scholarly journals British librarianship in the time of Covid-19

2021 ◽  
pp. 095574902198958
Author(s):  
Nick Poole
Keyword(s):  
Chief Executive ◽  
Effective Vaccine ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Look Ahead ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Information Professionals

Covid-19 has impacted on every aspect of daily life across the United Kingdom. At once both a public health crisis and an ‘infodemic’ of misinformation, it has presented unique challenges for library and information services. Yet despite these challenges, the pandemic has also given our services a new-found relevance. Readership has increased dramatically. Librarians in health have turned their skills to the search for an effective vaccine. Our colleagues in schools, colleges and Universities have stepped up to help their institutions achieve a rapid ‘digital pivot’. In the private sector, librarians and information professionals have used their skills to help their companies go online and to ensure the continuity of their activities. It is not yet clear how the pandemic will change our habits, attitudes and behaviours in the long term. As we begin to look ahead to a future in which ‘digital’ has taken its place on equal terms with face-to-face services, the library and information sector is uniquely positioned to help our communities thrive in a post-pandemic era. In this article, Nick Poole, the Chief Executive of CILIP, the United Kingdom’s Library and Information Association, looks back at the last year for UK libraries and explores the challenges and opportunities ahead.

scholarly journals Mental health during COVID-19 pandemic – a literature review

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 174-182
Author(s):  
Magdalena Gawrych
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
International Literature ◽  
Wuhan City ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Comprehensive Review ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Common Response ◽  
Number Of Publications

Pneumonia caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection emerged in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China in December 2019. Widespread outbreaks of infectious disease are associated with psychological distress and symptoms of mental illness. The COVID-19 outbreak has caused a public health crisis. In response to the rapidly increasing number of publications on this subject, this article attempts to provide a comprehensive review of early reports that appeared in the international literature until the beginning of May 2020. This paper details the effects on the general population as medical staff are exposed to different, specific stressors. The available literature has emerged from only a few of the most affected countries; therefore, there is a need for more representative research from other affected regions. The majority of studies focus on depression, anxiety, insomnia and distress. Subsyndromal mental health problems are a common response to the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a huge need for further research. In particular, attention must be paid to the potentially devastating effects on population-wide mental health. Pandemic crisis shifts from acute to protracted, and the long-term mental-health consequences of the pandemic will manifest themselves in the future.

scholarly journals “Over by Christmas”: The impact of war-metaphors and other science-religion narratives on science communication environments during the Covid-19 crisis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Kohlt
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
British Society ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
War Narratives ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Communication Environments ◽  
Effective Science ◽  
The Impact

Narratives are crucial for understanding the world, making decisions within it, but may also distort realities, and redirect actions in more damaging directions. This underlines their vital role in public health crisis. Studies of narrative in health crises have negatively assessed the overall impact of warfare rhetoric, judging according to discrepancies between projected and achieved outcomes. Yet the warfare narrative dominated the framing of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. Through a historical alignment of Christian, military and national virtues, the warfare narrative provided a guiding framework for collective response to crisis, simultaneously hoping to reassure and ‘bring the Nation together’. The narrative, however, polarised British society, accentuating divisions and exacerbating political tensions coinciding with the pandemic. This article analyses the implications and effects that Covid-19 war narratives had on public life, and what their usage tells us about effective science communication in a crisis.

scholarly journals RECONSIDERING PROTECTIVE FACTORS OF SUICIDALITY IN OLDER ADULTHOOD: RESULTS FROM THE CDC NVDRS NATIONAL DATASET

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S858-S858
Author(s):  
Kyle L Bower ◽  
Kerstin G Emerson
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Social Connections ◽  
Significant Other ◽  
Time Of Death ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Older Adulthood ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Mental Health Interventions

