Diabetes Apps: Information about COVID-19 and Risk Factors?

Background: Annually, there are 3.7 billion downloads of mobile health apps. There are 275.6 million smartphones in the US. Diabetes affects 34.2 million people and 88 million have prediabetes. Diabetes is a risk factor for COVID-19 and affects longterm health of the survivors. Other risk factors for COVID-19, include race and gender. There are also linguistic barriers to care in Diabetes and COVID-19. Both diabetes and COVID-19 have higher risks associated with race and ethnicity. With the pandemic, the US government, Google and Facebook, in March 2020, provided emergency grants for COVID-19 and dissemination of public education. Did the Diabetes apps meet this moment of public health crisis?. Purpose: Do Diabetes Apps provide information about COVID-19 and its risk factors? Methods: Using the search term “diabetes,” the top ten most downloaded android and iOS apps were assessed in the Google Play Store/Apple App Store, respectively. Inclusion criteria: 1) Android: Downloads > 100,000; iOS: Reviews > 300, star rating >4. Apple App store does not provide download information. 2) Free; 3) Ability to track health data: HbA1C, FBS; 4) Language Accessibility via in-app language settings. Results: In the Google Play Store(DROID), the top ten apps in descending order were: 1) mySugr, 2) Onetouch Reveal, 3) OneDrop Diabetes Management, 4) Diabetes: M, 5) Health2Sync - Diabetes Care, 6) Diabetes, 7) Ontrack Diabetes, 8) Blood Glucose Tracker, 9) Glucose Buddy Diabetes Tracker, and 10) Diabetes Connect. In the Apple App Store(iOS), the top ten apps in descending order were: 1) OneTouch Reveal, 2) Glucose Buddy Diabetes, 3) One Drop for Diabetes, 4) Glucose - Blood Sugar Tracker, 5) Blood Sugar Monitor by Dario, 6) mySugr, 7) Sugarmate, 8) DiabetesPal, 9) Diabetes:M, 10) Center Health - The Diabetes App. Of the 10 DROID apps: 0/10 had COVID symptom information in the app; 3/10 had a COVID statement; In-app language settings: 2/10 had Spanish and 1/10 had Chinese. Gender: 7/10 Droid apps. Race/Ethnicity: 0/10. Of the ten iOS apps: 0/10 had COVID symptom information in the app; 4/10 had a COVID statement (Only mySugr has CDC link for COVID information); In-app language settings: 1/10 had Spanish and 0/10 had Chinese settings. Gender: 9/10 Droid apps; 7/10 iOS apps, Race/Ethnicty:1/10. Conclusion: Of the top 20 diabetes apps, none had information about COVID-19 and its symptoms within the app. Also, the overall language accessibility is limited. Despite popularity of ehealth, physicians can continue to play an important role in public education about Diabetes and COVID-19 during this important time of the pandemic.

Parental strategies used in communication with their deaf infants

One way of increasing caregivers’ language accessibility when interacting with a deaf child is through visual communication strategies. By using both a longitudinal and cross-sectional approach, this study will reveal which strategies deaf and hearing parents prefer and implement in their daily communication with their deaf children. First, the interactions of one deaf and two hearing mothers with their deaf children were recorded over the course of 18 months starting when their children were 6 months of age. Second, interactions of 5 mothers and 5 fathers (i.e. each two deaf and three hearing) with their deaf children (24 months old) were analysed for implicit and explicit strategy-use. It indicated gender related differences and confirmed caregivers’ tendencies to rely on strategies closely related to the modality of their mother tongue. Finally, deaf parents outperformed the hearing parents in the duration of successful interaction moments with their deaf children.

