No Retrenchment From Employee Empowerment: Employer Wellness Imperatives and Opportunities Emerging From the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The impact of two years of the COVID-19 pandemic on the relationship between employers and employees are explored, including changing employee sensibilities with respect to future employment, work-life balance, remote and flexible work, and the great resignation. Lasting work changes induced by the pandemic expand employee empowerment and demand for greater work flexibility. Flexibility no longer provides employers a unique selling point and hiring/retention competitiveness - it has become an expected standard. Evolving workplace expectations are tied to realizations of the value of work within the broader context of employees' lives, changing business culture across many industries. Demand for increased work/employment individualization and personalization overlaps unprecedented personalization of and power of mobile technologies. Human-centered employee management in the post-COVID-19 era will become imperative, with many opportunities for employers to enable greater impact in employee wellness and health promotion driven by deploying compelling virtual-remote engagement and behavioral change technologies.

Face Validity of Observed Meal Patterns Reported with 7-Day Diet Diaries in a Large Population-Based Cohort Using Diurnal Variation in Concentration Biomarkers of Dietary Intake.

In a cross-sectional analysis of a population-based cohort (United Kingdom, N = 21,318, 1993-1998), we studied how associations between meal patterns and non-fasting triglyceride and glucose concentrations were influenced by the hour of day at which the blood sample was collected to ascertain face validity of reported meal patterns, as well as the influence of reporting bias (assessed using formula of energy expenditure) on this association. Meal size (i.e., reported energy content), mealtime and meal frequency were reported using pre-structured 7-day diet diaries. In ANCOVA, sex-specific means of biomarker concentrations were calculated by hour of blood sample collection for quartiles of reported energy intake at breakfast, lunch and dinner (meal size). Significant interactions were observed between breakfast size, sampling time and triglyceride concentrations and between lunch size, sampling time and triglyceride, as well as glucose concentrations. Those skipping breakfast had the lowest triglyceride concentrations in the morning and those skipping lunch had the lowest triglyceride and glucose concentrations in the afternoon, especially among acceptable energy reporters. Eating and drinking occasion frequency was weakly associated with glucose concentrations in women and positively associated with triglyceride concentrations in both sexes; stronger associations were observed for larger vs. smaller meals and among acceptable energy reporters. Associations between meal patterns and concentration biomarkers can be observed when accounting for diurnal variation and underreporting. These findings support the use of 7-day diet diaries for studying associations between meal patterns and health.

COVID-19 case-fatality rate and demographic and socioeconomic influencers: worldwide spatial regression analysis based on country-level data.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the influence of demographic and socioeconomic factors on the COVID-19 case-fatality rate (CFR) globally. DESIGN: Publicly available register-based ecological study. SETTING: Two hundred and nine countries/territories in the world. PARTICIPANTS: Aggregated data including 10 445 656 confirmed COVID-19 cases. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: COVID-19 CFR and crude cause-specific death rate were calculated using country-level data from the Our World in Data website. RESULTS: The average of country/territory-specific COVID-19 CFR is about 2%-3% worldwide and higher than previously reported at 0.7%-1.3%. A doubling in size of a population is associated with a 0.48% (95% CI 0.25% to 0.70%) increase in COVID-19 CFR, and a doubling in the proportion of female smokers is associated with a 0.55% (95% CI 0.09% to 1.02%) increase in COVID-19 CFR. The open testing policies are associated with a 2.23% (95% CI 0.21% to 4.25%) decrease in CFR. The strictness of anti-COVID-19 measures was not statistically significantly associated with CFR overall, but the higher Stringency Index was associated with higher CFR in higher-income countries with active testing policies (regression coefficient beta=0.14, 95% CI 0.01 to 0.27). Inverse associations were found between cardiovascular disease death rate and diabetes prevalence and CFR. CONCLUSION: The association between population size and COVID-19 CFR may imply the healthcare strain and lower treatment efficiency in countries with large populations. The observed association between smoking in women and COVID-19 CFR might be due to the finding that the proportion of female smokers reflected broadly the income level of a country. When testing is warranted and healthcare resources are sufficient, strict quarantine and/or lockdown measures might result in excess deaths in underprivileged populations. Spatial dependence and temporal trends in the data should be taken into account in global joint strategy and/or policy making against the COVID-19 pandemic.