Systematic Review on Information Technology Approaches to Evaluate the Impact of Public Health Campaigns: Real Cases and Possible Directions

Evaluating the success of a public health campaign is critical. It helps policy makers to improve prevention strategies and close existing gaps. For instance, Brazil's “Syphilis No!” campaign reached many people, but how do we analyze its real impact on population awareness? Are epidemiologic variables sufficient? This study examined literature on using of information technology approaches to analyze the impact of public health campaigns. We began the systematic review with 276 papers and narrowed it down to 17, which analyzed campaigns. In addition to epidemiological variables, other types of variables of interest included: level of (i) access to the campaign website, (ii) subject knowledge and awareness, based on questionnaires, (iii) target population's interest, measured from both online search engine and engagement with Social Network Service, and (iv) campaign exposure through advertising, using data from television commercials. Furthermore, we evaluated the impact by considering several dimensions such as: communication, epidemiology, and policy enforcement. Our findings provide researchers with an overview of various dimensions, and variables-of-interest, for measuring public campaign impact, and examples of how and which campaigns have used them.

Maximizing Completion of the Two-Dose COVID-19 Vaccine Series with Aid from Infographics

Two of the three COVID-19 vaccines approved in the United States require two doses to reach full efficacy, as do others available elsewhere in the world. The complete series of multidose COVID-19 vaccines offers stronger protection against infection by SARS-CoV-2 compared to single-dose injections with the same vaccines. Achieving perfect community-level adherence is a challenge in any public health campaign, even in non-pandemic times. Vaccines requiring multiple doses combined with a surge of vaccine hesitancy and misinformation that has been witnessed by the public during the COVID-19 pandemic are exacerbating the challenge of ensuring the world’s population achieves a sufficient level of immunity against COVID-19. Here, we describe the results of our study in which we sought to determine whether completion of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine regimen could be improved by disseminating infographics that explain what the vaccine is and why returning for the second dose is beneficial. Our results show that the proportion of COVID-19 vaccine recipients returning for a second inoculation grew after COVID-19 vaccine infographics were distributed to first-time vaccine recipients. We suggest that extending communication and outreach initiatives into the clinic positively influences the rate of follow-up visits, and that infographics are useful tools to aid and bolster the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines.

Public Awareness on Prevention Behavior of Coronavirus Disease-19 at North Sulawesi Indonesia

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus diseases (COVID)-19 outbreak around the world has prompted the government to urge its citizens to take precautionary measures to minimize the incidence of COVID-19, which has been continued to attack the world, including Indonesia. The pandemic has led to a massive global public health campaign to slow the spread of the virus by increasing hand washing, reducing face touching, wearing masks in public, and physical distancing. AIM: This study aims to analyze the sociodemographic relationship of knowledge, attitudes, and practices of preventing COVID-19. METHOD: This study was an analytic survey with a cross-sectional study design, conducted for 3 months with number of samples 356 people spared across four districts and cities in North Sulawesi Province. There are two types of data collection those are through Google forms and face to face questions. The studied variables are sociodemography as independent variables and knowledge, attitude, and behavior of COVID-19 prevention. Data were analyzed with Chi-square test. RESULTS: The result of study, only gender has a relationship toward people’s attitudes toward COVID-19 prevention with p = 0.046; while most of the variables, namely, age (0.333), education (0.085), occupation (0.152), and income (0.966), did not have a significant relationship with attitudes toward the prevention of COVID-19. Gender has a relationship toward people’s attitudes toward COVID-19 prevention with p = 0.046; while most of the variables, namely, age (0.333), education (0.085), occupation (0.152), and income (0.966), did not have a significant relationship with attitudes toward the prevention of COVID-19. Most of the variables had a significant relationship with prevention measures, including age (0.008), education (0.009), and occupation (0.038); and only the gender variable (0.895) and monthly income (0.077) had no statistical relationship. CONCLUSION: It is important for the government and society to take a role by becoming more concerned about the COVID-19 pandemic through wise steps to prevent and protect public health using all available resources.

Correction: Precision Public Health Campaign: Delivering Persuasive Messages to Relevant Segments Through Targeted Advertisements on Social Media (Preprint)

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Covid-19 #Takeresponsibility: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Select NCDC’s Online Public Health Advertising Campaign

This article examines the Nigerian Center for Disease Control’s (henceforth, NCDC) Covid-19 #TakeResponsibility online public health advertising campaign. This is with a view to exploring how the representational, interactive and compositional resources are realized in these advertising visuals as well as their communicative functions. Forty purposively selected data samples, which were subjected to qualitative analysis, are examined from a multimodal discourse analytical approach. The analysis reveals that the narrative, transactive, action, offer, and the frontal resources, among others, are realized in the adverts. These resources interactively perform the directive, informative, reinforcing, preventive, cautionary and collective functions. Thus, the representational, interactive and compositional resources deployed in the NCDC’s Covid-19 #TakeResponsibility online visuals discursively cohere as multimodal public health campaign strategies geared towards sensitizing the Nigerian populace on the safety guidelines to adhere to in containing the spread of Covid-19 in Nigeria.

