Using a 3 stage process to create a consumer research contact list in a paediatric health setting: the PARTICIPATE project

The impact of child health research can be far reaching; affecting children’s immediate health, their adult health, the health of future generations and the economic wellbeing of countries. Consumer and community involvement is increasingly recognised as key to successful research recruitment. Systematic approaches to research recruitment include research registries or research contact lists. Objective Develop a process of creating a consumer research contact list for participating in future research opportunities at a children’s health service. Methods A healthcare improvement approach using a 3 stage framework; 1) evidence review and consultation 2) co-production of a research communications plan with stakeholders (including consumers), including a draft research information brochure 3) prototyping involved iteratively testing the brochure, surveying parents or carers who attended outpatient clinics or the hospital Emergency Department, and conducting follow up telephone calls. Results There was overall support for the creation of a research contact list, but some unknowns remain. 367 parents or carers completed the survey and 36 participated in a follow up telephone call. Over half would be willing to join a research contact list and more than 90% of the children of parents or carers surveyed were not currently participating in research. Several potential barriers identified by health service staff were dispelled. Research communications and a future contact list should be available in electronic form. Conclusions There was strong support for creating a research contact list. The approach will inform our future directions including creation of an electronic research contact list easily accessible by consumers of the children’s health service. Plain English Summary Recruiting enough children to participate in research studies can be challenging. Establishing a registry or list of young people willing to be contacted to participate in research is one way of addressing this problem. At our children’s health service, we wanted to explore the idea of developing a research contact list and we were particularly keen to involve consumers and community members in this process, which involved: 1.Reviewing other examples of research contact lists and consulting with a range of people, including consumers and community members, 2. Co-producing a research communications plan with parents, young people, health service staff and research staff, including a draft research information brochure for families, and 3. Testing the acceptability of the brochure by surveying parents or carers who attended outpatient clinics or the hospital Emergency Department, and conducting follow up telephone calls with them. 367 parents or carers completed a survey and 36 participated in a follow up telephone call. Over half were willing to join a research contact list and more than 90% of the children of parents or carers surveyed were not currently participating in research. Several potential barriers raised by consumers and health professionals in the first stage of the project were not found to be a concern for the parents or carers surveyed. Responses showed research communications and a future contact list should be available in electronic form. These findings will inform the future creation of an electronic research contact list, easily accessible by consumers of the children’s health service.

Forensic analysis of open-source XMPP/Jabber multi-client instant messaging apps on Android smartphones

In the quest for a panacea to ensure digital privacy, many users have switched to using decentralized open-source Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol multi-client instant messaging (IM) apps for secure end-to-end communication. In this paper, we present a forensic analysis of the artefacts generated on Android smartphones by Conversations and Xabber apps. We identified databases maintained by each app and external Secure Digital card directories that store local copies of user metadata. We analysed each app’s storage locations for forensic artefacts and how they can be used in a forensic investigation. The results in this paper show a detailed analysis of forensic files of interest which can be correlated to identify the local user’s multiple IM accounts and contact list, contents of messages exchanged with contacts, deleted files, time, and dates in the order of their occurrence. The contributions of this research include a comprehensive description of artefacts, which are of forensic interest, for each app analysed.

Evidence Review, Co-Production and Prototyping A Process of Creating a Consumer Research Contact List in a Paediatric Health Setting: The PARTICIPATE Project

The impact of child health research can be far reaching; affecting children’s immediate health, their adult health, the health of future generations and the economic wellbeing of countries. Consumer and community involvement is increasingly recognised as key to successful research recruitment. Systematic approaches to research recruitment include research registries or research contact lists. Objective: Develop a process of creating a consumer research contact list for participating in future research opportunities at a children’s health service.Methods: A healthcare improvement approach used a 3 stage framework; 1) evidence review and consultation 2) co-production of a research communications plan with stakeholders and consumers, including a draft research information brochure 3) prototyping involved iteratively testing the brochure, surveying parents or carers who attended outpatient clinics or the hospital Emergency Department, and conducting follow up telephone calls.Results: There was overall support for the creation of a research contact list, but some unknowns remain. 367 parents or carers completed the survey and 36 participated in a follow up telephone call. Over half were willing to join a research contact list and more than 90% of the children of parents or carers surveyed were not currently participating in research. Several potential barriers identified by stakeholders were dispelled. Research communications and a future contact list should be available in electronic form.Conclusions: There was strong support for creating a research contact list. The co‑production approach will inform our future directions including creation of an electronic research contact list easily accessible by consumers of the children’s health service