A community-based public engagement with health experiment: Using English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) classes to empower immigrant communities with science

Our previous work with immigrant communities identified a lack of awareness of infections such as gut worm (helminth) infections in their countries of origin, and a lack of English language skills around medical and scientific terms. Furthermore, people from minority ethnic and linguistic backgrounds participate significantly less in public engagement with science practices or informal science learning activities. We suggest this may be due in part to their lack of language skills around scientific English. To start to address these issues of scientific language accessibility, we developed a bespoke set of English lessons that dealt with the theme of infection. A set of six lessons were delivered to adult learners from a variety of ethnic backgrounds in English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) classes. Feedback from students was positive, with students taking the opportunity to share their new knowledge with teachers, other students and their families. All students reported that they felt this would be invaluable to them in their everyday lives. We propose that developing programmes of this nature represents a potentially fruitful avenue for more-accessible public engagement with research and health education practices.

Are NCI-designated cancer centers websites linguistically accessible?

e18078 Background: The digital divide has shifted from disparities in internet access to disparities in content and design. Technology overlooks limited English proficient (LEP) patients, resulting in a lack of translated online content, possibly increasing disparities in cancer prevention, treatment and clinical trial participation. We sought to determine the language accessibility for the websites of the NCI-Designated CC. Methods: In January 2017, we performed a cross-sectional review of the language accessibility of NCI-Designated CC homepages using manual review and informatics methods (i.e., web scraping). Web scraping automates data extraction from online content. The primary outcomes were presence of translated content, number of languages available and method of translation defined as no translation, Google Translate (GT) or manual translation. Manual translation was categorized as limited (few phrases), moderate (1 webpage) or full ( > 1 webpage or entire site). We used logistic regression to assess the relationship between translated website content and CC county demographics: percent LEP, median income and percent of households with an internet subscription. We performed Spearman Rank Correlation by ranking translation effort: no translation, GT, limited, moderate and full translation. Results: Of 69 NCI-Designated CC websites, 54 (78.3%) were without translation, 12 (17.4%) were manually translated and 3 (4.3%) used GT. Of 12 manually translated websites, 6 had fully, 4 had moderate and 2 had limited translations. Of 16 languages offered, Spanish was the most common (100%), followed by Chinese (50%) and Arabic (33%). We found no significant increase in the odds of having a translated website as related to LEP population, median income or percent of households with internet subscription by CC county. There was no correlation between the translation effort and LEP population, internet subscription or median income by CC county. Conclusions: We found that most NCI-Designated CC offered no translations of their website content. Despite cancer health disparities and the increasing role of health technology, the NCI-Designated CC websites currently remain inaccessible to LEP patients.

Contextual factors in knowledge reuse

Purpose This paper aims to answer calls for more research on how contextual factors influence the effectiveness of knowledge reuse. Design/methodology/approach The findings are based on an in-depth case study conducted in the sales department of a large white goods company in Australia. Findings Six contextual factors identified include purpose, time pressure, language, accessibility, author and date. A mismatch in purpose between knowledge creation and reuse is most likely to reduce knowledge reuse effectiveness. Time pressures may lead to an increase in errors associated with search question definition as well as knowledge search and selection, while unfamiliar language is likely to lead to misinterpretations of content. Knowledge accessibility issues are of particular concern in time-sensitive situations. Authorship and creation date information may facilitate knowledge reuse by allowing consumers to filter unwanted knowledge. Originality/value This study contributes to knowledge management theory by providing an exploration of the ways in which contextual factors influence knowledge and reuse effectiveness, and of the possible relationships between those factors. The paper also provides knowledge management practitioners with tangible guidelines on how to increase the effectiveness of organizational knowledge reuse.

Language Accessibility in the Classroom: How UDL Can Promote Success for Linguistically Diverse Learners

This article provides an overview of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, which is based on brain-structure research and which incorporates multiple means of instruction, action and expression, and engagement. The article describes the relevance of this framework to linguistically diverse and culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners, and it provides a set of scenario-based examples of how UDL might help educators to implement effective instruction for a CLD learner in an inclusive setting. The paper makes additional suggestions for building on UDL principles to design linguistically accessible instruction for CLD learners.