pandemic planning

BACKGROUND: The Coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) caused drastic changes in people's lifestyle that affected TMD characteristics through its physical and psychological influences. The aim of this study was to define the clinical and psychological characteristics of a large group of well-defined TMD patients and seek their differences between before and during the COVID-19 pandemic to establish points of care to be emphasized in the post-pandemic era. METHODS: TMD patients diagnosed by the Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders (DC/TMD) aged ≥ 18 were analyzed...

Advance care planning (ACP) is essential in managing serious and chronic illnesses to ensure that patients receive care aligned with their personal values, goals, and preferences. This review focuses on integrating ACP in the treatment of patients receiving implantable left ventricular assist devices (VADs). The heart failure palliative care team developed a unique advance directive form and pamphlet to facilitate ACP discussions, emphasizing not only medical treatment preferences but also patients' values and life goals...

The correlation between viral infections and the onset of autoimmune conditions has long attracted the scientific community. With the COVID-19 pandemic impacting the world like never before, we have a unique chance to better understand this complex disease and uncover its origin. In light of this, we performed a systematic review of the incidence and prevalence of newly diagnosed autoimmune diseases following the COVID-19 pandemic. We undertook an extensive literature review from 2012 to 2023, by using electronic databases such as Medline, Web of Science, PubMed, Cochrane Library, and supplementary sources like scholarly articles...

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the critical role of public knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) in disease containment. Understanding these aspects can guide health promotion initiatives and policy decisions. DESIGN AND METHODS: This cross-sectional study examined the KAP concerning COVID-19 prevention in Vietnam. Participants' sociodemographic data, along with KAP toward COVID-19, were collected in a survey utilizing a standardized questionnaire...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The rapid spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) led the need to admit a large number of infected people to hospitals in a short period of time, turning them into one of the most important responsive organizations. This study aims to evaluate the performance of selected military hospitals because they carried out a military operation in Tehran in response to the recent pandemic. METHODS: This is a descriptive-analytical study. The statistical population of this study consisted of military hospitals responding to Covid-19 pandemic in Tehran...

In January 2021, we assessed the implications of temporary regulations in the United Kingdom allowing pubs and restaurants to operate on a takeaway basis without instigating a change of use. Local authorities (LAs) across the North-East of England were unaware of any data regarding the take-up of these regulations, partially due to ongoing capacity issues; participants also raised health concerns around takeaway use increasing significantly. One year on, we repeated the study aiming to understand the impact of these regulations on the policy and practice of key professional groups...

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 disrupted the provision of essential health services in numerous countries, potentially leading to outbreaks of deadly diseases. This study aims to investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the utilization of essential health services in Iran. METHODS: An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted using interrupted time series (ITS) analysis. Data about five indicators, including 'childhood vaccination, infant care, hypertension screening, diabetes screening, and breast cancer screening,' were obtained from the electronic health record System in two-time intervals: 15 months before (November 2018 to January 2020) and 15 months after (January 2020 to May 2021) the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic...

There is a critical need for fall-prevention interventions to reach medically underserved, hard-to-reach, rural older adults. The evidence-based Tai Ji Quan: Moving for Better Balance (TJQMBB) program reduces falls in older adults. This pre-COVID-19 pandemic study assessed the feasibility and impact of a 16-week tele-TJQMBB intervention in older adults. Instructors led six tele-TJQMBB classes via Zoom for 52 older adults (mean age ± SD 68.5 ± 7.7 years) at one academic and four community sites...

INTRODUCTION: Innovation in internet connectivity and the Covid 19 pandemic have caused a dramatic change in the management of patients in the medical field, boosting the use of telemedicine. A comparison of clinical outcomes and satisfaction between conventional face-to-face and telemedicine follow-up in general surgery, an economic evaluation is mandatory. The aim of the present study was to compare the differences in economic costs between these two outpatient approaches in a designed randomized controlled trial (RCT)...

BACKGROUND: Individuals with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder were at heightened risk for interruptions in psychiatric care during the coronavirus-19 (COVID 19) pandemic. There is limited work exploring the pandemic's impact on emergency department (ED) visit volume, use of restraint and parenteral medications, inpatient psychiatric (IP) hospitalization, and ED length of stay (LOS) among this population. METHODS: We retrospectively examined 2134 ED visits with a billing code for psychosis between March 1, 2019-February 28, 2021...

OBJECTIVE: To assess the association between the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and change in low-value cancer services. STUDY DESIGN: In this retrospective cohort study, we used administrative claims from the HealthCore Integrated Research Environment, a repository of medical and pharmacy data from US health plans representing more than 80 million members, between January 1, 2016, and March 31, 2021. METHODS: We used linear probability models to investigate the relation between the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and 4 guideline-based metrics of low-value cancer care: (1) conventional fractionation radiotherapy instead of hypofractionated radiotherapy for early-stage breast cancer; (2) non-guideline-based antiemetic use for minimal-, low-, or moderate- to high-risk chemotherapies; (3) off-pathway systemic therapy; and (4) aggressive end-of-life care...