Security Challenges in Android mHealth Apps Permissions: A Case Study of Persian Apps

Introduction: In this study, Persian Android mobile health (mhealth) applications were studied to describe usage of dangerous permissions in health related mobile applications. So the most frequently normal and dangerous permissions used in mhealth applications were reviewed.Materials and Methods: We wrote a PHP script to crawl information of Android apps in “health” and “medicine” categories from Cafebazaar app store. Then permission information of these application were extracted.Results: 11627 permissions from 3331 studied apps were obtained. There was at least one dangerous permission in 48% of reviewed apps. 41% of free applications, 53% of paid applications and 71% of in-purchase applications contained dangerous permissions. 1321 applications had writing permission to external storage of phone (40%), 1288 applications had access to read from external storage (39%), 422 applications could read contact list and ongoing calls (13%) and 188 applications were allowed to access phone location (5%).Conclusion: Most of Android permissions are harmless but significant number of the apps have at least one dangerous permission which increase the security risk. So paying attention to the permissions requested in the installation step is the best way to ensure that the application installed on your phone can only access what you want.

Contact tracing: a lesson from the Nipah virus in the time of COVID-19

Without a vaccine or proven therapeutic options in COVID-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a combination of measures: rapid diagnosis and immediate isolation of cases; rigorous contact tracing; and precautionary self-isolation of close contacts to curb the spread of COVID-19. During a Nipah outbreak in Kerala, India in 2019, it was confined to a single case. The authors were involved in the in-hospital contact tracing. With a single patient producing a contact list of 98 in a healthcare setting, the implications in a community setting during a pandemic of the scale of COVID-19 are huge but it proves that early and rigorous tracing with quarantining is an effective strategy to limit clusters. We believe that if the public is encouraged to maintain their own contact list on a daily basis, it would help in significantly reducing the time and effort invested into contact tracing in the event of a person contracting COVID-19.

Networking with Sources

This chapter investigates the labor of networking with sources. News fixers indicate that their networks of potential interviewees are perhaps the most lucrative thing they can offer a visiting reporter. Because of this, they spend years cultivating trust with a variety of contacts, some of whom are dangerous people to displease. Parachute journalists might try to buy fixers’ local contacts, showing little regard for the years of emotional labor that led the fixers to build trust with people who might pose a threat to both the journalist and the fixer. Once the journalist arrives and the news fixer draws upon his or her contact list, another problem emerges: the fixer must ensure that the client does not upset the valuable contact by showing cultural ignorance or insensitivity. This can become a complicated dance of playing to both sides, something that many of my interviewees say is necessary in order to keep the contact for future jobs, while also helping the journalist get the interviews needed to tell the story.

Dentists’ Awareness of Physical Therapy in the Treatment of Temporomandibular Disorders: A Preliminary Study

Background. Physical therapy (PT) has been shown to be one of the most effective conservative treatments for temporomandibular disorders (TMD). Not all dentists are aware of the importance of the collaboration with physical therapists in the treatment of TMD pain.Objectives. To determine the awareness of dentists in Florida about the importance of PT for TMD pain and to create awareness related to collaborations.Methods. An online questionnaire was used. A contact list of dentists was obtained from the Florida Dental Association. The overall awareness and information on patient referral were presented per dentist specialty.Results. A total of 256 dentists completed the survey. Prior to the survey, 41% of the dentists reported not aware that PTs can treat TMD patients. Oral surgeons and orthodontists were more aware about PT compared to other specialties. After the survey, 81% of the dentists were more likely to refer their TMD patients to PT, and 80% were interested to know more about the benefits of collaborations.Conclusion. This study shows the lack of dentists’ awareness in Florida about the benefits of PT for TMD treatment. This study increased the awareness of the surveyed dentists in Florida about the benefit from a multidisciplinary approach.