Abstract Existing literature comprehensively addresses the issue of suicide; however, there is still much to be understood concerning this phenomenon in later life. For instance, suicide rates are particularly high for older agricultural workers, yet there remains considerable ambiguity concerning the factors contributing to this public health crisis. We conducted exploratory analyses with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) 2003-2017 dataset. We identified a sample of individuals who committed suicide while working in the agricultural sector (N= 2,106). We coded “farmer” as anyone who worked in the agricultural sector at their time of death, or prior. The majority (>90%) of the sample was Caucasian male, and approximately 38% was age 65 and older. We also found that 40% of farmers were married (or in a domestic partnership) at the time of death. Specifically, of those 65 and older, 26% were married at the time of death (second largest majority as 70% were widowed). This finding is particularly interesting as marriage or long-term partnerships have been shown in the literature to be a protective health factor in later life, especially for older men. Our findings regarding marital status suggest that having a significant other may not be the most critical relationship for suicide prevention. Future mental health interventions should explore alternative social connections as a means to identify more effective methods of preventing suicide in this vulnerable population.

scholarly journals Using Telehealth to Provide Interventions for Children with ASD: a Systematic Review

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanicka L. de Nocker ◽  
Christina K. Toolan
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Equitable Access ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Group Design ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Empirically Supported

AbstractAs the need for accessible interventions for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) grows, empirically supported telehealth interventions become increasingly necessary. With the current COVID-19 public health crisis, in-person interventions have become largely infeasible; therefore, it is crucial that providers have information regarding the effectiveness of telehealth interventions. This systematic review evaluates and synthesizes existing group design research on telehealth ASD interventions. Sixteen articles were evaluated on implementer and child-level intervention outcomes as well as factors that promote equitable access to intervention. Findings suggest that telehealth programs are highly acceptable, comparable to face-to-face interventions, and can be an effective method of training implementers in interventions. Recommendations for future research and for maximizing equitable access to telehealth interventions are presented.

scholarly journals A Political Crisis, Long-term Trends and the Chinese Communist Party under the Magnifying Glass

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolin Kautz
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Chinese Studies ◽  
Foreign Politics ◽  
Long Term Trends

The COVID-19 pandemic has reached far beyond the immediate public health crisis to significantly affect global political and economic structures. Informed by a political science perspective, the author examines how the virus serves as a magnifying glass, accelerating and making more visible long-term trends in Chinese domestic and foreign politics, and why Chinese studies expertise is crucial for shaping Europe’s response to these trends. 

Afterword

2020 ◽  
pp. 230-234
Author(s):  
D. Hugh Whittaker ◽  
Timothy J. Sturgeon ◽  
Toshie Okita ◽  
Tianbiao Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Global Supply Chains ◽  
Global Public Health ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Political Effects

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has been traced to early December 2019, just as we were submitting our completed manuscript for publication. We were tempted to comb through the manuscript for ways to address what has rapidly emerged as an unprecedented global public health crisis, economic crisis, and more. But, we decided to leave the text be for several reasons. The first is the ongoing nature of the pandemic and its fallout. The scope of the damage and its long-term social, economic, and political effects will not be fully visible for years, and we are resistant to the business of prognostication. The second is that we believe the book, as it stands, can help make sense of some of the distinctive features of the pandemic, including its unprecedented speed of transmission to all corners of the globe and the economic chaos engendered by the disruption of industries embedded in the elaborate global supply chains and technology ecosystems that comprise GVCs. Third, it is very likely that the pandemic will intensify, if not actually cause, the overlapping and interacting crises that we depicted in ...

scholarly journals Counting the Costs of COVID-19: Why Future Treatment Option Values Matter

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Adrian Kent
Keyword(s):  
Herd Immunity ◽  
Life Quality ◽  
Quality Adjusted Life Year ◽  
Recent Analysis ◽  
Effective Vaccine ◽  
Medical Interventions ◽  
Social Interventions ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Cast Doubt

