Perceptions of the Effect of COVID-19 on the Health of Mapuche Young Adults in Chile

Objective To elucidate the perceptions of young Chinese adults aged 18–25 toward adopting breastfeeding in public in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong), China. Methods A descriptive and exploratory study design was adopted. Participants were recruited by convenience sampling. Focus group data were collected from three semi-structured interviews. Responses from 18 participants were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim, coded, and analyzed using content analysis. Results Four themes emerged that described the young adults’ perceptions and barriers toward breastfeeding practices: (1) adaptability of self and others, (2) cultural deem and practice, (3) convenience and connection, and (4) education and advocacy. Interestingly, all respondents (male and female) are aware of the benefits of breastfeeding. Their negative perceptions toward breastfeeding initiation and continuation originate from factors that are essentially extraneous to the mother–infant dyads (such as the breadth and intensity of sociopolitical support, the dominant social beliefs and norms, and the inadequacy of breastfeeding education in adolescent years). Conclusions In general, the young adult's perception of breastfeeding is dominated by sociopolitical and cultural-related factors. In particular, sexualization of breasts as a deep-rooted belief in the Chinese context negatively affects young adults’ perceptions and limits their breastfeeding practices.

A cancer diagnosis is a traumatic event. Youths, in the most crucial stage in a person's life course, are more susceptible to the influence of cancer. The diagnosis disrupts the original life and time plans of young adults with cancer, resulting in a reconstruction of time perception and changes in coping strategies. The aim of this study was to explore the changes in time perception and coping strategies in young adults with cancer. A phenomenological research methodology was used in the qualitative study. Thirty-one young adults with cancer were recruited. Semistructured interviews were conducted with them, and the interview data were analyzed using Colaizzi's 7-step analysis method. The study revealed 3 themes related to changes in time perception: perceived alterations in the speed of time, changes in remaining available time, and shifts in time preferences. Five themes were identified regarding coping strategies for changes in time perception: self-regulation of emotions, establishing spiritual beliefs, planning time effectively, returning to family life, and closure of the inner self. Identifying changes in time perception among young adults with cancer through the speed of time, remaining available time, and time preference and guiding patients in adopting positive coping strategies can offer more effective cancer support and care for patients. Healthcare professionals should pay attention to the changes in time perception in young adults with cancer and guide them to cope positively.

Aging can reduce the specificity with which memory episodes are represented as distributed patterns of brain activity. It remains unclear, however, whether repeated encoding and retrieval of stimuli modulate this decline. Memory repetition is thought to promote semanticization, a transformative process during which episodic memory becomes gradually decontextualized and abstracted. Because semantic memory is considered more resilient to aging than context-rich episodic memory, we hypothesized that repeated retrieval would affect cortical reinstatement differently in young versus older adults. We reanalyzed data from young and older adults undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging while repeatedly viewing and recalling short videos. We derived trial-unique multivariate measures of similarity between video-specific brain activity patterns elicited at perception and at recall, which we compared between age groups at each repetition. With repetition, memory representation became gradually more distinct from perception in young adults, as reinstatement specificity converged downward toward levels observed in the older group. In older adults, alternative representations that were item-specific but orthogonal to patterns elicited at perception became more salient with repetition. Repetition transformed dominant patterns of memory representation away and orthogonally from perception in young and older adults, respectively. Although distinct, both changes are consistent with repetition-induced semanticization.

Amid Australia’s surging house prices, rental housing has become the safety net for young adults experiencing housing stress. The attention of policymakers is drawn towards the build-to-rent (BTR) housing model, a growing housing option for many young Australian adults. Although BTR’s integration into Australia’s housing and planning landscape is unfolding, the perception of young adults is lacking in policy reforms for this growing industry. This study examines the perspectives of young adults aged 18 to 34 years on the critical success factors (CSFs) of the BTR housing provision in Australia. The responses are analysed using an explanatory factor analysis, relative importance index, and ANOVA. Our findings show a critically low awareness of BTR among young adults in Australia. Respondents, between 18 and 24 years, are most concerned with public awareness, an indication of their desire for transparency and engagement in decision making at the policy level. Young adults rank regulation and government policy interventions as the most important CSF of BTR housing. This shows that they are more concerned about the affordability of BTR houses. This study concludes that young adults’ viewpoints on BTR are important in ongoing policy reforms. There is a need to ensure that this asset class is accessible and affordable to this target group.

