| 1. |
- Beukes, Eldre W., et al.
(författare)
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Changes in Tinnitus Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- 2020
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Public Health. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2296-2565. ; 8, s. 1-13
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted delivery of healthcare, economic activity, and affected social interactions. Identifying and supporting those most affected by the pandemic is required. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of the pandemic on individuals with tinnitus and to identify mediating factors. Methods: This is a mixed-methods exploratory cross-sectional study, using data collected via an online survey from 3,103 individuals with tinnitus from 48 countries. The greatest representation was from North America (49%) and Europe (47%) and other countries were only marginally represented. Results: Although the study was aimed at those with pre-existing tinnitus, 7 individuals reported having COVID-19 initiated tinnitus. Having COVID-19 symptoms exacerbated tinnitus in 40% of respondents, made no change in 54%, and improved tinnitus in 6%. Other mediating factors such as the social and emotional consequences of the pandemic made pre-existing tinnitus more bothersome for 32% of the respondents, particularly for females and younger adults, better for 1%, and caused no change to tinnitus for 67%. Pre-existing tinnitus was significantly exacerbated for those self-isolating, experiencing loneliness, sleeping poorly, and with reduced levels of exercise. Increased depression, anxiety, irritability, and financial worries further significantly contributed to tinnitus being more bothersome during the pandemic period. Conclusions: These findings have implications for tinnitus management, because they highlight the diverse response both internal and external factors have on tinnitus levels. Clinical services should be mindful that tinnitus may be caused by contracting COVID-19 and pre-existing tinnitus may be exacerbated, although in the majority of respondents there was no change. Additional support should be offered where tinnitus severity has increased due to the health, social, and/or emotional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tinnitus may be more bothersome for those experiencing loneliness, having fewer social interactions, and who are more anxious or worried.
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| 2. |
- Danehorn, Emil, et al.
(författare)
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Mental health, self-rated health, risky sexual behaviour, alcohol use, and drug use among students who intend to spend a semester abroad - a cross-sectional study
- 2023
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Public Health. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2296-2565. ; 11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aim: Our aim was to investigate potential differences in mental health, self-rated health, risky sexual behaviour, alcohol use, and drug use between (1) Prospective exchange students and campus students separated by sex, and (2) male and female students as a group. Method: Comparative cross-sectional design using an online survey containing the following instruments: Knowledge, Attitudes, and Sexual Behaviour in Young People in Sweden; Self-Rated Health Questionnaire; and General Health Questionnaire 12. One-hundred and fourteen prospective exchange students and 451 campus students participated in the study. Results: Male prospective exchange students rated their mental health as being better and had used cannabis more often compared with female prospective exchange students. Male prospective exchange students also rated their mental health as being better than male campus students. Female students, in general, rated their mental health as worse than male students. A larger proportion of male prospective exchange students had sex together with alcohol compared with male campus students, and a larger proportion of female prospective exchange students had sex with a new partner and drank more alcohol compared to female campus students. Conclusion: The result shows that risky alcohol use and sexually risky behaviour is prominent amongst prospective exchange students. It is possible that they will continue, and even increase their risky behaviour whilst abroad as they find themselves in a new social context, and free from influence of the rules and restrictions that they might have at home. With limited knowledge of the local culture, native language, and in an unfamiliar environment, it is possible that the risks will be enhanced and possibly decrease their health. This highlights the need for proactive interventions, conceivably with some variations in content between sexes.
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| 3. |
- Davies, Alun, et al.
