scholarly journals Physiological Correlates of Processing Health-Related Information: An Idea for the Adoption of a Foreign Field

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-186
Author(s):  
Cornelia Geukes ◽  
Horst M. Müller

Measuring health may refer to the measurement of general health status through measures of physical function, pain, social health, psychological aspects, and specific disease. Almost no evidence is available on the possible interaction of physiological measures and correlating emotional–affective states that are triggered by dealing with individual health-relevant issues and their specific processing modes. Public health research has long been concerned with the processing of health-related information. However, it is not yet clear which factors influence access and the handling of health-related information in detail. One way to close this research gap could be adopting methods from neurocognitive experiments to add psychophysiological data to existing approaches in health-related research. In this article, we present some of these methods and give a narrative overview and description of their usefulness for enlarged research in public health.

Data ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Jordan ◽  
Sierra Hovet ◽  
Isaac Fung ◽  
Hai Liang ◽  
King-Wa Fu ◽  
...  

Twitter is a social media platform where over 500 million people worldwide publish their ideas and discuss diverse topics, including their health conditions and public health events. Twitter has proved to be an important source of health-related information on the Internet, given the amount of information that is shared by both citizens and official sources. Twitter provides researchers with a real-time source of public health information on a global scale, and can be very important in public health research. Classifying Twitter data into topics or categories is helpful to better understand how users react and communicate. A literature review is presented on the use of mining Twitter data or similar short-text datasets for public health applications. Each method is analyzed for ways to use Twitter data in public health surveillance. Papers in which Twitter content was classified according to users or tweets for better surveillance of public health were selected for review. Only papers published between 2010–2017 were considered. The reviewed publications are distinguished by the methods that were used to categorize the Twitter content in different ways. While comparing studies is difficult due to the number of different methods that have been used for applying Twitter and interpreting data, this state-of-the-art review demonstrates the vast potential of utilizing Twitter for public health surveillance purposes.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Lee Smith ◽  
Justin B. Dickerson ◽  
Monica L. Wendel ◽  
SangNam Ahn ◽  
Jairus C. Pulczinski ◽  
...  

Health disparities research in rural populations is based on several common taxonomies identified by geography and population density. However, little is known about the implications of different rurality definitions on public health outcomes. To help illuminate the meaning of different rural designations often used in research, service delivery, or policy reports, this study will (1) review the different definitions of rurality and their purposes; (2) identify the overlap of various rural designations in an eight-county Brazos Valley region in Central Texas; (3) describe participant characteristic profiles based on distances traveled to obtain healthcare services; and (4) examine common profile characteristics associated with each designation. Data were analyzed from a random sample from 1,958 Texas adults participating in a community assessment. K-means cluster analysis was used to identify natural groupings of individuals based on distance traveled to obtain three healthcare services: medical care, dental care, and prescription medication pick-up. Significant variation in cluster representation and resident characteristics was observed by rural designation. Given widely used taxonomies for designating areas as rural (or provider shortage) in health-related research, this study highlights differences that could influence research results and subsequent program and policy development based on rural designation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Robb ◽  
Tom Garner ◽  
Karen Collins ◽  
Lennart E. Nacke

Background. Understanding how sound functions on informational and emotional levels within video games is critical to understanding player experience of games. User interface sounds, such as player-character health, are a pivotal component of gameplay across many video game genres, yet have not been studied in detail. Method. To address this research gap in user interface sounds, we present two studies: The first study examines the impact of the presence or absence of player-health sounds on player experience. The second study explores the impact of the types of sound used to indicate player health. We use mixed methods with qualitative and physiological measures. Results. Our results reveal that despite the presence of visual cues, sound is still important to game design for conveying health-related information and that the type of sound affects player experience.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md Anwarul Azim Majumder ◽  
Sayeeda Rahman ◽  
Ahbab Mohammad Fazle Rabbi ◽  
Palash Das

South East Asia Journal of Public Health (SEAJPH) is a Bangladesh-origin, open access and peer reviewed international journal. This study conducted a bibliometric analysis of papers published in the SEAJPH from 2011 to 2015 using data extracted from the Bangladesh Journal Online database. Five volumes (which include eight issues) with a total of 108 papers were included in the analysis. The highest number of papers were published in 2012 and the average number of papers published per year was 21.6. More than 58% of published papers were original research, followed by short communications (12.96%).The highest proportion of papers were published during the study period by single authors (20.37%) or three authors (20.37%), followed by double authors (19.44%). he maximum of average authors/article was found to be 4 in the year 2011, and the minimum was 2.6 in the year 2015. The degree of collaboration in SEAJPH is approximately 0.80, and the collaboration was consistently high every year (ranges from 0.74 to 0.87). The maximum number of papers was published by professionals from India (35.16%), followed by Bangladesh (25%) and the UK (13.89%). Timely and accurate evidence-based information from health-related research/publications provide the extent and burden health problems/challenges of countries and regions. AS the SAARC region has the greatest total disease burden of any region in the world and relevant public health research and dissemination/collaboration of findings is crucial to alleviate this burden. The SEAJPH is successful in this regard. However, the journal needs indexing to popular search engines (e.g. PubMed) to attract global researchers and eventually lead to an increase in the citation of the papers.South East Asia Journal of Public Health Vol.5(1) 2015: 51-54


