Exploring communication by public health leaders and organizations during the pandemic: a content analysis of COVID-related tweets.

OBJECTIVES: Health communication is an essential competency in public health practice. The increasing use of social media and the connectivity between the general public and public health leaders present a unique opportunity to explore how digital communications tools were leveraged in the COVID-19 pandemic. This study explores Twitter-based communications from public health leaders and organizations across Canada and compares them with those from the World Health Organization (WHO). This research aimed to understand Twitter communications strategies to address the COVID-19 pandemic, other public health emergencies, and non-emergency public health issues. METHODS: A content analysis of COVID-related Twitter content during the first wave of the pandemic (January 1-August 31, 2020) was performed. The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) Policy Intervention Scan was used as a framework to analyze messaging from public health leaders and the WHO. RESULTS: Findings demonstrate that most tweets from public health leaders and organizations in Canada and the WHO focused on case management and public information. Gaps and areas of weakness identified include the lack of Twitter participation by some public health leaders and a narrow range of policy intervention topics, limiting the breadth and depth of public health messages. CONCLUSION: Strengthening communications can serve to improve information sharing in future pandemics or public health crises. Further research should assess how public health leaders and organizations applied communication best practices on all social media platforms and across different policy interventions.

RéSUMé: OBJECTIFS: La communication de messages sur la santé est une compétence essentielle de la pratique en santé publique. L'utilisation accrue des médias sociaux et de la connectivité entre le grand public et les responsables de la santé publique présente une occasion unique d'explorer comment les outils de communication numériques ont été exploités pendant la pandémie de COVID-19. Notre étude porte sur les messages publiés sur Twitter par les responsables et les organismes de la santé publique du Canada et les compare à ceux de l'Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS). Notre but était de comprendre les stratégies de communication sur Twitter employées pour lutter contre la pandémie de COVID-19, les autres urgences sanitaires et les problèmes de santé publique non urgents. MéTHODE: Nous avons analysé les contenus liés à la COVID-19 publiés sur Twitter au cours du premier cycle de la pandémie (1er janvier au 31 août 2020). L'outil d'analyse des interventions de l'Institut canadien d'information sur la santé (ICIS) a servi de cadre à l'analyse des messages des responsables de la santé publique et de l'OMS. RéSULTATS: Selon nos constats, la plupart des messages des responsables et des organismes de la santé publique du Canada et de l'OMS ont porté sur la gestion des cas et l'information publique. Les lacunes et les points faibles cernés ont été l'absence de certains responsables de la santé publique sur Twitter et l'éventail limité de sujets abordés; ces deux éléments ont limité l'envergure et la profondeur des messages de santé publique. CONCLUSION: Le renforcement des communications pourrait améliorer la communication d'informations lors de futures pandémies ou crises sanitaires. Il faudrait pousser la recherche pour déterminer si les responsables et les organismes de la santé publique ont utilisé des pratiques de communication exemplaires sur toutes les plateformes de médias sociaux et pour différentes interventions.

Maternal mortality among women with sickle cell disease in Jamaica over two decades (1998-2017).

BACKGROUND: Sickle cell disease (SCD) affects 2.8% of Jamaican antenatal women. Between 1998-2007 their maternal mortality ratio was 7-11 times higher than women without these disorders. We aim to determine if outcomes improved between 2008 and 17 amid declining fertility and changes in referral obstetric care. METHODS: Maternal deaths in Jamaica's maternal mortality surveillance database (assembled since 1998) with SCD reported as underlying or associated cause of death were compared to those without known SCD, over two decades from 1998 to 2017. Social, demographic and health service variables were analysed using SPSS and EpiInfo Open. FINDINGS: Over the two decades from 1998 to 2017, 806 (74%) of the 1082 pregnancy-associated deaths documented by the Jamaican Ministry of Health and Wellness were maternal deaths. The maternal mortality ratio (MMR) did not statistically change over the two periods for women with (p = 0.502) and without SCD (p = 0.629). The MMR among women with and without SCD in 2008-17 was 378.1 (n = 41) and 89.2/100,000 live births (n = 336) respectively, an odds ratio of 4.24 (95% CI: 3.07-5.87). When deaths due to their blood disorders were excluded, risk remained elevated at 2.17 (95% CI: 1.36-3.32). There was an upward trend in direct deaths over the two decades (p [trend]=0.051). INTERPRETATION: MMRs were unchanged over two decades for Jamaicans with SCD. The high contribution to maternal mortality by women with SCD may explain some of the persistently higher mortality experience of women in the African diaspora. Multi-disciplinary evidence-based strategies need to be developed and tested which improve survival for women with SCD who want to have children. FUNDING: No external funding was provided.

