The association between HIV diagnosis disclosure and adherence to anti-retroviral therapy among adolescents living with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

INTRODUCTION: Nine in ten of the world's 1.74 million adolescents living with human immunodeficiency virus (ALHIV) live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Suboptimal adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) and poor viral suppression are important problems among adolescents. To guide intervention efforts in this regard, this review presented pooled estimates on the prevalence of adherence and how it is affected by disclosure of HIV status among ALHIV in Sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS: A comprehensive search in major databases (Excerpta Medica database (EMBASE), PubMed, Ovid/MEDLINE, HINARI, and Google Scholar) with additional hand searches for grey literature was conducted to locate observational epidemiologic studies published in English up to November 12, 2022 with the following inclusion criteria: primary studies that reported disclosure of HIV status as an exposure variable, had positive adherence to ART as an outcome, and conducted among adolescents and children. The COVIDENCE software was used for a title/abstract screening, full-text screening, the JBI quality assessment checklist, and data extraction. Random effects model was used to pool estimates. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis and subgroup analysis were also conducted by age groups and type of adherence measures used. RESULTS: This meta-analysis combines the effect estimates from 12 primary studies with 4422 participants. The prevalence of good adherence to ART was 73% (95% CI (confidence interval): 56 to 87; I2 = 98.63%, P = <0.001), and it was higher among adolescents who were aware of their HIV status, 77% (95% CI: 56 to 92; I2 = 98.34%, P = <0.001). Overall, knowledge of HIV status was associated with increased odds of adherence (odds ratio (OR) = 1.88, 95% CI: 1.21 to 2.94; I2 = 79.8%, P = <0.001). This was further supported in a subgroup analysis by age (seven studies, pooled OR = 1.89, 95% CI: 1.06 to 3.37; I2 = 81.3%, P = <0.0001) and whether primary studies controlled for confounding factors (six studies provided adjusted estimates, pooled OR = 2.61, 95% CI: 1.22 to 5.57; I2 = 88.1%, P = <0.001) confirmed this further. CONCLUSIONS: Our meta-analysis and systematic review revealed that knowledge of one's HIV status was associated with adherence to ART, particularly among adolescents. The findings underscored the importance of encouraging disclosure in order to enhance adherence among adolescents.

Effects of Emotional Regulation, Resilience, and Distress Disclosure on Post-Traumatic Growth in Nursing Students.

Nursing students, who need to reflect on self, secure their identity, and be prepared as would-be nurses, can make a good use of post-traumatic growth (PTG) that can function as a catalyst for positive change even amidst this COVID-19 crisis. Emotional regulation strategies in traumatic events are key factors for successful growth, resilience is positively associated with PTG, and distress disclosure is an important factor for stress reduction. In this context, this study is a descriptive research study to identify factors influencing the PTG of nursing students, using emotional regulation, resilience, and distress disclosure as the main variables. Data were collected from 231 junior and senior students of the nursing departments of two universities, and the collected data were analyzed using the t-test, the Mann-Whitney U test, ANOVA, the Scheffé test, Pearson's correlation coefficients, and stepwise multiple regression in SPSS/WIN 26.0. Analysis of the PTG scores of the nursing students by general characteristics revealed significant differences in PTG according to the transfer status, perceived health status, and levels of satisfaction with major, hybrid-learning class, interpersonal relationship satisfaction, and clinical practice. Factors influencing PTG were identified to be resilience, reappraisal among emotional regulation strategies, satisfaction with clinical practice, and transfer, with the overall explanatory power calculated at 44%. Based on the results of this study, it is necessary to consider resilience and reappraisal, which is a sub-variable of emotional regulation strategies, in order to develop programs designed to promote PTG of nursing students in the future.

21st Century Cures Act ONC Rule: Implications for Adolescent Care and Confidentiality Protections.

Ensuring the confidentiality and protection of health information is the standard of care for adolescents. In 2023 and beyond, the protection of personal health information is more critical than ever. The 21st Century Cures Act Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Rule, with its requirements for the broad sharing of electronic health information and ban on "information blocking," poses serious concerns for confidentiality in adolescent health care delivery. The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has rapidly increased the use of telehealth and, thereby, patient portal use for adolescent health records, increasing risks for disclosure. Understanding the legal and clinical underpinnings for confidential adolescent health services and the clinical challenges and health information technology limitations presented by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Rule is key to providing quality adolescent health services while implementing the Rule. A framework is presented to facilitate decision-making in individual cases by clinicians.

