Health professional students at the University of Illinois Chicago (HOLISTIC) Cohort study: Prevalence of mental health and lifestyle behaviors effects among health professional students during the COVID-19 pandemic (preprint)

Background The COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected the mental health of healthcare workers. The World Health Organization estimates a 25% increase in anxiety prevalence during the pandemic. The mental health of students across the health professions during the pandemic is less well understood. Objectives To better understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health professional students, a cross-sectional analysis of data collected on enrollment in a cohort study was utilized to examine the prevalence of poor mental health days in association with lifestyle behaviors in seven health sciences colleges at a large public Midwestern university during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study recruited 890 students enrolled full- or part-time across seven health sciences colleges in 2020 and/or 2021 using convenience sampling. Methods Participants completed questionnaires which included socio-demographic questions and items from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor and Surveillance System (BRFSS) 2019 survey. Results The participants reported a median of 7 days with poor mental health (IQR: 3-15 days) in the past 30 days. Female sex (OR 1.70, 95% CI [1.21, 2.38]), Asian race (OR 1.47, 95% CI [1.06, 2.06]), adverse childhood events (OR 2.01, 95 % CI [1.45-2.78]), and frequent cannabis use (OR = 2.03, 95 % CI [1.14-3.61]) were each associated with an increased risk of poor mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Exercise (OR 0.64, 95 % CI [0.42-0.97]) was found to be a protective factor, during COVID-19. Conclusions and Implications Results indicate the need to design, implement, and evaluate services to support mental health in health sciences students, particularly among certain subgroups. Students who are frequent cannabis users or have significant childhood trauma are more likely to have poor mental health and as such may benefit from additional mental health support. Health promotions around home-based exercise and intramural sports to health professional students along with longer open hours for the gym may be beneficial.

Impacts of COVID-19 on Market Access and Pricing of Fisheries Value Chain in the Coastal Region of Bangladesh

The present study analyzes the market access of the biggest fish market at Chattogram coastal region of Bangladesh affected by COVID-19. The food chain was reduced locally, regionally, and globally as supply chains were disturbed and international seafood exports were halted for a certain period. For data collection several qualitative data collection tools, such as individual interviews as well as secondary document analysis were employed. To realize the overarching aim of this research the whole market system was analyzed including the supplier, wholesaler, retailer, as well as the consumer of the domestic market in the Chattogram district. The result shows that the pandemic slowed the supply and demand in the domestic fish market, and as a consequence the price of fish was distinctly reduced in the whole market system. The result highlights that the most affected stages of the supply chains are the supply quantity, the interval of the supply, and the quantity of fish sales. Furthermore, the principally affected stages of the demand chains are consumer demand and alternation in the preference of the consumer. To overcome such situation, this study recommends governmental financial support to trades to ensure the smooth flow of the supply and demand and create an alternative market system for the consumer. The pandemic and the measures to address the pandemic have created significant new challenges for market access and controlling pricing in domestic markets. Regularly engage of the policymakers are thus the prerequisite to overcome the compensation of trades and ensure food security in this sector.

Developing entrepreneurial intentions among business graduates of higher educational institutions through entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial passion: A moderated mediation model

Using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this study examines the mediating role of Entrepreneurial Passion (EP) in the association between Entrepreneurship Education (EE) and Entrepreneurial Intentions (EI), and also the moderating role of Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy (ESE) on the association between EE and EP. The study collected data through an online survey from 359 private university students residing in Dhaka and Chittagong. SPSS 23 and Amos 24 were utilized to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings revealed that EE positively improves the EI of university students via EP. The study further demonstrated that the influence of EE on EP is more significant for student with high ESE then low ESE. The study extends the existing literature on the EE-EI link by integrating the TPB from the private higher education perspective during the COVID-19 crisis. The findings offer valuable insight and guidance for policymakers and university management regarding how and when EE leads to better EI among university students. This is one of the pioneering empirical studies highlighting the importance of EE on EI among private university students in an emerging South-Asian setting. Moreover, the study confirms that entrepreneurial passion plays a key role in explaining how EE drives EI.

