Life-Ecology Integrated Security in Building a Global Community of Health for Human Beings

The sudden onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic brought people the most serious global public health emergency since the end of World War II. Posing a threat to human survival and development, the pandemic has given prominence to global issues concerning life safety and ecological security and triggered studies on their integrated advancement. Only by fully understanding the importance and urgency of the life-ecology integrated security and establishing the new idea, new strategy, new plan, and basic path can we survive deadly emergencies, build a community with a shared future and health for all, and jointly contribute to and share the benefits of a safe, healthy and beautiful world with common prosperity, long-lasting peace and stability of humanity.     

Examining college students' food security coping strategies and experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic

College students' food situations may have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which could have affected their health and well-being. However, little is known about how the pandemic impacted students' food experiences and how students coped with food-related disruptions, particularly from the student's own perspective. This study reviews data from 571 undergraduates who attended public colleges during Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 and wrote a narrative about the pandemic's impact on their food experiences. Most students indicated they experienced a wide range of food difficulties and adapted new food practices. Despite these challenges, students emphasized proactive coping strategies and positive pandemic outcomes rather than difficulties and negative outcomes. These findings have implications for students' long-term health and well-being.     

COVID-19 Pandemic: Applying a Multisystemic Lens

The COVID-19 pandemic has a pervasive effect on all aspects of family life. We can distinguish the collective societal and community effects of the global pandemic and the risk and disease impact for individuals and families. This paper draws on Rolland’s Family Systems-Illness (FSI) model to describe some of the unique challenges through a multisystemic lens. Highlighting the pattern of psychosocial issues of COVID-19 over time, discussion emphasizes the evolving interplay of larger systems public health pandemic challenges and mitigation strategies with individual and family processes. The paper addresses issues of coping with myriad Covid-19 uncertainties in the initial crisis wave and evolving phases of the pandemic in the context of individual and family development, pre-existing illness or disability, and racial and socio-economic disparities. The discussion offers recommendations for timely family oriented consultation and psychoeducation, and for healthcare clinician self-care.     

Hyperbolic modeling and assessment of hypothetical health behaviors during a viral outbreak using crowdsourced samples

The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to investigate factors related to public response to public health measures, which could help better prepare implementation of similar measures for inevitable future pandemics. To understand individual and environmental factors that influence likelihood in engaging in personal and public health measures, three crowdsourced convenience samples from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) completed likelihood-discounting tasks of engaging in health behaviors given a variety of hypothetical viral outbreak scenarios. Experiment 1 assessed likelihood of mask wearing for a novel virus. Experiment 2 assessed vaccination likelihood based on efficacy and cost. Experiment 3 assessed likelihood of seeking health care based on number of symptoms and cost of treatment. Volume-based measures and three-dimensional modeling were used to analyze hypothetical decision making. Hypothetical public and personal health participation increased as viral fatality increased and generally followed a hyperbolic function. Public health participation was moderated by political orientation and trust in science, whereas treatment-seeking was only moderated by income. Analytic methods used in this cross-sectional study predicted population-level outcomes that occurred later in the pandemic and can be extended to various health behaviors.     

In this together: Psychological wellbeing of foreign workers in the United Arab Emirates during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated infection prevention and control measures (e.g. quarantine, lockdown and isolation), have had an adverse impact on mental health. To date, the mental health status and challenges of foreign workers during the pandemic have been neglected in the literature. This cross-sectional web-based survey assessed levels of post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety and insomnia among an international sample of foreign workers (n = 319) resident in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The majority of participants were female (76%), European (69%) and highly educated (83% had a bachelor's or higher degree). Results indicate high rates of post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and insomnia, especially among women, younger individuals, and those with a previous diagnosis of a psychological disorder. Additionally, foreign workers' perceptions of pandemic severity in their home nations (mild, moderate, severe) were positively correlated with their symptom levels of depression, anxiety and insomnia. Overall, these findings may help inform future public mental health strategy and pandemic preparedness plans with reference to safeguarding the psychological wellbeing of foreign workers.     

Responding to the Psychological Needs of Health-Care Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Case Study from the Medical College of Wisconsin

With the advent of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, health-care workers have been faced with an inordinately high level of trauma as frontline providers. The Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) partnered with affiliate hospitals and community partners to mobilize a matrix of available support and interventions to deliver psychological services to reach all levels of health-care providers in timely, accessible formats. While virtual peer support groups were the most utilized resource among the support group options, other opportunities also provided unique benefits to learners whose education had been disrupted by the pandemic. Mental health must be prioritized for health-care workers in the event of future public health crises. Lessons learned from this pandemic indicate that it is critical to involve learners early on in the process in order to meet their educational needs and to increase access to evidence-based care.