(författare)
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Evaluating and engaging : Using participatory video with Kenyan secondary school students to explore engagement with health research
- 2022
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Public Health. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2296-2565. ; 10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: The growing ethical requirement to engage communities with health research has yielded diversification in approaches and targeted audiences. Conventional approaches like community "town-hall meetings," laboratory open-days and focus group discussions, have evolved into new methods and audiences such as community drama and school engagement with health research (SEHR) involving learning interactions between researchers and school students. While engagement practices are diversifying, evaluations of these initiatives are rare in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC). This article focuses on the use of Participatory Video (PV) to explore the influence of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme's (KWTRP) School Engagement Programme (SEP) on the views and understandings of science and research among Kenyan state secondary school students. Methods: Twelve male and twelve female students from four coeducational schools were provided with film-making kits (1 per school), and a one-day PV training workshop. They prepared 22 short films over 8 weeks depicting their experiences and views of research and engagement and conveying their career aspirations. Schools were selected based on prior SEP participation; two schools having experienced different engagement approaches, and the others with no prior school engagement. Study data comprised footage and participant observation notes. Results: PV provided an opportunity to simultaneously engage and evaluate to inform practice. Through student-led filmmaking, PV stimulated conversations with students about research and engagement, enabling them to share their views in a way they felt was appropriate. These interactions offered an understanding of student gains from engagement, the depth of interaction required to address perceptions held about research and the potential unintended consequences of engagement. PV also provided insights into the context and complexity of life in which engagement is situated. Understanding this context is important because of its potential influence on participation in engagement activities. We draw on these insights to make two recommendations for school engagement practice. First is that PV can provide an enjoyable and insightful means of combining engagement with evaluation. Second, given that time for SEHR is competed for against other important curricular and extracurricular activities, SEHR practitioners must ensure that activities are as beneficial and enjoyable as possible to students.
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| 4. |
- Hiltunen, Linda, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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Risky drinking cultures among affluent youth in Sweden
- 2022
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Public Health. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2296-2565. ; 10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There is a growing scientific interest in drinking behavior among young people in affluent areas, who report higher levels of alcohol consumption compared to youth in less privileged areas. This phenomenon has been observed in several Western countries. The research has been dominated by variable-oriented analyses and has presented interesting explanations, but there has been little research into these young people's own experiences of and attitudes toward alcohol consumption. To develop interventions targeting this group, we need to understand their lifeworld. This study aims to develop an in-depth understanding of the high alcohol consumption among young people in affluent areas and how they themselves experience it. In the spring of 2019, we conducted 20 in-depth interviews with adolescents in upper secondary school (aged 15–19) in one of the most affluent area in Sweden. The empirical material was analyzed thematically. Theoretically, the phenomenon is understood by relating to social identity processes and considering the group's material, social and cultural means through Bourdieu's metaphors of capital. We found that affluent youth link their social identities to alcohol consumption. Alcohol is a social beverage that opens social networks and contributes to a sense of community. The consumption of alcohol gives experience capital leading to status in this context, with clear norms and expectations governing alcohol consumption. Parties are arranged in protected spaces where young people are free to drink out of the adults' sight. Affluent youths also have considerable purchasing power which contributes to drinking, and they are socialized into a pre-existing adult alcohol culture characterized by a liberal view on alcohol. Finally, when alcohol consumption escalates, the youths perceive that it is difficult to get adequate help from the adult world. The findings are important for future preventive interventions for subgroups of adolescents at high risk for heavy drinking.
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| 5. |
- Mishra, Sushruta, et al.
(författare)
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An Explainable Intelligence Driven Query Prioritization Using Balanced Decision Tree Approach for Multi-Level Psychological Disorders Assessment
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Public Health. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2296-2565. ; 9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Human emotions affect psychological health to a great level. Positive emotions relate to health improvement; whereas negative emotions may aggravate psychological disorders such as anxiety, stress, and depression. Although there exist several computational methods to predict psychological disorders, most of them provide a black-box view of uncertainty. This research involves developing a novel predictive model for multi class psychological risk recognition with an accurate explainable interface. Standard questionnaires are utilized as data set and a new approach called a Q-Prioritization is employed to drop insignificant questions from the data set. Moreover, a novel balanced decision tree method based on repetitive oversampling is applied for the training and testing of the model. Predictive nature along with its contributing factors are interpreted with three techniques such as permuted feature importance, contrastive explanation, and counterfactual method, which together form a reasoning engine. The prediction outcome generated an impressive performance with an aggregated accuracy of 98.25%. The mean precision, recall, and F-score metric recorded were 0.98, 0.977, and 0.979, respectively. Also, it was noted that without applying Q-Prioritization, the accuracy significantly drops to 90.25%. The error rate observed with our model was only 0.026. The proposed multi-level psychological disorder predictive model can successfully serve as an assistive deployment for medical experts in the effective treatment of mental health.
