.04), and emotion-based coping significantly decreased (P=.01). Participants generally considered the app or program to be a helpful resource. CONCLUSIONS: Although there were no significant changes in caregiver burden, we were encouraged by the increased emotional well-being of our participants following the completion of our program. We also conclude that our app or program demonstrated feasibility (ie, acceptability, practicality, implementation, and efficacy) and can provide a much-needed resource for primary caregivers of persons with dementia. In the subsequent version of the program, we will respond to participant feedback by incorporating web-based weekly sessions and incorporating an outcome measure of self-compassion.
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This narrative review aims to summarize initiatives developed during the COVID-19 pandemic to support healthcare workers' emotional well-being within the context of a pre-existing framework of occupational mental health guidelines. This occupational mental health framework integrates principles from multiple disciplines to optimize prevention and management of mental health issues among employees. We conducted an online search on Medline/PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Embase for studies that reported on design or execution of medical institution-based interventions, aiming to support healthcare worker mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Inclusion criteria was intentionally broad in order to incorporate as many types of interventions at varying stages of development or evaluation. We included 31 studies in our review that reported on newly designed psychological support interventions for healthcare workers (HCW) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that most programs commonly supported HCW mental health through offering one or more of the following initiatives: expanded basic need resources/services, additional workplace training programs that bolstered professional preparedness while also indirectly boosting HCW emotional health, and/or expanded psychological support programs, such as peer support programs, psychoeducational or counseling services. Most programs, however, did not consider methods to ensure program longevity or sustainability. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the acuity of HCW mental health issues and is likely to leave long lasting mental health strains among HCW. This pandemic is a critical point in time to catalyze much needed progress in reducing stigma and expanding HCW mental health care access.