Author(s):  
Lawrence T. Brown ◽  
Ashley Bachelder ◽  
Marisela B. Gomez ◽  
Alicia Sherrell ◽  
Imani Bryan

Academic institutions are increasingly playing pivotal roles in economic development and community redevelopment in cities around the United States. Many are functioning in the role of anchor institutions and building technology, biotechnology, or research parks to facilitate biomedical research. In the process, universities often partner with local governments, implementing policies that displace entire communities and families, thereby inducing a type of trauma that researcher Mindy Thompson Fullilove has termed “root shock.” We argue that displacement is a threat to public health and explore the ethical implications of university-led displacement on public health research, especially the inclusion of vulnerable populations into health-related research. We further explicate how the legal system has sanctioned the exercise of eminent domain by private entities such as universities and developers.Strategies that communities have employed in order to counter such threats are highlighted and recommended for communities that may be under the threat of university-led displacement. We also offer a critical look at the three dominant assumptions underlying university-sponsored development: that research parks are engines of economic development, that deconcentrating poverty via displacement is effective, and that poverty is simply the lack of economic or financial means. Understanding these fallacies will help communities under the threat of university-sponsored displacement to protect community wealth, build power, and improve health.


Author(s):  
Vishwali Mhasawade ◽  
Anas Elghafari ◽  
Dustin T. Duncan ◽  
Rumi Chunara

Online social communities are becoming windows for learning more about the health of populations, through information about our health-related behaviors and outcomes from daily life. At the same time, just as public health data and theory has shown that aspects of the built environment can affect our health-related behaviors and outcomes, it is also possible that online social environments (e.g., posts and other attributes of our online social networks) can also shape facets of our life. Given the important role of the online environment in public health research and implications, factors which contribute to the generation of such data must be well understood. Here we study the role of the built and online social environments in the expression of dining on Instagram in Abu Dhabi; a ubiquitous social media platform, city with a vibrant dining culture, and a topic (food posts) which has been studied in relation to public health outcomes. Our study uses available data on user Instagram profiles and their Instagram networks, as well as the local food environment measured through the dining types (e.g., casual dining restaurants, food court restaurants, lounges etc.) by neighborhood. We find evidence that factors of the online social environment (profiles that post about dining versus profiles that do not post about dining) have different influences on the relationship between a user’s built environment and the social dining expression, with effects also varying by dining types in the environment and time of day. We examine the mechanism of the relationships via moderation and mediation analyses. Overall, this study provides evidence that the interplay of online and built environments depend on attributes of said environments and can also vary by time of day. We discuss implications of this synergy for precisely-targeting public health interventions, as well as on using online data for public health research.


BMJ Open ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. e022931 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Taylor ◽  
Claudia Pagliari

IntroductionThe rising popularity of social media, since their inception around 20 years ago, has been echoed in the growth of health-related research using data derived from them. This has created a demand for literature reviews to synthesise this emerging evidence base and inform future activities. Existing reviews tend to be narrow in scope, with limited consideration of the different types of data, analytical methods and ethical issues involved. There has also been a tendency for research to be siloed within different academic communities (eg, computer science, public health), hindering knowledge translation. To address these limitations, we will undertake a comprehensive scoping review, to systematically capture the broad corpus of published, health-related research based on social media data. Here, we present the review protocol and the pilot analyses used to inform it.MethodsA version of Arksey and O’Malley’s five-stage scoping review framework will be followed: (1) identifying the research question; (2) identifying the relevant literature; (3) selecting the studies; (4) charting the data and (5) collating, summarising and reporting the results. To inform the search strategy, we developed an inclusive list of keyword combinations related to social media, health and relevant methodologies. The frequency and variability of terms were charted over time and cross referenced with significant events, such as the advent of Twitter. Five leading health, informatics, business and cross-disciplinary databases will be searched: PubMed, Scopus, Association of Computer Machinery, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts, alongside the Google search engine. There will be no restriction by date.Ethics and disseminationThe review focuses on published research in the public domain therefore no ethics approval is required. The completed review will be submitted for publication to a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary open access journal, and conferences on public health and digital research.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 95-97
Author(s):  
Jeevan Bhatta ◽  
Sharmistha Sharma ◽  
Shashi Kandel ◽  
Roshan Nepal

Social media is a common platform that enables its users to share opinions, personal experiences, perspectives with one another instantaneously, globally. It has played a paramount role during pandemics such as COVID-19 and unveiled itself as a crucial means to communicate between the sources and the individuals. However, it also has become a place to disseminate misinformation and fake news rapidly. Infodemic, a plethora of information, some authentic some not makes it even harder to general people to receive factual and trustworthy information when required, has grown to be a major risk to public health and social media is developing as a trendy platform for this infodemic. This commentary aims to explore how social media has affected the current situation. We also aim to share our insight to control this misinformation.  This commentary contributes to evolving knowledge to counter fake news or health-related information shared over various social media platforms.


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