Ecological Risk Assessment of Oil Spills in Ice-Covered Waters: A Surface Slick Model Coupled with a Food-Web Bioaccumulation Model.

The limited knowledge on oil-ice interactions and on the ecological outcomes of oil spills in the Arctic represent sources of uncertainties for shipping and oil and gas activities in polar regions. The present work aims at the definition of the ecological risk posed by oil spills in the Arctic by the integration of an improved surface slick model to a fugacity-based food-web bioaccumulation model for icy waters. The model's outcomes are the representation of transport and weathering processes and the concentrations of a toxic component of oil, namely naphthalene, in the environmental media as a function of ice conditions. Given those concentrations, the associated ecological risk is defined in terms of the bioconcentration factor (BCF). Overall, the model predicted low bioaccumulation and biomagnification potential for naphthalene to a hypothetical Arctic food web, regardless of the ice concentration. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2020;16:729-744. © 2020 SETAC.

Resilience Analysis of a Remote Offshore Oil and Gas Facility for a Potential Hydrocarbon Release.

Resilience is the capability of a system to adjust its functionality during a disturbance or perturbation. The present work attempts to quantify resilience as a function of reliability, vulnerability, and maintainability. The approach assesses proactive and reactive defense mechanisms along with operational factors to respond to unwanted disturbances and perturbation. This article employs a Bayesian network format to build a resilience model. The application of the model is tested on hydrocarbon-release scenarios during an offloading operation in a remote and harsh environment. The model identifies requirements for robust recovery and adaptability during an unplanned scenario related to a hydrocarbon release. This study attempts to relate the resilience capacity of a system to the system's absorptive, adaptive, and restorative capacities. These factors influence predisaster and postdisaster strategies that can be mapped to enhance the resilience of the system.

Hybrid connectionist model determines CO2-oil swelling factor.

In-depth understanding of interactions between crude oil and CO2 provides insight into the CO2-based enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process design and simulation. When CO2 contacts crude oil, the dissolution process takes place. This phenomenon results in the oil swelling, which depends on the temperature, pressure, and composition of the oil. The residual oil saturation in a CO2-based EOR process is inversely proportional to the oil swelling factor. Hence, it is important to estimate this influential parameter with high precision. The current study suggests the predictive model based on the least-squares support vector machine (LS-SVM) to calculate the CO2-oil swelling factor. A genetic algorithm is used to optimize hyperparameters (γ and σ 2) of the LS-SVM model. This model showed a high coefficient of determination (R 2 = 0.9953) and a low value for the mean-squared error (MSE = 0.0003) based on the available experimental data while estimating the CO2-oil swelling factor. It was found that LS-SVM is a straightforward and accurate method to determine the CO2-oil swelling factor with negligible uncertainty. This method can be incorporated in commercial reservoir simulators to include the effect of the CO2-oil swelling factor when adequate experimental data are not available.

The Public Health Responsibility Deal: making the workplace healthier?