     

Guns,germs, and public history: A conversation with Jennifer Tucker

In this wide‐ranging conversation, historians David Serlin (UC San Diego) and Jennifer Tucker (Wesleyan University) discuss the role of material culture and visual media in shaping how museums communicate histories of science and technology. Tucker describes recent a public history project focused on 19th‐century histories of firearms and gun regulation in light of contemporary debates about the Second Amendment “right to bear arms.” Serlin and Tucker conclude by speculating about possible curatorial directions for a future public history exhibit focused on the social and cultural impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic during 2020.     

Excessive Worrying as a Central Feature of Anxiety during the First COVID-19 Lockdown-Phase in Belgium: Insights from a Network Approach

Since the WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020, the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has profoundly impacted public health and the economy worldwide. But there are not the only ones to be hit. The COVID-19 pandemic has also substantially altered mental health, with anxiety symptoms being one of the most frequently reported problems. Especially, the number of people reporting anxiety symptoms increased significantly during the first lockdown-phase compared to similar data collected before the pandemic. Yet, most of these studies relied on a unitary approach to anxiety, wherein its different constitutive features (i.e., symptoms) were tallied into one sum-score, thus ignoring any possibility of interactions between them. Therefore, in this study, we seek to map the associations between the core features of anxiety during the first weeks of the first Belgian COVID-19 lockdown-phase (n = 2,829). To do so, we implemented, in a preregistered fashion, two distinct computational network approaches: a Gaussian graphical model and a Bayesian network modelling approach to estimate a directed acyclic graph. Despite their varying assumptions, constraints, and computational methods to determine nodes (i.e., the variables) and edges (i.e., the relations between them), both approaches pointed to excessive worrying as a node playing an especially influential role in the network system of the anxiety features. Altogether, our findings offer novel data-driven clues for the ongoing field’s larger quest to examine, and eventually alleviate, the mental health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Goal disruption during COVID-19: Reimagining goals during a global pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major source of professional and personal disruption and has had both direct and downstream consequences on almost every aspect of peoples' lives, including their personal goal pursuits. In the face of unexpected hardships and obstacles, people have had to find new paths to goal achievement. In the present work, we examined whether difficulty adjusting goal pursuit during the global disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic is related to negative affective, cognitive, and behavioral goal-related outcomes. Across two studies, we found that people who had more difficulty adjusting their goal pursuit during the pandemic experienced more negative feelings toward their goals, were less satisfied with the status of their goals, and were less likely to actually achieve their goals. Moreover, individual differences in planning tendencies, need for predictability, general adaptability, and perceived pandemic disruption were related to more difficulty adjusting goal pursuit. This work demonstrates the importance of flexibility in the face of setbacks and obstacles, especially during times of disruption and uncertainty.     

The motivations for using bike sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Insights from Lisbon

Urban mobility has been severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, with public transport (PT) particularly affected due to infection risks and fears. The promotion of alternative modes of transport such as bike sharing systems (BSS) has gained a new drive as a possible way of providing an alternative to PT and limit a potential surge in private car use.In this study, we provide insights on the motivations for using bike sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic through a survey to the BSS users of Lisbon (entitled GIRA). Before the coronavirus pandemic, the most influential motivations were those connected to the BSS’ Service Coverage & Quality (such as the convenient location of BSS stations near the users’ destinations or the availability of shared e-bikes) as well as to the Personal Interests & Well-being of BSS users (namely the pleasure of cycling as well as the perceived environmental and health benefits). With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, although the motivations of Service Coverage & Quality continue to be the most valued by respondents, the motivations associated with using BSS to avoid PT and to maintain a social distance during the trip are now as important as the motivations linked to Personal Interests & Well-being. Furthermore, new users who have joined bike sharing during COVID-19 give more importance to the Social Influence (such as seeing other people using the system or the influence of their social circle) comparatively to those who were already users before the pandemic and continue to use BSS.This research provides evidence on the importance of bike sharing to the resilience of urban transport systems, particularly during disruptive public health crises. It supports that BSS should continue to operate during the coronavirus pandemic as such systems offer a transport alternative to PT that is perceived to be capable of preserving a physical distance.     