COVID-19 disrupted critical public health services globally. It is important to understand how the pandemic affected healthcare service delivery and utilisation in Nigeria to guide planning for future public health crises in the country. This study aimed to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic affected health service delivery and utilisation in Nigeria. The study was conducted in Abuja, and Oyo State, Nigeria, in 2023. This was a cross-sectional qualitative study that adopted an exploratory study design. Key Informant Interviews were used to elicit information from twenty-eight healthcare stakeholders in relevant government health Ministries and Agencies as well as partners of the government on health. The selection of the stakeholders was done through purposive sampling. Recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim, and analysed using an inductive qualitative data analysis method to generate themes. The data were further organized and analysed using NVivo software version 14. The findings revealed that COVID-19 negatively affected healthcare service delivery and utilisation in Nigeria. This was due to various factors such as healthcare workers' unwillingness to provide services, exposed healthcare system gaps that affected service delivery, and the shift of attention and resources to COVID-19. However, the pandemic also presented an opportunity to improve public health infrastructure and health service delivery. Government needs to maximise the gains from the pandemic to build a resilient health system. This article provides insights for public health policy and planning aimed at enhancing resilience and optimising service delivery during future health crises.

Falls during walking are a leading cause of injuries across aging. Many of these falls are due to slips and trips. The ability to perceive disturbances to ongoing motion may play an important role in the control of walking balance. However, disturbance perception has been investigated in standing balance, but its role in walking balance due to slip- and trip-like disturbances remains largely unknown. Characterizing locomotor disturbance perception in young adults may lead to a more comprehensive understanding of sensorimotor walking balance control. This work defined locomotor disturbance perception in response to slip and trip-like disturbances in young adults. We demonstrate that young adults can perceive small locomotor disturbances. Since we found that young adults had an ability to perceive small slip and trip-like locomotor disturbances, we investigated the role of whole-body and local sensory feedback in perceiving these disturbances. We identified significantly increased deviations for perceived perturbations in sagittal-plane & frontal-plane whole-body angular momentum (WBAM), anteroposterior center of mass (CoM) position and velocity, and mediolateral CoM position, velocity, and acceleration. Because whole-body motion is not sensed directly but arises from integrating various sensory feedback signals, we also explored local III sensory feedback contributions to the perception of locomotor disturbances. We used novel kinematic analogues to estimate the local sensory feedback contributions. We found that our novel kinematic analogues for ankle and knee proprioception play a role in perceiving these disturbances in young adults. Based largely on these findings, we investigated the role of medial gastrocnemius muscle length changes play in perceiving locomotor disturbances. For trip-like disturbances, we identified significantly increased average and peak deviations in Achilles tendon and musculotendon unit length for perceived versus not perceived trials. However, there was no effect on the timing of the peak deviation. For slip-like disturbances, there was no significant effect for average deviation, peak deviation, or timing of the peak deviation for all musculotendon complex lengths between perceived versus not perceived disturbances. These results suggest that either tendon force or overall musculotendon unit length monitoring plays a role in perceiving locomotor disturbances. Since disturbance perception has been characterized and the role sensory feedback plays in disturbance perception for young adults, it should be evaluated in balance-impaired populations to determine shifts in sensorimotor control and the role it plays in fall risk.

Two experimental studies were conductedto investigate the malleability of memory and perception in young adults. One hundred and twenty four young adultsin the age range of 20–30 years participated in the studies. In Study 1, the classic misinformation paradigm was used, during which participants first viewed a video, and were then given misinformation about what they had viewed in the form of misleading questions. The visual reproduction sub-test of the WMS-R was administered to the participants, to look at the relationship between visual memory and the misinformation effect. In Study 2, the participants were divided into three groups, each receiving a set of questions that differed in their linguistic framing. The results showed that misleading questions were able to create false memories in young adults. It was also seen that better visual memory did not protect against the misinformation effect, though it did mildly indicate a lower memory lapse. There was also a change in perception of length of time between questions that used different adjectives.

