Project description:The coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic is putting a huge strain on healthcare systems and is a turning point for the beginning of a global health crisis of an unprecedented condition. As such, the provision of quality pharmacy services particularly, dispensing practice with pre-existing challenges in resource-limited settings is a grave concern in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, in this commentary we described the pattern of dispensing practice in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic by evaluating the current condition of drug dispensing practice in drug retail outlets of Jimma Town.
Project description:To understand and analyse the global impact of COVID-19 on outpatient services, inpatient care, elective surgery, and perioperative colorectal cancer care, a DElayed COloRectal cancer surgery (DECOR-19) survey was conducted in collaboration with numerous international colorectal societies with the objective of obtaining several learning points from the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on our colorectal cancer patients which will assist us in the ongoing management of our colorectal cancer patients and to provide us safe oncological pathways for future outbreaks.
Project description:Global pandemics are a serious concern for developing countries, perhaps particularly when the same pandemic also affects donors of development aid. During crises at home, donors often cut aid, which would have grave ramifications for developing countries with poor public health capacity during a time of increased demand for health care. Because the major donors are democracies, whether they renege on promises would depend intimately on how donor citizens respond to the specific crisis. We conduct two survey experiments with 887 U.S. residents to examine how the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic influences their attitudes toward aid. We demonstrate that people's concern about the impact of COVID-19 on their country's financial situation reduces their support for aid. If they think that aid can help curb the next wave of the disease at home by first alleviating its impact in developing countries, people become substantially more supportive of giving aid. In contrast, merely stressing how COVID-19 might ravage developing countries barely changes their aid attitudes. Our findings have implications for what to expect from donors during global pandemics as well as how advocates may prevent aid from being cut.
Project description:In 2015, the University of Saskatchewan PAWS Your Stress Therapy Dog program partnered with St. John Ambulance for therapy dog teams to visit our campus and offer attendees love, comfort and support. We recognized at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that students, staff and faculty may require mental health support, particularly with the challenges of isolation and loneliness. In response, our team transitioned from an in-person to a novel online format at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We designed online content for participants to (1) connect with therapy dogs and experience feelings of love, comfort and support as occurred in in-person programming, and (2) learn about pandemic-specific, evidence-informed mental health knowledge. Our unique approach highlighted what dogs can teach humans about health through their own care and daily activities. From April to June 2020, we developed a website, created 28 Facebook livestreams and 60 pre-recorded videos which featured therapy dogs and handlers, and cross-promoted on various social media platforms. Over three months, first a combined process-outcome evaluation helped us determine whether our activities contributed to the program's goals. A subsequent needs assessment allowed us to elicit participant preferences for the program moving forward. This commentary reflects on these findings and our teams' collective experiences to share our key lessons learned related to program personnel needs, therapy dog handler training and support requirements, and online programming prerequisites. This combined understanding is informing our current activities with the virtual program and should be of interest to other therapy dog programs transitioning online.
Project description:Increased mental-health symptoms as a reaction to stressful life events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, are common. Critically, successful adaptation helps to reduce such symptoms to baseline, preventing long-term psychiatric disorders. It is thus important to understand whether and which psychiatric symptoms show transient elevations, and which persist long-term and become chronically heightened. At particular risk for the latter trajectory are symptom dimensions directly affected by the pandemic, such as obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms. In this longitudinal large-scale study (N = 406), we assessed how OC, anxiety and depression symptoms changed throughout the first pandemic wave in a sample of the general UK public. We further examined how these symptoms affected pandemic-related information seeking and adherence to governmental guidelines. We show that scores in all psychiatric domains were initially elevated, but showed distinct longitudinal change patterns. Depression scores decreased, and anxiety plateaued during the first pandemic wave, while OC symptoms further increased, even after the ease of Covid-19 restrictions. These OC symptoms were directly linked to Covid-related information seeking, which gave rise to higher adherence to government guidelines. This increase of OC symptoms in this non-clinical sample shows that the domain is disproportionately affected by the pandemic. We discuss the long-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on public mental health, which calls for continued close observation of symptom development.
Project description:We study the labor market effects of information technology (IT) during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, using data on IT adoption covering almost three million establishments in the US. We find that in areas where firms had adopted more IT before the pandemic, the unemployment rate rose less in response to social distancing. IT shields all individuals, regardless of gender and race, except those with the lowest educational attainment. Instrumental variable estimates-leveraging historical routine employment share as a booster of IT adoption- confirm IT had a causal impact on fostering labor markets' resilience. Additional evidence suggests this shielding effect is due to the easiness of working-from-home and to stronger creation of digital jobs in high IT areas.
Project description:The main objective of this study is to offer and evaluate an interim triage approach for patients waiting for surveillance colonoscopies. This will reduce the waiting period and the psychological stressors for our patients and from a scientific point of view allow us to compare the yield of findings for each approach.
Project description:This study was designed to investigate the roles information and communications technology (ICT) played during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we focused on the relationships between ICT use and perceived importance of social connectedness and future anxiety, while considering relevant personality and psychosocial factors. A U.S. sample of 394 adults answered questions about ICT use, pandemic-related reactions and actions, demographics, and psychosocial factors via an online survey. Using logistic regression, findings indicated that personality (extraversion and conscientiousness) and psychosocial (need to belong and perceived attachment to phone) factors, types of ICT as news source, and gender were associated with perceived importance of social connectedness. Neuroticism, time spent on ICT for social purposes, and perceived threat of COVID-19 were associated with future anxiety. In addition, using Mann-Whitney U test, people who rated higher on importance of social connectedness had higher ICT use, both in terms of types and time spent on ICT. Overall, results are consistent with the idea that technology is a coping tool during the pandemic and balanced use can lead to feelings of social connectedness and less future anxiety. Therefore, it is important for authorities to align their messaging and outreach with people's psychosocial, personality, and health considerations through ICT channels while empowering ICT users to be responsible for their interactions with the technology.
Project description:During the COVID-19 emergency, most domiciliary social services were suspended to avoid the risk of contagion, leaving older people at a greater risk of social isolation. Assistive technology has the potential to support the work of social professionals in promoting social inclusion and assistance of the older people. In this context, this paper aims to investigate the expectations of social operators toward assistive technology before and during the COVID-19 emergency. It also explores how the said emergency could guide us to implement social services in the future, including a discussion on the barriers to the adoption of assistive technologies. A total of 72 social professionals participated in this study comprising of three phases: two online questionnaires and one semi structured interview. In the first two phases, the two online questionnaires were administered before and during the COVID-19 emergency to 62 social professionals. In the third phase, 10 social workers were interviewed to discuss the results of the previous questionnaires to gain an in-depth understanding. The results highlight that the COVID-19 emergency is responsible for an increased perceived need of services involving telepresence, proposing a hybrid paradigm of assistance with both remote and in-presence assistance. Furthermore, the identified barriers to technology adoption are lack of organizational structure and ready-to-use technology. As for the facilitators for the technology adoption, social workers suggested investing in education and training of social professionals to reduce skepticism towards the usefulness of technology. The social professionals involved in this study highlight a generally positive view of technology in supporting their work. Finally, the lessons learned is also presented as a guideline for researchers in this field. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12008-021-00836-3.