ABSTRACT
Health security has gained significant attention at the national and global levels, "security" is not a simple term; instead, it is "essentially contested" - that is, it induces debates about what it means and how to use it. This study aimed to define three terms frequently used in health security discussions. These terms are national health security, Global Health Security, and public health. The research method was a scoping review performed in three stages. The first stage was electronic searching based on selection criteria among multiple sources at various time points during the year 2023. These sources included online literature searches, websites of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other governmental health agencies. The second stage involved determining the relevance of the selected papers to the study's objectives; the selected papers had moderate to high relevance to the study's objectives. The third stage was to evaluate the methodological quality of a study; we selected peer-reviewed published papers and websites recognized as trustworthy sources of information. The search yielded 143 articles; five met the inclusion criteria and were subjected to the definition of health security. Despite proposed definitions, agreement has yet to be reached on the content and scope of health security. Another main finding is that health security requires more state and international collaboration efforts to reach Global Health Security. To the best of our knowledge, no known government body or organization is responsible for governing health security in Saudi Arabia. However, the current study presents a definition of health security and differentiates it from the public health approach, in addition to emphasizing the importance of governing the related health sectors within each country in order to improve health security and have a positive impact on overall Global Health Security.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Unhealthy lifestyle behaviors are the main reason for the worldwide epidemic of chronic diseases. Changes in lifestyle, such as physical activity, healthy diet, and non-smoking, require preventive strategies at the national and individual levels. Clinical counseling is one of these strategies which helps patients to be motivated and enhance their self-management. The present study aimed to improve clinical counseling practice at the National Guard Primary Health Care Center, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Objective:To assess the quality of counseling from the patient's perspective in the primary care center of the National Guard (specialized polyclinic center) using a modified counseling quality instrument (CQI). Subjects and methods: In a cross-sectional study and through a convenient sampling technique from the patients visiting the National Guard Primary Health Care Center (specialized polyclinic center), 358 patients completed a self-administered questionnaire regarding their experiences of clinical counseling. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to record the statistically significant differences between the ordinal variable of participants' quality scores and their demographic characteristics. RESULTS: The mean age of participants was 35± 8 years, ranging between 22 to 69 years. Most of the participating patients were women (63%). Slightly more than half the patients obtained clinical counseling during their appointments, and physicians at the clinic gave 57% of these clinical counseling sessions. The patients were generally satisfied with the counseling. They rated the counseling sessions as good in terms of content, the process of counseling, the way of interaction, and the degree of goal-oriented discussion. In addition to receiving counseling from physicians, older participants and those with postgraduate education were found to significantly positively affect patient perceptions of counseling quality. CONCLUSION: This study found that half of the participants did not get clinical counseling during their visits, indicating no standardization in clinical counseling services for all patients. Although patients were generally satisfied with the counseling session provided to them, time constraint was the highest dissatisfaction item among two-thirds of the patients in the present study.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Electronic cigarette (E-cigarette) is an electronic nicotine delivery device that has been advocated as a safe alternative for cigarette smokers. Since the introduction of E-cigarette internationally and in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), it gained popularity, particularly among the youth and young adults. Moreover, many nonsmoker (nicotine-naïve) youth started to use E-cigarette as a new social habit. Recent researches have casted shadows on the E-cigarette safety profile. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to assess the prevalence of E-cigarette use among students of health science colleges in Jeddah-KSA. It also assesses E-cigarette effectiveness as a smoking cessation method and its possible addictiveness. METHODS: The study is an epidemiological, cross-sectional study, which was conducted between November 2017 and December 2017 in three different universities in Jeddah. A self-administered online questionnaire related to E-cigarette and the conventional cigarette was used. RESULTS: A total of 1007 completed an electronic survey which was distributed to 3000 health sciences colleges' students. Of the participants 14.1% were cigarette smoker, 46% of them smoke regularly. Students who smoke half a pack per day and above were 22% of the smokers. More college students use the E-cigarette (27.7%). Moreover, one-fifth of the E-cigarettes users were using it on the regular daily basis. The study found that 42.7% of E-cigarettes users have used it as a tool to quit smoking. Interestingly, more than half (56.7%) of the students who used it to stop smoking has succeeded. However, only 46% of E-cigarettes users who tried to quit vaping have succeeded. Young aged, students believed that smoking is more addictive than vaping or recommended E-cigarette for smoking cessation found to have a higher chance of quitting smoking in the univariate regression analysis. While, in the multivariate analysis, students who believed that conventional smoking is more addictive than E-cigarettes; students started vaping to quit smoking, or used E-cigarettes with fruit flavor found to have significantly higher chance of quitting. CONCLUSION: The E-cigarettes vaping is more prevalent than conventional cigarette smoking among health sciences students in Jeddah-KSA. E-cigarettes are used as a tool to help smoking cessation in less than half of the user. E-cigarettes help some smokers to quit smoking. However, it seems as addictive to the users as conventional cigarette smoking.
