Systematic Review: HIV, Aging, and Housing-A North American Perspective, 2012-2023.

Advances in anti-retroviral therapy (ART) have decreased mortality rates and subsequently led to a rise in the number of HIV-positive people living longer. The housing experiences of this new population of interest-older adults (50 years and older) living with HIV-are under-researched. Understanding the housing experiences and unmet needs of older people with HIV can better provide comprehensive care services for them. This study's systematic review evaluated the peer-reviewed literature reporting housing access/insecurity/assistance/options, housing impact, and unmet needs of older individuals living with HIV in North America from 2012 to 2023. Furthermore, Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), a text-mining technique, and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) for text clustering were utilized to examine unstructured data from the abstracts selected from the review. The goal was to allow for a better understanding of the relationships between terms in the articles and the identification of emerging public health key themes affecting older adults living with HIV. The results of text clustering yielded two clusters focusing on (1) improvements to housing and healthcare services access and policies and (2) unmet needs-social support, mental health, finance, food, and sexuality insecurities. Topic modeling demonstrated four topics, which we themed to represent (1) a holistic care approach; (2) insecurities-food, financial, sexuality, and other basic needs; (3) access to housing and treatment/care; and (4) homelessness and HIV-related health outcomes. Stable housing, food, and healthcare services access and availability are critical elements to incorporating comprehensive, holistic healthcare for older adults living with HIV. The aging population requires high-priority policies for accessible and equitable healthcare. Clinicians and policymakers should address individual barriers, adopt a patient-centered approach, increase doctor visits, provide competency training, ensure long-term follow-up, involve families, and improve patient education in care management, contributing to HIV/AIDS geriatric care models.

The Role of Technology in Online Health Communities: A Study of Information-Seeking Behavior.

This study significantly contributes to both theory and practice by providing valuable insights into the role and value of healthcare in the context of online health communities. This study highlights the increasing dependence of patients and their families on online sources for health information and the potential of technology to support individuals with health information needs. This study develops a theoretical framework by analyzing data from a cross-sectional survey using partial least squares structural equation modeling and multi-group and importance-performance map analysis. The findings of this study identify the most beneficial technology-related issues, like ease of site navigation and interaction with other online members, which have important implications for the development and management of online health communities. Healthcare professionals can also use this information to disseminate relevant information to those with chronic illnesses effectively. This study recommends proactive engagement between forum admins and participants to improve technology use and interaction, highlighting the benefits of guidelines for effective technology use to enhance users' information-seeking processes. Overall, this study's significant contribution lies in its identification of factors that aid online health community participants in the information-seeking process, providing valuable information to professionals on using technology to disseminate information relevant to chronic illnesses like COPD.

The Role of Physical Activity and Community Engagement in Understanding Mental Health Among Community-Dwelling Seniors.

Caregivers and health practitioners are often looking for good intervention techniques to help community-living older adults to improve their mental health. This study examined the relationship between physical activity and community engagement and their effect on mental well-being among older men and women. Data from National Health and Aging Trends Study from the years 2018 to 2020 were used to explore and test the posited relationships. Partial least-squares structural equation modeling was used to test the developed model that focused on the relationships among physical activity and mental well-being when controlling for demographics in older adults. Social interactions added importance to well-being among older men and women. Physical activity factors and community engagement all together have a positive impact on an older adults' mental well-being. This study provides statistically significant empirical evidence that older adults who are physically active and involved in the community exhibit greater mental well-being than those who isolate themselves.

Addressing Health Disparities in Public Health Through the Application of Data Science Software in the Last 5 Years: A Preferred Reporting Items for Structured Review and Meta-Analyses Structured Review.

The application of data science resources can enhance our ability to reduce health disparities affecting communities across the country. In this paper, we use the Preferred Reporting Items for Structured Review and Meta-Analyses methodology to conduct a thematic analysis of selected studies and identify micro and macro themes within the literature. The authors of this analysis reviewed articles that included data science software applications and their role in focusing efforts to address health disparities affecting the health of citizens in specific communities across the country. Abstracts were reviewed for research relevance after duplicates were removed, and documents were eliminated from consideration during the screening based on the exclusion criteria. At the conclusion of the structured literature review, the results emphasized the strong utility of geographically directed assessment. This highlights the need for the integration of geo- and statistical methodologies in the use of data science software for healthcare applications, which can be a useful means to identify locations where health disparities are present and can focus efforts to resolve these health disparities. Nurses, physicians, and health educators can be dispatched to the geographical areas where health disparities are most prevalent.

Exploring the factors in information seeking behavior: a perspective from multinational COPD online forums.

This research establishes a theoretical framework for evaluating antecedents of the information seeking behaviors of online forum participants with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We evaluated the proposed framework using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) after gathering data using a cross-sectional survey. We subsequently assessed the framework using importance-performance map analysis (IPMA). Findings suggest that perceived ease of use does not singularly influence COPD forum users' information seeking behavior. IPMA analysis reveals that the opportunity to interact with other forum members creates the greatest impact on COPD forum users' mindsets, among all the indicators. For healthcare professionals, the results of this study provide a blueprint in terms of utilizing COPD online forums to foster recurrent associations among forum administrators and users and by creating a strong social and informational resource for COPD information seekers.

Quantitative comparisons of urgent care service providers.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to develop, validate, and use a survey instrument to measure and compare the perceived quality of three types of US urgent care (UC) service providers: hospital emergency rooms, urgent care centres (UCC), and primary care physician offices. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: This study develops, validates, and uses a survey instrument to measure/compare differences in perceived service quality among three types of UC service providers. Six dimensions measured the components of service quality: tangibles, professionalism, interaction, accessibility, efficiency, and technical quality. FINDINGS: Primary care physicians' offices scored higher for service quality and perceived value, followed by UCC. Hospital emergency rooms scored lower in both quality and perceived value. No significant difference was identified between UCC and primary care physicians across all the perspectives, except for interactions. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS: The homogenous nature of the sample population (college students), and the fact that the respondents were recruited from a single university limits the generalizability of the findings. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The patient's choice of a health care provider influences not only the continuity of the care that he or she receives, but compliance with a medical regime, and the evolution of the health care landscape. SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS: This work contributes to the understanding of how to provide cost effective and efficient UC services. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This study developed and validated a survey instrument to measure/compare six dimensions of service quality for three types of UC service providers. The authors provide valuable data for UC service providers seeking to improve patient perceptions of service quality.

A content relevance model for social media health information.

Consumer health informatics includes the development and implementation of Internet-based systems to deliver health risk management information and health intervention applications to the public. The application of consumer health informatics to educational and interventional efforts such as smoking reduction and cessation has garnered attention from both consumers and health researchers in recent years. Scientists believe that smoking avoidance or cessation before the age of 30 years can prevent more than 90% of smoking-related cancers and that individuals who stop smoking fare as well in preventing cancer as those who never start. The goal of this study was to determine factors that were most highly correlated with content relevance for health information provided on the Internet for a study group of 18- to 30-year-old college students. Data analysis showed that the opportunity for convenient entertainment, social interaction, health information-seeking behavior, time spent surfing on the Internet, the importance of available activities on the Internet (particularly e-mail), and perceived site relevance for Internet-based sources of health information were significantly correlated with content relevance for 18- to 30-year-old college students, an educated subset of this population segment.