Mar 19th, 2023 - To crack down on price gouging, proposed legislation in Missouri calls for allowing felony charges against healthcare staffing agencies that substantially raise their prices during a declared emergency. A New York bill includes a cap on the amount staffing agencies can charge healthcare facilities. And a Texas measure would allow civil penalties against such agencies. These proposed regulations...

Mar 18th, 2023 - COVID-19 has highlighted severe health inequities experienced by certain migrants. Despite evidence suggesting that migrants are at risk of under-immunisation, data are limited for migrants' COVID-19 vaccine uptake in England. We did a retrospective population-based cohort study on COVID-19 vaccination uptake in England. We linked the Million Migrant cohort (which includes non-EU migrants and r...

Mar 18th, 2023 - Food prepared out-of-home is typically energy dense and nutrient poor. Online food delivery services such as Just Eat and Deliveroo facilitate access to this food. The number of outlets accessible through these services reportedly increased in England during the COVID-19 pandemic, possibly exacerbating inequalities in access to unhealthy food. We investigated changes in online food outlet acces...

Mar 18th, 2023 - The percentage of people in Wales experiencing severe mental health issues more than doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, hundreds of people in Wales wait more than a year for help with their mental health. The EmotionMind Dynamic (EMD) programme is a six-session programme over 3 months involving self-reflective introspection, self-analysis, problem solving, goal setting, and act...

Mar 18th, 2023 - A Free School Meals (FSM) policy is a well recognised intervention for tackling food insecurity among children (up to the age 18 years) whose parents receive state benefits. National school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the need to rapidly adapt the delivery of FSM to protect the most disadvantaged children in the UK from increased food insecurity. A range of food assistance...

Mar 18th, 2023 - Despite increased focus on adolescence, young people's voices are often undervalued and underrepresented in inequalities research. Through exploring young people's perceptions of health and inequality, we might understand how public health interventions can be more effective and equitable. Engaging with youth through art enables self-expression on these complex and sensitive topics. This qualit...

Mar 18th, 2023 - UK policy makers have called for urgent action to reduce prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE), but evidence on what is effective is scarce. We aimed to identify, evaluate, and synthesise evidence on content, process aspects, and effectiveness of UK PAE prevention initiatives. We conducted a systematic search of published and grey literature on UK PAE prevention (PROSPERO: CRD42020209460); consultati...

Mar 18th, 2023 - Gender-based violence is an important public health issue that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Survivors often face barriers when seeking support for mental health and wellbeing and some find therapeutic value in creative arts. We aimed to explore how women with experiences of abuse used art during the pandemic to support mental health and wellbeing. In two small, exploratory, qu...

Mar 18th, 2023 - The COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on cancer services and will have likely led to delayed early detection and diagnosis. In response, the Irish Cancer Society (ICS) planned and delivered seven cancer roadshow events run on 15 days across seven shopping centres in four deprived areas based on Trinity National Deprivation Index, 2016, in Limerick, Cork, Waterford and Dublin regions in Ir...

Mar 18th, 2023 - The COVID-19 pandemic had direct and indirect effects on health. Indirect effects on long term medical conditions (LTCs) are unclear. We examined trends in recorded incidences of LTCs and quantified differences between expected rates and observed rates from 2020 onwards. This is a population data linkage study using primary and secondary care data within the Secure Anonymised Information Linkag...

Mar 18th, 2023 - A decade of cuts to public services and the COVID pandemic have impacted the social infrastructure supporting connection and networking among communities. Although UK Levelling Up agendas advocate investment in physical infrastructure for economic prosperity, there are calls for a greater focus on the creation of community-led social infrastructure to address growing public health concerns, suc...

Mar 18th, 2023 - Children younger than 5 years living in temporary accommodation due to homelessness (U5TA) are extremely vulnerable to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Few qualitative studies have examined provider perspectives in family homelessness, but none focused on U5TA specifically. We aimed to qualitatively explore professionals' perspectives of pandemic-related challenges and barriers experienced...

Mar 18th, 2023 - Interdisciplinary interventions for school-based mental health promotion (SBMHP) for adolescents (10-19 years old) provide a unique opportunity to address the urgent mental health needs across this population. EspaiJove.net, a SBMHP programme, has delivered mental health workshops to over 24118 adolescents in Barcelona, Spain, since 2012. This study aimed to explore the perspectives from profes...

Mar 18th, 2023 - Despite sexual wellbeing representing a potential component of the overall wellbeing of individuals, its relationship to indoor soundscape has not been investigated. The aim of this study was to identify acoustic-related variables linked to sexual wellbeing during the COVID-19 lockdown; the mechanisms through which those variables exert an influence; and the components of an ideal indoor sounds...

Mar 18th, 2023 - Increasingly, climate change policies are emerging across Europe. Policies addressing adaptation (adjusting the effects of climate change on public health) are being implemented after the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to identify issues in climate adaptation implementation for public health and understand the health implications from responses after COVID-19. Key informant interviews were ...

Mar 18th, 2023 - There is a need for a specific programme of engagement around COVID-19 vaccination with the Charedi Orthodox Jewish community in Stamford Hill, London, UK. We co-produced a live event for women on COVID-19 safety and vaccination and wider health topics to support vaccine uptake and improve awareness of health and wellbeing issues. For this qualitative analysis, we organised an event that was de...

Mar 18th, 2023 - The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people experiencing homelessness in multiple ways. The Everyone In initiative during 2020 was initially transformative in providing short-term accommodation for this group but was accompanied by major disruptions to treatment and support services. Understanding how these changes have affected health needs of people experiencing homelessness in the inner-city L...

Mar 18th, 2023 - The COVID19 pandemic revealed and deepened existing inequalities. These were exacerbated by institutional and interpersonal racism and poorly conceived public health messaging. As a result, people from minority ethnic backgrounds in the UK were disproportionately affected. We conducted a creative interdisciplinary session to support interactive reflection and discussion on these inequalities be...

Mar 18th, 2023 - The new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is raging worldwide. The administered vaccination has become a significant vehicle against the virus. Three hypotheses were made and required for validation: the number of vaccines administered is related to the country gross domestic product (GDP), vaccines can reduce the fatality rate (FR), and dashboards can present more meaningful informa...

Mar 18th, 2023 - Since coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreaks in December 2019 in Wuhan, almost no studies have systematically described drug-induced liver injury (DILI) in COVID-19 patients. This study aimed to assess the characteristics of liver test abnormality or liver injury in patients with COVID-19, and further to explore DILI in COVID-19 patients during hospitalization. It was a single-center ret...