Rapid Scoping Review on the Topic of Ensuring Social Protection and Basic Services to Inform the United Nations Framework for the Immediate Socioeconomic Response to COVID-19.

This rapid scoping review has informed the development of the UN Research Roadmap for the COVID-19 Recovery on the topic of "Ensuring Social Protection and Basic Services." The aim was to provide a robust synthesis of key concepts and existing evidence drawn from a wide range of disciplines to support the identification and appraisal of research priorities. An emergent theme has been the notion that measures implemented in response to COVID-19 merely ameliorate symptoms of entrenched, systemic gender-, age-, and race-based inequity, inequality, and exclusion. Key findings include the critical role of contextual and community-based knowledge for informing the design, development, and delivery of programs, as well as the urgent need for implementation science to move existing knowledge into action. This review also describes how the disruption associated with "shock events" such as the COVID-19 pandemic is often associated with unusually high levels of interest and willingness to invest in programs and policies to strengthen strained systems. As such, an unprecedented window of opportunity exists to leverage measures implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to effect large-scale, sustainable change and thereby increase the resiliency of our interconnected systems for the future.

Understanding the decision to immunize: insights into the information needs and priorities of people who have utilized an online human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine decision aid tool.

SETTING: People in Alberta are more likely to seek information about cancer prevention online than they are to have this conversation with their primary care provider. As people turn to the internet to support health decision-making, it is critical that we improve the supportiveness of the virtual health setting for cancer prevention. INTERVENTION: In 2014, the Alberta Cancer Prevention Legacy Fund launched an online HPV Decision Aid Tool to support evidence-informed decision-making in response to suboptimal uptake of the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine. Google Analytics data from approximately 2000 recent interactions with this tool have yielded insights into the concerns that impact people's decision-making about the vaccine. OUTCOMES: Most users of this tool are adults interested in the vaccine for themselves (69%), rather than parents considering immunizing their children (31%). No differences were found in the information-seeking behaviour of parents of girls compared with parents of boys, suggesting that mental models among those who are considering the HPV vaccine may have shifted in recent years. Concerns differed by respondent; cost was the most important concern among adults (62.0%), while parents were most concerned about vaccine safety (61.5%). Only 23% of users asked "what is HPV", suggesting that many people in Alberta now have basic knowledge about the virus. IMPLICATIONS: Results provide a real-time "pulse" on knowledge and attitudes towards HPV immunization, which informs our approach to tailoring messaging with the aim of increasing vaccine uptake in Alberta. Outcomes will provide evidence needed to inform new interventions aimed at increasing HPV immunization rates.

RéSUMé: LIEU: Les gens de l'Alberta ont plus tendance à chercher des informations sur la prévention du cancer en ligne que d'en parler avec leur fournisseur de soins de premier recours. Comme les gens se tournent de plus en plus vers Internet pour éclairer leurs décisions en matière de santé, il est essentiel d'améliorer notre soutien aux milieux de soins virtuels de prévention du cancer. INTERVENTION: En 2014, le fonds spécial de l'Alberta pour la prévention du cancer (Alberta Cancer Prevention Legacy Fund) lançait un outil en ligne d'aide à la décision axé sur le VPH (virus du papillome humain) pour favoriser la prise de décisions éclairées par les données probantes, vu le recours sous-optimal au vaccin anti-VPH. Les données sur environ 2 000 interactions récentes avec cet outil, extraites au moyen de Google Analytics, ont offert un aperçu des préoccupations qui comptent dans les décisions des gens au sujet du vaccin. RéSULTATS: La plupart des utilisateurs de l'outil sont des adultes que le vaccin intéresse pour eux-mêmes (69 %) plutôt que des parents qui songent à faire vacciner leurs enfants (31 %). Aucune différence n'a été constatée dans le comportement de recherche d'informations des parents de filles et des parents de garçons, ce qui indique que les modèles mentaux des personnes qui envisagent le vaccin anti-VPH pourraient avoir changé ces dernières années. Les préoccupations différaient selon les répondants; le coût était la préoccupation la plus importante chez les adultes en général (62 %), tandis que les parents s'inquiétaient surtout de l'innocuité du vaccin (61,5 %). Seulement 23 % des utilisateurs ont cherché « qu'est-ce que le VPH? ¼, ce qui donne à penser que beaucoup de gens en Alberta ont maintenant des connaissances de base sur le virus. CONSéQUENCES: Nos résultats permettent de prendre le « pouls ¼ en temps réel des connaissances et des attitudes à l'égard de l'immunisation contre le VPH, ce qui éclaire notre stratégie d'adaptation de nos messages en vue d'accroître le recours au vaccin en Alberta. Les résultats finaux fourniront les données probantes nécessaires pour éclairer de nouvelles interventions visant à accroître les taux d'immunisation contre le VPH.

CIHR Health System Impact Fellows: Reflections on "Driving Change" Within the Health System.

Learning health systems necessitate interdependence between health and academic sectors and are critical to address the present and future needs of our health systems. This concept is being supported through the new Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Health System Impact (HSI) Fellowship, through which postdoctoral fellows are situated within a health system-related organization to help propel evidence-informed organizational transformation and change. A voluntary working group of fellows from the inaugural cohort representing diversity in geography, host setting and personal background, collectively organized a panel at the 2018 Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research Conference with the purpose of describing this shared scholarship experience. Here, we present a summary of this panel reflecting on our experiential learning in a practice environment and its ability for impact.

Dying devotion: discerning the association between differential mortality from scarlet fever and religious affiliation among early Edmontonians (1893-1894).

Regarding the relationship between religious affiliation and patterns of differential mortality, many hold that any proxy for religion is hopelessly confounded, but that religiosity nevertheless certainly functions to benefit the health of the devout. Edmonton's scarlet fever epidemic (1893-1894) provides a counterexample to prevailing notions, in that religious affiliation is revealed as a risk-factor for this specific threat to health. Roman Catholic children were found to be at a significantly greater risk of dying from scarlet fever than were their counterparts from all other denominations combined, which is demonstrated as a direct corollary of religious affiliation.