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| 6. |
- Pandya, Sharnil, Researcher, 1984-, et al.
(författare)
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COVIDSAVIOR : A Novel Sensor-Fusion and Deep Learning Based Framework for Virus Outbreaks
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Public Health. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2296-2565. ; 9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The presented deep learning and sensor-fusion based assistive technology (Smart Facemask and Thermal scanning kiosk) will protect the individual using auto face-mask detection and auto thermal scanning to detect the current body temperature. Furthermore, the presented system also facilitates a variety of notifications, such as an alarm, if an individual is not wearing a mask and detects thermal temperature beyond the standard body temperature threshold, such as 98.6°F (37°C).Design/methodology/approach—The presented deep Learning and sensor-fusion-based approach can also detect an individual in with or without mask situations and provide appropriate notification to the security personnel by raising the alarm. Moreover, the smart tunnel is also equipped with a thermal sensing unit embedded with a camera, which can detect the real-time body temperature of an individual concerning the prescribed body temperature limits as prescribed by WHO reports.Findings—The investigation results validate the performance evaluation of the presented smart face-mask and thermal scanning mechanism. The presented system can also detect an outsider entering the building with or without mask condition and be aware of the security control room by raising appropriate alarms. Furthermore, the presented smart epidemic tunnel is embedded with an intelligent algorithm that can perform real-time thermal scanning of an individual and store essential information in a cloud platform, such as Google firebase. Thus, the proposed system favors society by saving time and helps in lowering the spread of coronavirus.
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| 7. |
- Patil, Seema, et al.
(författare)
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Forecasting Dengue Hotspots Associated With Variation in Meteorological Parameters Using Regression and Time Series Models
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Public Health. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2296-2565. ; 9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- For forecasting the spread of dengue, monitoring climate change and its effects specific to the disease is necessary. Dengue is one of the most rapidly spreading vector-borne infectious diseases. This paper proposes a forecasting model for predicting dengue incidences considering climatic variability across nine cities of Maharashtra state of India over 10 years. The work involves the collection of five climatic factors such as mean minimum temperature, mean maximum temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, and mean wind speed for 10 years. Monthly incidences of dengue for the same locations are also collected. Different regression models such as random forest regression, decision trees regression, support vector regress, multiple linear regression, elastic net regression, and polynomial regression are used. Time-series forecasting models such as holt's forecasting, autoregressive, Moving average, ARIMA, SARIMA, and Facebook prophet are implemented and compared to forecast the dengue outbreak accurately. The research shows that humidity and mean maximum temperature are the major climate factors and exhibit strong positive and negative correlation, respectively, with dengue incidences for all locations of Maharashtra state. Mean minimum temperature and rainfall are moderately positively correlated with dengue incidences. Mean wind speed is a less significant factor and is weakly negatively correlated with dengue incidences. Root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and R square error (R2) evaluation metrics are used to compare the performance of the prediction model. Random Forest Regression is the best-fit regression model for five out of nine cities, while Support Vector Regression is for two cities. Facebook Prophet Model is the best fit time series forecasting model for six out of nine cities. Based on the prediction, Mumbai, Thane, Nashik, and Pune are the high-risk regions, especially in August, September, and October. The findings exhibit an effective early warning system that would predict the outbreak of other infectious diseases. It will help the relevant authorities to take accurate preventive measures.
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| 8. |
- Rämgård, Margareta, 1961-, et al.