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a major contradiction in contemporary urban planning. This is the relationship between the entrepreneurial modes of urban politics that shape contemporary planning practice and the interrelated dynamics of economic precarity and informalisation of low-income communities that exacerbate contagion, and therefore enable pandemic spread. Through a review of literature on the urban dimensions of COVID-19, and on the historical relationship between pandemics and urban planning, we develop a framework for analysing the debates that are emerging around planning approaches to addressing contemporary pandemic risk in low-income, informalised communities...

The coronavirus pandemic has reignited the debate over urban density. Popular media has been quick to blame density as a key contributor to rapid disease transmission, questioning whether compact cities are still a desirable planning goal. Past research on the density-pandemic connection have produced mixed results. This article offers a critical perspective on this debate by unpacking the effects of alternative measures of urban density, and examining the impacts of mandatory lockdowns and the stringency of other government restrictions on cumulative Covid-19 infection and mortality rates during the early phase of the pandemic in the US...

The global COVID-19 crisis has severely affected mass transit in the cities of the global south. Fear of widespread propagation in public spaces and the dramatic decrease in human mobility due to lockdowns have resulted in a significant reduction of public transport options. We analyze the case of TransMilenio in Bogotá, a massive Bus Rapid Transit system that is the main mode of transport for an urban area of roughly 10 million inhabitants. Concerns over social distancing and new health regulations reduced the number of trips to under 20% of its historical values during extended periods of time during the lockdowns...

Almost as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading throughout much of the world, conspiracies arose that blamed the virus on the deployment of fifth-generation cellular networks (5G) infrastructure. These conspiracies had significant consequences, including protests against 5G and the destruction of 5G infrastructure. This article uses a media genealogy approach to place the 5G/COVID-19 conspiracies within the long and recurring cycle of conspiracies focused on mobile infrastructure. Placed within that broader history, this article argues that the 5G/COVID-19 conspiracies should have been unsurprising, and these types of infrastructural conspiracies should be a more significant part of mobile media and communication (MMC) research because infrastructures are an often invisible, yet crucial, part of the mobile practices studied within MMC research...

The COVID-19 pandemic generated a considerable debate in relation to urban density. This is an old debate, originated in mid 19th century's England with the emergence of public health and urban planning disciplines. While popularly linked, evidence suggests that such relationship cannot be generally assumed. Furthermore, urban density has been investigated in a spatially coarse manner (predominantly at city level) and never contextualised with other descriptors of urban form. In this work, we explore COVID-19 and urban form in Greater London, relating a comprehensive set of morphometric descriptors (including built-up density ) to COVID-19 deaths and cases, while controlling for socioeconomic, ethnicity, age and co-morbidity...

This paper combines historical and contemporary sources to examine 'epidemic urban planning' from the first decades of the 20th century through to the present day. It considers how infamous early 20th-century epidemics triggered the development of several urban regulations that profoundly shaped the city's future. To reduce the risk of contagion in bourgeois space, the city began displacing and spatially segregating the urban poor, leading to deprived neighbourhoods in the city's suburbs. The social and urban structure of these deprived, 'vulnerable' neighbourhoods remains to this day...

COVID-19 dashboards with geospatial data visualization have become ubiquitous. There is a growing sense of responsibility to report public health data pushing governments and community organizations to develop and share web-based dashboards. While a substantial body of literature exists on how these GIS technologies and urban analytics approaches support COVID-19 monitoring, their level of social embeddedness, quality and accessibility of user interface, and overall decision-making capabilities has not been rigorously assessed...

New York City (NYC) was the epicenter of COVID-19 pandemic for a long time, and the government introduced a city-wide lockdown policy to mitigate the spread of virus. Minority communities, however, suffered disproportionally high percentage of infection and mortality rates, a disturbing phenomenon that deserves scrutiny. Adopting a spatial and temporal perspective, this study aims to investigate health disparities in this pandemic by focusing on mobility in the city. Considering both public transit and the lockdown policy essential factors that impact infection and mortality, this study introduced a measure indicating mobility-restricted transit as the spatial factor...

Transit providers have used social media (e.g., Twitter) as a powerful platform to shape public perception and provide essential information, especially during times of disruption and disaster. This work examines how transit agencies used Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic to communicate with riders and how the content and general activity influence rider interaction and Twitter handle popularity. We analyzed 654,345 tweets generated by the top 40 transit agencies in the US, based on Vehicles Operated in Annual Maximum Service (VOM), from January 2020 to August 2021...