Evidence exists for age-related decline in face cognition ability. However, the extents to which attentional demand and flexibility to adapt viewing strategies contribute to age-related decline in face cognition tests is poorly understood. Here, we studied holistic face perception in older (age range 65–78 years, mean age 69.9) and young adults (age range 20–32 years, mean age 23.1) using the complete design for a sequential study-test composite face task (Richler et al., 2008b). Attentional demand was varied using trials that required participants to attend to both face halves and to redirect attention to one face half during the test (high attentional demand), and trials that allowed participants to keep a pre-adjusted focus (low attentional demand). We also varied viewing time and provided trial-by-trial feedback or no feedback. We observed strong composite effects, which were larger for the elderly in all conditions, independent of viewing time. Composite effects were smaller for low attentional demand, and larger for high attentional demand. No age-related differences were found in this respect. Feedback also reduced the composite effects in both age groups. Young adults could benefit from feedback in conditions with low and high attentional demands. Older adults performed better with feedback only in trials with low attentional demand. When attentional demand was high, older adults could no longer use the feedback signal, and performed worse with feedback than without. These findings suggest that older adults tend to use a global focus for faces, albeit piecemeal analysis is required for the task, and have difficulties adapting their viewing strategies when task demands are high. These results are consistent with the idea that elderly rely more on holistic strategies as a means to reduce perceptual and cognitive load when processing resources are limited (Konar et al., 2013).

Has traditional medicine had its day? The need to redefine academic medicine

This cross-sectional study explored how the speechreading ability of adults with hearing impairment (HI) in China would affect their perception of the four Mandarin Chinese lexical tones: high (Tone 1), rising (Tone 2), falling-rising (Tone 3), and falling (Tone 4). We predicted that higher speechreading ability would result in better tone performance and that accuracy would vary among individual tones. A total of 136 young adults with HI (ages 18-25 years) in China participated in the study and completed Chinese speechreading and tone awareness tests. The participants were divided into three groups on their basis of their speechreading performance (HIGH, MIDDLE, and LOW speechreading ability), and their ability to recognize the four Mandarin tones was compared. HI adults with high speechreading ability identified tones more accurately than HI adults with low speechreading ability. The overall performance for Tone 2 was the lowest across all the groups. We found a significant interaction between speechreading ability groups and tone levels; the high speechreading ability group performed significantly better than the low ability group when identifying Tones 1 and 4, and performance on Tone 3 also differed by speechreading ability. These results suggest that speechreading ability affects Mandarin tone perception in adults with HI in China. Higher speechreading ability was associated with better overall tone perception. Tone 2 was the most difficult tone to identify, while identification of the other three lexical tones depended on speechreading ability. In visual language processing, adults with HI must reconstitute phonological units from visual and auditory fragments. To determine the generalizability of these results, they should be examined in languages beyond Mandarin Chinese. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.28207784.

The COVID-19 pandemic imposed unprecedented challenges on health care education, particularly for student nurses who found themselves navigating their professional training under crisis conditions. This study explores how the pandemic affected graduating student nurses' perceptions of their education and clinical experiences. Incorporating both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of student responses, the data reveals a significant change in their understanding of the nursing profession. A concerning 41% of students reported considered withdrawing from the nursing program due to the pandemic's impact on their education and mental well-being. The implications of this underscores the need for adaptive measures in nursing education and offer insights into fostering resilience in future health crises.