Using 10-K text to gauge COVID-related corporate disclosure.

During the pandemic era, COVID-related disclosure has become quite critical for shareholders and other market participants to understand the uncertainties and challenges associated with a firm's operation. However, there is no well-grounded and systematic measure to gauge the intensity of COVID-related disclosure and its plausible impact. Therefore, this study develops and validates various COVID-related disclosure measures. More specifically, using a sample of publicly listed U.S. firms and applying natural language processing (NLP) on 10-K reports, we have developed two types of COVID dictionaries (or COVID-related disclosure measurement tools): (a) overall COVID dictionary (count of all COVID-related words/phrases) and (b) contextual COVID-dictionary (count of COVID related words/phrases preceded or followed by positive, negative tones, or financial constraints words). Subsequently, we have validated both types of COVID dictionaries by investigating their association with corporate liquidity events (e.g., dividend payment, dividend change). We confirm that the overall COVID dictionary effectively predicts a firm's liquidity event. We find similar results for contextual COVID dictionaries with a negative spin (i.e., COVID disclosures with a negative tone or an indication of financial constraints). Our results further show that better-governed firms (e.g., greater board independence, and more female directors) tend to have more COVID-related disclosures, despite the fact that more COVID-related disclosures suppress a firm's market-based stock performance (e.g. Tobin's Q). Our results suggest that better-governed firms prefer greater transparency, even if it may hurt their market performance in the short run.

The role of Fintech firms' sustainability during the COVID-19 period.

This study investigates the moderating role of environmental disclosures on the market performance of 48 Fintech and 140 non-Fintech firms during the pandemic using data from 2011 to 2022. Ordinary least squares and correlations were used for data analysis. The study's first finding revealed that Fintech firms had a better environmental performance (78.4%) than non-Fintech firms during the pandemic. The study's second finding indicated that environmental disclosures are crucial for shareholders and contributed almost 10.2% to the Fintech firms' market performance during the pandemic. This study's contribution is significant in enhancing the understanding of the shareholders' sensitivity towards sustainability disclosures during financial crisis. The findings of this study are essential for policymakers, start-up entrepreneurs, and shareholders.

PrEP disclosure and discussions within social networks of people who inject drugs experiencing homelessness: a brief report.

BACKGROUND: In the context of increasing injection-related HIV outbreaks across the United States, particularly among people who inject drugs (PWID) experiencing homelessness, there is an urgent need to expand access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention. Peer-based interventions for PrEP could be helpful for promoting PrEP uptake, yet the social experiences of using PrEP among PWID experiencing homelessness have not been thoroughly explored. METHODS: To better understand social experiences surrounding PrEP use among PWID experiencing homelessness, we conducted qualitative interviews from March-December 2020 with current and former PrEP patients of an innovative, low-threshold program implemented by Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP) in Boston, MA. Thematic analysis of coded interview data explored participants' perspectives and experiences with PrEP disclosure and discussions within their social networks. RESULTS: Among interviews with 21 participants, we identified the following four interrelated aspects of their social experiences using PrEP: (1) participants' were aware of increasing HIV transmission within their social networks, which motivated their PrEP use and disclosure; (2)  participants generally avoided disclosing their PrEP use within public spaces or casual conversations; (3)  participants expressed greater willingness to discuss PrEP with their close social contacts; and (4)  some participants self-identified as leaders or expressed interest in leading the dissemination of PrEP information within their social networks. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight the significance of PrEP disclosure and discussions within the social networks of PWID experiencing homelessness, suggesting a need for continued social network and intervention research-particularly to establish the feasibility and acceptability of peer-based interventions for promoting PrEP-with this marginalized population.