Rationale and design of the Health Professional Students at the University of Illinois Chicago (HOLISTIC) Cohort Study (preprint)

ABSTRACT Objectives The objectives of the HOLISTIC Cohort Study are to establish a 3-year prospective cohort study that characterizes the health of students within and across health professionals’ education programs during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, implement an interprofessional student research team, and inform initiatives to improve student health. This report describes the rationale and design of the HOLISTIC Cohort Study, including recruitment strategy, survey development, data management, and descriptive statistics of the first wave of study participants. Methods An interprofessional student research team was formed to continuously inform study design. The first wave of recruitment was conducted from April 14, 2021 to May 5, 2021 across seven health science colleges (applied health, dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, social work) at the University of Illinois Chicago in Chicago, IL. Eligible students were sent an invitation via email to complete an online survey after providing electronic informed consent. The online survey was based on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System 2019 survey and the 2014 World Health Organization Report of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts Working Group Questionnaire. Two additional recruitment waves are planned in the Spring 2022 and Spring 2023; follow-up of participants previously enrolled will occur during these second and third recruitment waves. Results Of 5,118 students invited to participate in the first wave, 553 (10.8%) completed the survey and includes participants from all seven health science colleges. The average age of participants is 27.3 years, 435 (78.8%) identify as female, and 137 (24.8%) identify as an underrepresented minority. Overall, 465 (84.6%) participants reported being currently employed for wages. Just over half (51%) reported no days with poor physical health within a month but only 11.2% reported no days with poor mental health within a month. Nearly one in ten (9.4%) reported having ever had a positive test for COVID-19. Conclusion The HOLISTIC Cohort Study of health professional students across seven health science colleges has completed the first of three waves of enrollment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the first wave of study participants, increased attention to supporting the mental and physical health of health professional students is needed.

Smart-Contract Aware Ethereum and Client-Fog-Cloud Healthcare System.

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is increasingly being used for healthcare purposes. IoMT enables many sensors to collect patient data from various locations and send it to a distributed hospital for further study. IoMT provides patients with a variety of paid programmes to help them keep track of their health problems. However, the current system services are expensive, and offloaded data in the healthcare network are insecure. The research develops a new, cost-effective and stable IoMT framework based on a blockchain-enabled fog cloud. The study aims to reduce the cost of healthcare application services as they are processing in the system. The study devises an IoMT system based on different algorithm techniques, such as Blockchain-Enable Smart-Contract Cost-Efficient Scheduling Algorithm Framework (BECSAF) schemes. Smart-Contract Blockchain schemes ensure data consistency and validation with symmetric cryptography. However, due to the different workflow tasks scheduled on other nodes, the heterogeneous, earliest finish, time-based scheduling deals with execution under their deadlines. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm schemes outperform all existing baseline approaches in terms of the implementation of applications.

Ancestral origin, antigenic resemblance and epidemiological insights of novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2): Global burden and Bangladesh perspective.

SARS-CoV-2, a new coronavirus strain responsible for COVID-19, has emerged in Wuhan City, China, and continuing its global pandemic nature. The availability of the complete gene sequences of the virus helps to know about the origin and molecular characteristics of this virus. In the present study, we performed bioinformatic analysis of the available gene sequence data of SARS-CoV-2 for the understanding of evolution and molecular characteristics and immunogenic resemblance of the circulating viruses. Phylogenetic analysis was performed for four types of representative viral proteins (spike, membrane, envelope and nucleoprotein) of SARS-CoV-2, HCoV-229E, HCoV-OC43, SARS-CoV, HCoV-NL63, HKU1, MERS-CoV, HKU4, HKU5 and BufCoV-HKU26. The findings demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 exhibited convergent evolutionary relation with previously reported SARS-CoV. It was also depicted that SARS-CoV-2 proteins were highly similar and identical to SARS-CoV proteins, though proteins from other coronaviruses showed a lower level of resemblance. The cross-checked conservancy analysis of SARS-CoV-2 antigenic epitopes showed significant conservancy with antigenic epitopes derived from SARS-CoV. Descriptive epidemiological analysis on several epidemiological indices was performed on available epidemiological outbreak information from several open databases on COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2). Satellite-derived imaging data have been employed to understand the role of temperature in the environmental persistence of the virus. Findings of the descriptive analysis were used to describe the global impact of newly emerged SARS-CoV-2, and the risk of an epidemic in Bangladesh.