Background There is international recognition that cancer in young people is on the rise and that improvements in outcomes for young people lag well behind advances achieved for both children and older adults over the past 30 years. Cancer is the third leading cause of death in adolescents and young adults; however, little is known about how the end of life unfolds for those who die of the progressive disease. Objective This scoping review sought to locate and describe literature relating to end of life care for adolescents and young adults with cancer. Inclusion criteria Types of participants We considered studies that focused on adolescents and young adults aged 10-24 with advanced cancer at the end stage of life and those who care for them. Types of intervention(s)/ phenomena of interest We considered studies that focused on end-of-life care, including service provision, practices and interventions, and the experiences and perceptions of adolescents and young adults with advanced cancer and their health professionals and family carers. Types of studies We included all quantitative and qualitative research designs. Types of outcome The purpose of the review was to map existing literature on this topic and to identify what outcomes were being measured by current research. Search strategy A three-step search strategy was used in this review. Methodological quality This review is a scoping review to provide a broader picture of existing literature on this topic. Hence, assessment of methodological quality was not performed to exclude studies based on quality scores. Data collection Data was extracted using extraction tools from the Joanna Briggs Institute Meta-Analysis of Statistics Assessment and Review Instruments (JBI-MAStARI) and the Joanna Briggs Institute Qualitative Assessment and Review Instrument (JBI-QARI). Data synthesis The findings are presented in a narrative form including tables and figures to aid in data presentation where appropriate. Results Twenty studies published in English were included in this review. Research designs were mainly descriptive and retrospective using data from case notes or medical records (n=8) and focus groups (n=4). There was a single randomized controlled trial, four cross sectional surveys, two prospective cohort studies and one that used data from three studies to develop guidelines. Conclusion Relatively little research was located relating to experiences and perceptions of adolescents and young adults and their carers in relation to decision making and advanced care planning. The main focus of the research was medical record review and interviews with bereaved parents. Implications for practice The overall focus on retrospective data and the heterogeneous and descriptive nature of the studies limits the development of recommendations for practice. Encouraging adolescents and young adults to participate in decisions about their end of life care through the use of advance care planning documents, introduced at a suitable stage of their illness, appears to be an appropriate way forward. Implications for research Future research should focus specifically on adolescents and young adults at the end of life and consider both their perspective and that of their carers, particularly with regard to decision-making. Research should also focus on factors influencing appropriate place of death.

The use of tobacco has been on the rise globally including in India, posing a grave public health problem. Recently, tobacco use through hookah smoking has increased among young adults in India, Middle East, Southwest Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. Hookah prevalence of 0.4-15% has been reported in India. The aim of the study was to understand perception of hookah use among young adults in Mumbai. A total of 500 college students, with/without hookah habit, were given a self-administered questionnaire to indicate their perception of hookah use, using yes/no responses. The responses were analyzed in the users/non-users and considered significantly different at P < 0.05. Responses were received from 122 hookah users and 325 non-users. The perception of hookah use between users and non-users and males and females, showed significant differences (P < 0.05), with respect to hookah being injurious to health, causes cancer, is addictive, influence of a close friend, flavors, curiosity toward hookah use and willingness to prepare hookah at home. Whereas, differences in the groups perception of hookah as safer than cigarettes, harmful air quality, ambience, cool look and means of socializing, was not observed. The perception of young adults in Mumbai, toward hookah use, indicates an increased trend to use hookah. We recommend deterrents for hookah use by display of health warnings on hookah assembly and the tobacco products, implementation of government policies on hookah and tobacco use and punitive measures for offenders.

IntroductionIn Indonesia, a country with around 280 million people and the second-highest tuberculosis (TB) incidence rate in the world, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on TB care needs careful...

This study evaluates the prevalence of burnout among healthcare professionals (HCPs) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran and examines its association with key occupational stressors (workload, job control, and leadership communication). Furthermore, it proposes relevant organisational interventions for future pandemic preparedness. A cross-sectional survey of HCPs (N = 723) was conducted in four hospitals in Tehran during the third peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran, including the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory and items on perceived workload, job control, and leadership communication. The study found that 67.41% of HCPs reported substantial symptoms of burnout (moderate-to-high burnout, i.e. CBI ≥ 50), with a mean score of 59.6 points. The prevalence of burnout (CBI ≥ 50) was prominent across all three dimensions—personal, work, and patient-related—at 72.86%, 69.87%, and 65.37%, respectively. The analysis demonstrated significant associations between burnout and the three foundational workplace stressors. Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that frontline, female, and married HCPs reported the highest levels of burnout. This study provides practical implications for healthcare organisations and policy makers, highlighting the need for targeted organizational interventions that could mitigate burnout during ongoing and future health crises.