Associations between COVID-19-related disruptions and psychological adjustment in a sample of young adults

We examined the relations between disruptions experienced by young adults in the US during the COVID-19 pandemic and their psychological adjustment. An online sample (N = 180, M_age = 24.8) reported on the impact of the pandemic on their living arrangements, work status, and finances; their psychological adjustment overall and with specific reference to the pandemic; and whether they lived alone and, if living with others, there were children in the home. Results indicated a moderate association between financial strain and poor overall adjustment and a small association between job-related problems and sleep disruption. Women experienced negative effects of pandemic-related disruptions on their adjustment. Men were particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of financial strain. The results show the negative psychological effects of disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic on young adults' mental health.     

Attending to social vulnerability when rationing pandemic resources

Pandemic plans are increasingly attending to groups experiencing health disparities and other social vulnerabilities. Although some pandemic guidance is silent on the issue, guidance that attends to socially vulnerable groups ranges widely, some procedural (often calling for public engagement), and some substantive. Public engagement objectives vary from merely educational to seeking reflective input into the ethical commitments that should guide pandemic planning and response. Some plans that concern rationing during a severe pandemic recommend ways to protect socially vulnerable groups without prioritizing access to scarce resources based on social vulnerability per se. The Minnesota Pandemic Ethics Project (MPEP), a public engagement project on rationing scarce health resources during a severe influenza pandemic, agrees and recommends an integrated set of ways to attend to the needs of socially vulnerable people and avoid exacerbation of health disparities during a severe influenza pandemic. Among other things, MPEP recommends: 1. Engaging socially vulnerable populations to clarify unique needs and effective strategies; 2. Engaging socially vulnerable populations to elicit ethical values and perspectives on rationing; 3. Rejecting rationing based on race, socioeconomic class, citizenship, quality of life, length of life-extension and first-come, first-served; 4. Prioritizing those in the general population for access to resources based on combinations of risk (of death or severe complications from influenza, exposure to influenza, transmitting influenza to vulnerable groups) and the likelihood of responding well to the resource in question. 5. Protecting critical infrastructures on which vulnerable populations and the general public rely; 6. Identifying and removing access barriers during pandemic planning and response; and 7. Collecting and promptly analyzing data during the pandemic to identify groups at disproportionate risk of influenza-related mortality and serious morbidity and to optimize the distribution of resources.     

Majority world successes and European and American failure to contain COVID‐19: Cultural collectivism and global leadership

United Nations and World Health Organization data show a positive correlation, r = .53, p < .0001, N = 189, between COVID‐19 infection rates and the human development index (HDI). Less wealthy, less educated countries with lower life spans were also more successful in maintaining lower fatality rates, r = .46, p < .0001, N = 189 whereas 9 of the top‐10 countries in the world in per capita fatalities due to COVID‐19 were Western societies high in HDI. Similar positive correlations were found between COVID‐19 infection and fatality rates and a smaller sample of 76 countries measured on Schwartz intellectual autonomy (or individualism), and negative correlations of similar magnitude were found for embeddedness (or collectivism). East Asia was a global leader in preventing the spread of COVID‐19 because of a vigilant public concerned for public safety and compliant with public safety measures. African Union leaders coordinated their responses, and bought into a continent‐wide African Medical Supplies Platform that prevented panicked competition for scare supplies. Western global media and scholars have not paid attention to the successes of East Asia, Africa, and the South Pacific in fighting the pandemic. It is worth asking why this should be the case; understand the weaknesses of extreme individualism in fighting a pandemic requiring coordinated and unified public response, and consider the lessons for global scholars from the pandemic for doing research in the future.     

Positive Public Health Ethics: Toward Flourishing and Resilient Communities and Individuals

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global contagion of unprecedented proportions and health, economic, and social consequences. As with many health problems, its impact is uneven. This article argues the COVID-19 pandemic is a global health injustice due to moral failures of national governments and international organizations to prepare for, prevent and control it. Global and national health communities had a moral obligation to act in accordance with the current state of knowledge of pandemic preparedness. This obligation—a positive duty to develop and implement systems to reduce threats to and safeguard individuals’ and, communities’ abilities to flourish—stems from theories of global health justice and governance. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed and amplified the fragility and deficiencies in our global and domestic health institutions and systems. Moving forward, positive public health ethics is needed to set ethical standards for building and operating robust public health systems for resilient individuals and communities.     

