Journal of Public Health

AIMS: This study examines the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on postpartum mothers in England, with the aim of identifying opportunities to improve maternal experience and wellbeing. The postpartum/postnatal period is widely acknowledged as a time when mothers require greater levels of support from multiple sources. However, stay-at-home orders, commonly known as "lockdown," deployed in some countries to limit COVID-19 transmission reduced access to support. In England, many postpartum mothers navigated household isolation within an intensive mothering and expert parenting culture...

AIM: Digital device usage, especially during the pandemic, has catapulted into a new age problem, the computer vision syndrome. This study aimed to quantify the prevalence and determinants of digital eye strain (DES). SUBJECT AND METHODS: A total of 345 university students in India were surveyed in June-July 2022, by a validated tool, the Computer Vision Syndrome Questionnaire (CVS-Q) © in this cross-sectional study. According to American Optometric Association, digital eye strain and computer vision syndrome are synonyms...

AIM: The accessibility of social media data has allowed researchers to measure official-public interactions during COVID-19. However, previous work analyzing official posts or public comments has failed to explore the link between the two. Therefore, this study investigates the relationship between the communication strategies of public health agencies (PHAs) on TikTok and public emotional/sentiment tendencies in COVID-19 normalization. SUBJECT AND METHODS: This study uses the 2022 Shanghai city closure event as a public health communication case study in the context of COVID-19 normalization, using TikTok as a data source...

AIM: This paper investigates the effect of a religious holiday ( Eid-ul-Fitr in Pakistan) on compliance behaviour instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Longstanding religion-based norms of behaviour during the Eid holidays (traveling to meet family members, praying in large gatherings, hugging) may counteract newly established (and weaker) norms of health-preserving behaviours. METHOD: We study the impact of Eid-ul-Fitr on compliance with COVID guidelines for a sample of university students...

AIM: Covid-19 pandemic and its relative containment measures have affected populations' quality of life and psychological well-being worldwide. The fear related to the pandemic and the imposed containment measures has acted as a trigger causing a global increase in negative mental health states. Thus, we aimed to explore the relationship between fear of covid-19 and mental health via QoL (the first and the second lockdown in Italy, 2020). SUBJECT AND METHODS: Through a quantitative cross-lagged path model research design, the study investigates people's fear of Covid-19, quality of life, and negative mental states in a population of 444 Italian adults (Mean=40...

AIM: University students are sexually active, and the sexual risk behavior of this group is higher than that of the general population. The prevention of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) emphasizes the need for comprehensive knowledge about behaviors for STI protection and the actual realization of these behaviors. SUBJECT AND METHODS: First, an online questionnaire was developed to record the knowledge and realization of STI-protective behaviors among students at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HUAS) to conduct quantitative cross-sectional interviews...

AIM: The COVID-19 epidemic has caused risk and uncertainty. This study answers whether and how psychological distress and digital sports influence willingness to take the vaccine and precautionary savings. SUBJECT AND METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study with an online survey sample of 1016 Shanghai residents who live and work there and are aged between 16-60. All of them experienced the COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai. We used logistic regressions to examine the relationships between the variables of interest...

AIM: To identify predictors of transportation-related barriers to healthcare access in a North American suburb. SUBJECT AND METHODS: Data from the 2022 Scarborough Survey were used, comprising n = 528 adults living in Scarborough, which is a subu<rb of Toronto, Canada, recruited through iterative sampling. Log binomial regression models identified demographic, socioeconomic, health and transportation predictors of a composite of: (1) delaying a primary care appointment, (2) missing a primary care appointment or (3) postponing or declining a vaccination due to transportation issues...

AIM: Coronavirus is an airborne and infectious disease and it is crucial to check the impact of climatic risk factors on the transmission of COVID-19. The main objective of this study is to determine the effect of climate risk factors using Bayesian regression analysis. METHODS: Coronavirus disease 2019, due to the effect of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has become a serious global public health issue. This disease was identified in Bangladesh on March 8, 2020, though it was initially identified in Wuhan, China...

BACKGROUND: A large number of deaths could be avoided by improving health behaviours. The degree to which people invest in their long-term health is influenced by how much they believe they can control their risk of death. Identifying causes of death believed to be uncontrollable, but likely to occur, may provide actionable targets for health interventions to increase control beliefs and encourage healthier behaviours. METHOD: We recruited a nationally representative online sample of 1500 participants in the UK...