(författare)
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Lay Health Promoters Empower Neighbourhoods : Results From a Community-Based Research Programme in Southern Sweden
- 2022
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Public Health. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2296-2565. ; 10, s. 1-13
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article focuses on the role of lay health promoters in the Lindangen initiative, a community-based participatory research (CBPR) programme for health promotion that started 2016 in a low-income neighbourhood in the outskirts of Malmo, southern Sweden. The programme aimed to support equitable health and develop an innovative model for community health promotion. The purpose of this article is to describe the role of the lay health promoters in the initiative and discuss the challenges of their position mediating between residents of the neighbourhood and the established institutions, using interviews, meeting notes and focus groups sessions with the health promoters and local stakeholders. Lay health promoters' role and function developed in a collaborative process of networking with local stakeholders and citizens in local meeting places. Their work was based on their credibility in their role, in combination with the use of a CBPR model that was open to innovation, with a strong focus on actively engaging members of the community. This allowed the lay health promoters to take political and social stances towards various issues, and to start to concretely address the social determinants of health in the community, as well as express recommendations to policymakers. Based on these experiences, the lay health promoters gained clearer insights into the institutional and structural conditions that impact their community. The position they had in the process of the programme resulted in empowerment and a new local association for health promotion; LindangenKraft (LindangenPower) driven by the health promotors and community members.
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| 9. |
- Shah, Apeksha, et al.
(författare)
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Smart Cardiac Framework for an Early Detection of Cardiac Arrest Condition and Risk
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Public Health. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2296-2565. ; 9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is considered to be one of the most epidemic diseases in the world today. Predicting CVDs, such as cardiac arrest, is a difficult task in the area of healthcare. The healthcare industry has a vast collection of datasets for analysis and prediction purposes. Somehow, the predictions made on these publicly available datasets may be erroneous. To make the prediction accurate, real-time data need to be collected. This study collected real-time data using sensors and stored it on a cloud computing platform, such as Google Firebase. The acquired data is then classified using six machine-learning algorithms: Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Random Forest Classifier (RFC), Gradient Boost Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) classifier, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Naïve Bayes (NB), and Decision Tree (DT). Furthermore, we have presented two novel gender-based risk classification and age-wise risk classification approach in the undertaken study. The presented approaches have used Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression survival analysis methodologies for risk detection and classification. The presented approaches also assist health experts in identifying the risk probability risk and the 10-year risk score prediction. The proposed system is an economical alternative to the existing system due to its low cost. The outcome obtained shows an enhanced level of performance with an overall accuracy of 98% using DT on our collected dataset for cardiac risk prediction. We also introduced two risk classification models for gender- and age-wise people to detect their survival probability. The outcome of the proposed model shows accurate probability in both classes.
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| 10. |
- Wemrell, Maria, et al.
(författare)
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Attitudes Toward HPV Vaccination in Sweden : A Survey Study
- 2022
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Public Health. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2296-2565. ; 10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: While HPV vaccination uptake in Sweden is quite high, at around 80%, vaccine hesitancy remains an issue in countries throughout Europe. The latter can be related to a contemporary context of increased contestation of expert knowledge and of a large share of information on health-related issues including vaccination today being sought via the internet. Still, there is a paucity of recent research on attitudes toward the HPV vaccine in a larger sample of the population in Sweden. This survey study assesses such attitudes and any correlations between vaccine hesitancy and sociodemographic characteristics, trust in healthcare and other societal institutions, and evaluation of the reliability of different sources of information.Methods: The validated survey questionnaire was distributed to adult women in Sweden (n = 2,000), via a nationally representative web panel. The response rate was 37%. Aside from descriptive statistics, associations between vaccine hesitancy and sociodemographic and other variables were computed using logistic regressions and expressed as odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs).Results: Our results show a positive attitude toward HPV vaccination overall. Still, some degree of HPV vaccine hesitancy was indicated by 33.8% of the respondents, and more pronounced hesitancy by 7.6%. Regarding vaccination in general, a very positive attitude was indicated by 55%. HPV vaccine hesitancy was associated with low education and low income and strongly associated with a lack of confidence in healthcare and other societal institutions. It was also correlated with a self-assessed lack of access to, and ability to assess the origin, quality and reliability of, information about the HPV vaccine.Conclusion: Efforts to provide transparent information about HPV vaccination should be combined with healthcare providers being open to discuss vaccine concerns with patients and avoiding practices that do not promote trust.
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