COVID-19 lockdown anxiety harms newcomers' job satisfaction: A cross-lagged panel analysis during snap lockdowns in China

The COVID-19 pandemic may have been a difficult time to join a new organization. Drawing on the feelings-as-information theory, this study explores how COVID-19 lockdown anxiety influenced newcomers' job satisfaction during their first few months of work. We tested 357 new employees working in 84 cities across China. We conducted a longitudinal study, and participants were invited to complete the same survey at two time points. Cross-lagged panel analysis was conducted to test our hypotheses. We confirmed that COVID-19 lockdown anxiety at Time 1 predicted less job satisfaction at Time 2, whereas the data did not support the idea of reverse causality. These findings suggest public health crises like the pandemic can impact newcomers' job satisfaction, especially during China's Zero-Covid Policy.     

流行性感冒近期会大流行吗?

流行性感冒是为数不多的可能造成世界大流行的急性传染病之一。大流行的基础是人与动物的流感病毒相互接触与不断变异,在复制过程中基因重组而产生新的亚型,并侵袭对新亚型毫无抵抗力的人群,迅速蔓延而成大流行。大流行的结果是人群的高发病率与高致死率,对人类生命财产和社会经济发展带来灾难性打击。目前,H5N1亚型可能巳经具备了从禽鸟直接向人类传播的能力,流感大流行已向我们走来。面对威胁只有加强监测,力争在大流行来到之前,采取有科学依据的综合性措施,随时应对疫情先兆,方有可能遏制流行势头。     

Perceived risk of using shared mobility services during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused our daily routines to change quickly. The pandemic provokes public fear, resulting in changes in what modes of transport people use to perform their daily activities. It is imperative for transportation authorities to properly identify the different degrees of behavioral change among various social groups. A major factor that can substantially explain individuals’ behavioral changes is the personal risk perceptions toward using shared mobility solutions. Thus, this study explores the risk that individuals perceive while using public transit and ridesharing services (as the most widespread forms of shared mobility) during the COVID-19 pandemic. To do so, we designed and implemented a multidimensional travel-behavior survey in the Chicago metropolitan area that comprises socio-demographic information and retrospective questions related to attitudes and travel behavior before and during the pandemic. Utilizing a bivariate ordered probit modeling approach to better account for the potential correlation between unobserved factors, we simultaneously modeled the perceived risk of exposure to the novel coronavirus in case of riding transit and using ridesharing services. A wide range of factors is found to be influential on the perceived risk of using shared mobility services, including the socio-demographic attributes, built environment settings, and the virus spread. Further, our results indicate that the mitigation strategies to increase the ridership of shared mobility services should be adaptive considering the spatial variations.     

Overseas Filipino workers and the COVID-19 pandemic: Exploring the emotional labor of persistence

Without a doubt, the precarity of an overseas Filipino worker's (OFW) life is augmented by the COVID-19 pandemic, primarily through the economic and political consequences that such public health crises engender. However, while primarily seen in terms of their economic and political dimensions, these consequences also affectively disrupt the life of OFWs. In this paper, I trace the various conflicting ways that OFWs, who were terminated from their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, have dealt with their emotions while still in their respective host countries, and, trying to find a way to return home. Drawing from Arlie Hochschild (1983) concept of emotional labor, I argue that the OFWs perform what I am provisionally calling the emotional labor of persistence. This type of emotion work, though tied to, and enabled by the precarious conditions in which the respondents live, is a resistive and agential kind of emotional labor. It allows the OFWs to endure precarity, and in the process, find ways to elude, confront, or question the modes of thinking and feeling in which they are constantly circumscribed by the demands of their overseas work and overall precarious situation.     

Judging Public Health Research: Epistemology,Public Health and the Law

There are three broad ethical issues related to handling public health emergencies. They are the three R's—rationing, restrictions and responsibilities. Recently, a severe shortage of annual influenza vaccine in the US, combined with the threat of pandemic flu, has provided an opportunity for policy makers to think about rationing in very concrete terms. Some lessons from annual flu vaccination likely will apply to pandemic vaccine distribution, but many preparatory decisions must be based on very rough estimates. What ethical principles should guide rationing decisions, what data should inform these decisions, how to revise decisions as new data emerge, and how to implement rationing decisions on the ground are all important considerations. In addition, ethicists might be able to help policy makers think through the importance of international cooperation in surmounting global rationing dilemmas and to accept the inevitable responsibilities of government in making and implementing rationing decisions.