AIM: The COVID-19 outbreak escalated into a global pandemic, pushing many governments around the world to impose measures affecting all aspects of life. Similar to other countries, Greece adopted social restriction, lockdowns, and quarantines to reduce transmission from person-to-person. This cross-sectional study investigated the association between social restriction measures, an mental health and coping strategies employed by a Greek adult sample. SUBJECT AND METHODS: An online questionnaire was used to collect data during the second national lockdown (February to May 2021)...

AIM: Increasingly at GP practices, patients appear who are extremely worried as a result of health information researched online and consequently affected by doubts and concerns. The study highlights GP attitudes and experiences with regard to this patient group. Moreover, it identifies strategies adopted by GPs to respond appropriately to worried or scared patients. SUBJECT AND METHODS: In the German federal states of Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, 2532 GPs were surveyed between June and August 2022...

AIMS: This study was designed and implemented to compare the effect of prenatal education on the fear of natural birth in pregnant women. SUBJECT AND METHOD: This research was a semi-experimental study with a control group conducted on 96 pregnant women in Mashhad. People were randomly allocated to face-to-face and virtual groups. The Wijma childbirth experience/expectation questionnaire version A and the midwifery personal information form were used as pre-test and post-test tools...

AIM: To investigate the relationship between related factors and visual acuity of Chinese school students before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. SUBJECT AND METHODS: Chinese students from primary and secondary schools were included from the Chinese National Surveys on Students' Constitution and Health CNSSCH (2019). A total of 1496 participants completed follow-ups in June and December 2020, respectively. Generalized estimating equations were used to test the differences in visual environment...

BACKGROUND: The conduct of healthcare organisation employees on social media can impact both their personal reputation and that of the organisation. However, social media has blurred the lines between professional and personal communication, and what is acceptable and ethical conduct is not always clear. Furthermore, the global COVID-19 pandemic has changed how healthcare organisations and their employees approach the use of social media, expediting the need to ensure that employees communicating health-related information adhere to employee codes of conduct...

AIM: This paper aimed to study the effect of the vaccine on the reproduction rate of coronavirus in Africa from January 2021 to November 2021. SUBJECT AND METHODS: Functional data analysis (FDA), a relatively new area in statistics, can describe, analyze, and predict data collected over time, space, or other continuum measures in many countries every day and is increasingly common across scientific domains. For our data, the first step of functional data is smoothing...

AIM: The need to improve training of health professionals has increased in recent years due to increasing frequencies of public health events. Consequently, a descriptive cross-sectional survey was carried out to determine the level of satisfaction and knowledge acquired by undergraduate students in the health sciences during a community health outreach program. SUBJECT AND METHODS: Students were invited to complete an online-administered questionnaire (consisting of both open- and closed-ended questions) to assess their perceptions and experiences on the community health outreach program...

BACKGROUND: In 2020, COVID-19 spread rapidly in Iran and other parts of the world. Some of the epidemiological aspects of this disease remain unknown; therefore, the present study was designed with the aim of determining the trend of incidence and mortality of COVID-19 from February 2020 to July 2021 in southern Iran. METHODS: The present study was a cross-sectional analytical study that included all people who had COVID-19 in the period from February 2020 to July 2021 and whose information had been registered in the Infectious Diseases Center of Larestan city and MCMC unit...

AIM: The main objective of this study was to explore the value of the discharged case fatality rate (DCFR) in estimating the severity and epidemic trend of COVID-19 in China. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Epidemiological data on COVID-19 in China and Hubei Province were obtained from the National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China from January 20, 2020, to March 31, 2020. The number of daily new confirmed cases, daily confirmed deaths, daily recovered cases, the proportion of daily deaths and total deaths of discharged cases were collected, and the total discharge case fatality rate (tDCFR), daily discharge case fatality rate (dDCFR), and stage-discharge case fatality rate (sDCFR) were calculated...

AIM: Smart wearable devices for continuous monitoring of health conditions have bbecome very important in the healthcare sector to acquire and assess the different physiological parameters. This paper reviews the nature of physiological signals, desired vital parameters, role of smart wearable devices, choices of wearable devices and design considerations for wearable devices for early detection of health conditions. SUBJECT AND METHODS: This article provides designers with information to identify and develop smart wearable devices based on the data extracted from a literature survey on previously published research articles in the field of wearable devices for monitoring vital parameters...