I critique a recent analysis (Miles, Stedman & Heald, 2020) of COVID-19 lockdown costs and benefits, focussing on the United Kingdom (UK). Miles et al. (2020) argue that the March-June UK lockdown was more costly than the benefit of lives saved, evaluated using the NICE threshold of £30000 for a quality-adjusted life year (QALY) and that the costs of a lockdown for 13 weeks from mid-June would be vastly greater than any plausible estimate of the benefits, even if easing produced a second infection wave causing over 7000 deaths weekly by mid-September.   I note here two key problems that significantly affect their estimates and cast doubt on their conclusions. Firstly, their calculations arbitrarily cut off after 13 weeks, without costing the epidemic end state. That is, they assume indifference between mid-September states of 13 or 7500 weekly deaths and corresponding infection rates. This seems indefensible unless one assumes that (a) there is little chance of any effective vaccine or improved medical or social interventions for the foreseeable future, (b) notwithstanding temporary lockdowns, COVID-19 will very likely propagate until herd immunity. Even under these assumptions it is very questionable. Secondly, they ignore the costs of serious illness, possible long-term lowering of life quality and expectancy for survivors. These are uncertain, but plausibly at least as large as the costs in deaths.In summary, policy on tackling COVID-19 cannot be rationally made without estimating probabilities of future medical interventions and long-term illness costs. More work on modelling these uncertainties is urgently needed.

scholarly journals Scare of Avian Flu Revisits India: A Bumpy Road Ahead

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajnish Kumar Rai
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Patent Law ◽  
Patent Licensing ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Compulsory Licensing ◽  
Avian Flu ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Licensing Laws

With the threat of an avian flu pandemic once again looming over eastern India, issues regarding patents and affordability and accessibility of drugs have taken center stage. The key priority of India should be to remain prepared to address the public health crisis effectively, by stockpiling the drug tamiflu so that it can be easily distributed and administered to the needy.India had been confronted with a serious threat of avian flu in 2005-06, but past experience shows that, despite having some of the broadest and most comprehensive compulsory patent licensing laws, India's policymaking elite shied away from fully exploiting these legal 'flexibilities.' Fortunately, the danger of avian flu did not turn into a substantial public health crisis that year. Under this backdrop, this paper explores various ‘flexibilities’ available in the Indian patent law and suggests short term and long term strategies to effectively tackle the impending danger of an avian flu pandemic, and similar public health crises in future. This paper will discuss potential areas of conflict between the indigenous generic drug firms and the multi-national companies with respect to TRIPS compliance in the event that these flexibilities are exploited. This paper also highlights the administrative constraints and the economic viability of the compulsory licensing system. Finally, this paper shows how political will is often more critical than having well documented provisions in statute books to respond to such situations effectively.

scholarly journals COVID-19 AND EMOTION MANAGEMENT

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maia Akhvlediani ◽  
Zurab Mushkudiani ◽  
Sophia Mikabadze ◽  
Irine Jgerenaia
Keyword(s):  
World Economy ◽  
Video Conferencing ◽  
Employee Health ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Short And Long Term ◽  
Almost All ◽  
E Mail

This study tries to analyze the pandemic situation created by the COVID-19 that has changed the content and dynamics of work in almost all organizations, which is still an ongoing global health crisis. At the same time, its impact on the world economy, with short - and long-term difficulties for business, is growing exponentially. Significant tasks in almost all organizations have been suspended or postponed indefinitely. Managers have adapted to the role of a “virtual manager” and have come to terms with the fact that their colleagues work “elsewhere” and “independently.” COVID-19 reality has made it a priority for organizations to move work from office to home, take care of employee health and protect employees from the spread of the virus. E-mail, messengers, and video-conferencing platforms have replaced work and face-to-face communication with colleagues. Thus, in the context of the economic crisis and pandemic, modern management needs a study that takes into account the role and significance of specific emotions in managerial and socio-economic processes. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0851/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

scholarly journals The Challenges and Opportunities of Sustaining Academia-Sponsored Community Service Programs for Latinx Youth During the COVID-19 Pandemic

2020 ◽  
pp. 153819272098029
Author(s):  
Cheryne M. Kim ◽  
Brittany R. Silverman ◽  
Claudio Cortes
Keyword(s):  
Community Service ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Service Programs ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Community Service Programs ◽  
The Impact

The COVID-19 pandemic has widely affected existing academia-sponsored community service initiatives. Little is known about the strategies to sustain these initiatives during a public health crisis and the potential effects on community well-being and education. In this case study, we describe the impact of the pandemic on service partnerships between our medical school and the Latinx community, discuss the challenges and opportunities of transitioning to a virtual community service model, and offer solutions and considerations.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document