Comparative Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude/Practices and Prevention of Lassa fever among Community Dwellers and Contacts of Confirmed Patients in Endemic Areas of Ondo State, Nigeria

Background: The current resurgence and transmission dynamics of Lassa fever (LF) within an endemic community in Nigeria calls for concern. Lassa fever virus is known to be transmitted from rodents to humans as well as from human to human. This study aims to compare the knowledge, attitude/practices and prevention of Community dwellers (CD) and Contacts of confirmed Lassa fever patients (CCP) with respect to LF in an endemic area in Nigeria. Methodology: This is a comparative cross-sectional study conducted between 2018 and 2019 during an outbreak of LF disease in Ondo State, Nigeria. A total of 250 consenting CD and 104 CCP were randomly selected to participate in this study. They were administered semi-structured questionnaires which were analysed using SPSSv23. Lassa fever disease causative agents, mode of transmission and prevention as well as actions on response to Lassa virus infections were assessed among respondents. Data were analysed and presented using descriptive statistics at 95% confidence interval and (p<0.05) level of significance. Results: The gender distribution for CD was 116 males and 134 females while for CCP, it was 43 males and 61 females. Furthermore, radio (CD= 55.8%, CCP= 20.8%) and public health campaign (CD= 40.4%, CCP= 26.5%) were the major sources of information on Lassa fever among respondents. A larger fraction of CCP (12.5%) erroneously believe mosquitoes are the mode of transmission of Lassa fever compared to CD (4.2%). Comparison also showed that higher proportion (60.6%) of CCP exhibits poor attitude/practices to Lassa fever infection compared to 4% of CD. Level of education for both CD and CCP respondents were statistically significantly associated with knowledge and prevention of Lassa fever. Conclusion: Comparatively, our study showed poor awareness on Lassa fever diseases, erroneous believes and need for positive attitudinal changes and practices towards LF prevention and control in affected communities. Keywords: Lassa fever, Lassa virus, Endemic area, Contact of Confirmed Patient, Community dweller.

Changes in handwashing and hygiene product usage patterns in Korea before and after the outbreak of COVID-19

Background The World Health Organization declared COVID-19, the disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. Non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing, handwashing, using hand sanitizer, and wearing facial masks are recommended as the first line of protection against COVID-19. Encouraging hand hygiene may be one of the most cost-effective means of reducing the global burden of disease. Methods This study uses a web-based questionnaire to evaluate the usage patterns and consumer perceptions of the effectiveness and health safety of bar soap, liquid hand soap, and hand sanitizer products before and after the spread of COVID-19. Results The results show that since the outbreak of COVID-19, the number of consumers who primarily use bar soap has decreased from 71.8 to 51.4%, the number of those who primarily use liquid hand soap has increased from 23.5 to 41.3%, and the number of those who use and carry hand sanitizer has increased. The frequency of use, duration of use, and amount used of all three products have increased significantly since the COVID-19 outbreak. Finally, consumer perception of the products’ preventive effect against COVID-19 is higher for liquid hand soap and hand sanitizer than it is for bar soap. Conclusions Because use of hand sanitizers has increased, public health guidelines must address the potential risks associated them. Our data also show that the public is abiding by the recommendations of the regulatory authorities. As handwashing has become important in preventing COVID-19 infections, the results of our study will support the development of better handwashing guidelines and a public health campaign.

From Contact Prevention to Social Distancing: The Co-Evolution of Bilingual Neologisms and Public Health Campaigns in Two Cities in the Time of COVID-19

This article investigates the evolution of social distancing terms in Chinese and English in two geographically close yet culturally distinct metropolitan cities: Hong Kong and Guangzhou. This study of bilingual public health campaign posters during the COVID-19 pandemic focuses on how the evolution of neologisms and linguistic strategies in public health campaigns adapts to different societal contexts. A baseline meaning of the re-purposed linguistic expressions was established according to the BNC corpus for English and the Chinese Gigaword Corpus for Chinese. To establish the link between linguistic expressions and public health events, we converted them to eventive structures using the Module-Attribute Representation of Verbs and added interpersonal meaning interpretations based on Systemic Functional Linguistics. The two cities are found to have taken divergent approaches. Guangzhou prefers “contact prevention” with behavior-inhibiting imperatives and high value modality. Conversely, the original use of “contact prevention” in Hong Kong was gradually replaced by the neologism social distancing in English, triggering competing loan translations in Chinese. In Hong Kong, behavior-encouraging expressions are predominantly used with positive polarity and varying modality and mood devices, which fluctuate to track the epidemic curve of COVID-19. We conclude that lexical evolution interacts with social realities. Different speech acts, prohibition in Guangzhou but advice and warning in Hong Kong, are constructed with a careful bilingual reconfiguration of eventive information, mood, modality, and polarity to tactfully address the social dynamics in the two cities.

Continuing Entomological Research During the Covid-19 Pandemic

In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the UK has experienced three national lockdowns and a public health campaign designed to stop the spread of the virus. The first national lockdown, starting in March 2020, led to the closure of university campuses, and laboratories having to pause practical research and move research student supervision online. During this time, laboratories had to develop way for research activities to resume whilst also complying with public health measures. The entomology group at Harper Adams University is in the Agriculture and Environment Department and forms part of the Centre for Integrated Pest Management. At present our group consists of seven staff members, ranging from early career researchers to those with over 20 years of experience in academia and industry, who collectively supervise 10 PhD students at varying stages of their research. Two of these students are completing their research at an external institute. The group carries out research across multiple sites, office buildings, research laboratories, including the Jean Jackson Entomology Laboratory (https://www.infraportal.org.uk/node/1880), as well as field and glasshouse facilities. Here we provide a narrative account of the challenges in maintaining an active research group during a year of highly restricted activities. We begin by outlining the impact that national lockdowns and public health measures had on researchers working on PhD projects through to larger UKRI and levy-funded multi-institute, multi-year projects. We address four key areas: i) maintaining productivity, ii) student-supervisor interactions, iii) accessibility and widening participation and iv) well-being and mental health. We then outline how lessons learnt from lockdown can inform best practice for a research group. Many aspects will be useful for researchers working part-time, flexible hours, remotely or at multiple sites, but we emphasise that the aim of this contribution is to share our personal experiences and not to cover every theme in what is an extremely complex set of global circumstances.