Background: The Public Health Responsibility Deal (RD) in England is a public-private partnership which aims to improve public health by addressing issues such as health at work. This paper analyses the RD health at work pledges in terms of their likely effectiveness and added value. Methods: A review of evidence on the effectiveness of the RD 'health at work' pledges to improve health in the workplace; analysis of publically available data on signatory organizations' plans and progress towards achieving the pledges; and assessment of the likelihood that workplace activities pledged by signatories were brought about by participating in the RD. Results: The 'health at work' pledges mostly consist of information sharing activities, and could be more effective if made part of integrated environmental change at the workplace. The evaluation of organizations' plans and progress suggests that very few actions (7%) were motivated by participation in the RD, with most organizations likely (57%) or probably (36%) already engaged in the activities they listed before joining the RD. Conclusions: The RD's 'health at work' pledges are likely to contribute little to improving workplace health as they stand but could contribute more if they were incorporated into broader, coherent workplace health strategies.

Development, optimization, validation and application of faster gas chromatography - flame ionization detector method for the analysis of total petroleum hydrocarbons in contaminated soils.

This paper presents an important new approach to improving the timeliness of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon (TPH) analysis in the soil by Gas Chromatography - Flame Ionization Detector (GC-FID) using the CCME Canada-Wide Standard reference method. The Canada-Wide Standard (CWS) method is used for the analysis of petroleum hydrocarbon compounds across Canada. However, inter-laboratory application of this method for the analysis of TPH in the soil has often shown considerable variability in the results. This could be due, in part, to the different gas chromatography (GC) conditions, other steps involved in the method, as well as the soil properties. In addition, there are differences in the interpretation of the GC results, which impacts the determination of the effectiveness of remediation at hydrocarbon-contaminated sites. In this work, multivariate experimental design approach was used to develop and validate the analytical method for a faster quantitative analysis of TPH in (contaminated) soil. A fractional factorial design (fFD) was used to screen six factors to identify the most significant factors impacting the analysis. These factors included: injection volume (µL), injection temperature (°C), oven program (°C/min), detector temperature (°C), carrier gas flow rate (mL/min) and solvent ratio (v/v hexane/dichloromethane). The most important factors (carrier gas flow rate and oven program) were then optimized using a central composite response surface design. Robustness testing and validation of model compares favourably with the experimental results with percentage difference of 2.78% for the analysis time. This research successfully reduced the method's standard analytical time from 20 to 8min with all the carbon fractions eluting. The method was successfully applied for fast TPH analysis of Bunker C oil contaminated soil. A reduced analytical time would offer many benefits including an improved laboratory reporting times, and overall improved clean up efficiency. The method was successfully applied for the analysis of TPH of Bunker C oil in contaminated soil.

The Public Health Responsibility deal: has a public-private partnership brought about action on alcohol reduction?

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The Public Health Responsibility Deal (RD) in England is a public-private partnership involving voluntary pledges between industry, government and other organizations, with the aim of improving public health. This paper aims to evaluate what action resulted from the RD alcohol pledges. METHODS: We analysed publically available data on organizations' plans and progress towards achieving key alcohol pledges of the RD. We assessed the extent to which activities pledged by signatories could have been brought about by the RD, as opposed to having happened anyway (the counterfactual), using a validated coding scheme designed for the purpose. RESULTS: Progress reports were submitted by 92% of signatories in 2013 and 75% of signatories in 2014, and provided mainly descriptive feedback rather than quantifiable performance metrics. Approximately 14% of 2014 progress reports were identical to those presented in 2013. Most organizations (65%) signed pledges that involved actions to which they appear to have been committed already, regardless of the RD. A small but influential group of alcohol producers and retailers reported taking measures to reduce alcohol units available for consumption in the market. However, where reported, these measures appear to involve launching and promoting new lower-alcohol products rather than removing units from existing products. CONCLUSIONS: The RD is unlikely to have contributed significantly to reducing alcohol consumption, as most alcohol pledge signatories appear to have committed to actions that they would have undertaken anyway, regardless of the RD. Irrespective of this, there is considerable scope to improve the clarity of progress reports and reduce the variability of metrics provided by RD pledge signatories.