Screening for and Disclosure of Domestic Violence during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Results of the PRICOV-19 Cross-Sectional Study in 33 Countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic left no one untouched, and reports of domestic violence (DV) increased during the crisis. DV victims rarely seek professional help, yet when they do so, they often disclose it to their general practitioner (GP), with whom they have a trusting relationship. GPs rarely screen and hence rarely take the initiative to discuss DV with patients, although victims indicate that offering this opportunity would facilitate their disclosure. This paper aims to describe the frequency of screening for DV by GPs and disclosure of DV by patients to the GP during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to identify key elements that could potentially explain differences in screening for and disclosure of DV. The PRICOV-19 data of 4295 GP practices from 33 countries were included in the analyses, with practices nested in countries. Two stepwise forward clustered ordinal logistic regressions were performed. Only 11% of the GPs reported (much) more disclosure of DV by patients during COVID-19, and 12% reported having screened for DV (much). Most significant associations with screening for and disclosure of DV concerned general (pro)active communication. However, (pro)active communication was performed less frequently for DV than for health conditions, which might indicate that GPs are insufficiently aware of the general magnitude of DV and its impact on patients and society, and its approach/management. Thus, professional education and training for GPs about DV seems highly and urgently needed.

Observational study of financial and non-financial conflicts of interest among the Japanese government advisory board members concerning coronavirus disease 2019.

This cross-sectional analysis aimed to assess the extent of conflicts of interest among the Japanese government coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) advisory board members and elucidate the accuracy of conflicts of interest (COI) disclosure and management strategies. Using the payment data from all 79 pharmaceutical companies in Japan between 2017 and 2019 and direct research grants from the Japanese government between 2019 and 2020, we evaluated the extent of financial and non-financial COI among all 20 Japanese government COVID-19 advisory board members. The Ethic Committee of the Medical Governance Research Institute approved this study. Japanese government COVID-19 advisory board members were predominantly male (75.0%) and physicians (50.0%). Between 2019 and 2020, 2 members (10.0%) received a total of $819,244 in government research funding. Another 5 members (25.0%) received $532,127 in payments, including $276,722 in personal fees, from 31 pharmaceutical companies between 2017 and 2019. The average value of the pharmaceutical payments was $9155 (standard deviation: $12,975). Furthermore, neither the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare nor the Japanese Cabinet Secretariat disclosed financial or non-financial COI with industry. Additionally, the government had no policies for managing COI among advisory board members. This study found that the Japanese government COVID-19 advisory board had financial and non-financial COI with pharmaceutical companies and the government. Furthermore, personal communication received as part of this research indicated that there were no rigorous COI management strategies for the COVID-19 advisory board members. Any government must ensure the independence of scientific advisory boards by implementing more rigorous and transparent management strategies that require the declaration and public disclosure of all COI.

Analyst Site Visits and Corporate Environmental Information Disclosure: Evidence from China.

Compared with developed countries, emerging economy countries are facing more severe environmental challenges. Therefore, effective disclosure of corporate environmental information is an important concern for emerging economies to cope with environmental issues. There is a growing volume of literature documenting that analyst site visits can urge corporations to provide high-quality financial information to investors. However, whether analyst site visits can also improve the quality of environmental information is still unclear. In the Chinese setting, where environmental information has attracted much attention, we explore the interaction between analyst site visits and environmental information disclosure. With three regression methods of the ordinary least squares model, two-stage least square model, and difference-in-difference model, we establish regressions to verify the relationships between them by using empirical data from 2012 to 2019 in China. The results show that analyst site visits are significantly positively correlated with corporate environmental information disclosure. This positive relation is more pronounced when corporations are in economically developed and highly market-oriented areas, in poor air quality areas, and for corporations with good, reasonable internal governance. In addition, we find that analyst site visits affect the quality of environmental information disclosure through the intermediary effect of media attention. In the robustness test, further evidence also indicates that the interaction between analyst site visits and corporate environmental information disclosure was more significant before the COVID-19 lockdown policy was implemented in Wuhan. Our findings suggest that governments should provide support for analysts to conduct site visits and formulate regulations on mandatory disclosure of environmental information by different regions as soon as possible.

A meta-epidemiological assessment of transparency indicators of infectious disease models.

Mathematical models have become very influential, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data and code sharing are indispensable for reproducing them, protocol registration may be useful sometimes, and declarations of conflicts of interest (COIs) and of funding are quintessential for transparency. Here, we evaluated these features in publications of infectious disease-related models and assessed whether there were differences before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and for COVID-19 models versus models for other diseases. We analysed all PubMed Central open access publications of infectious disease models published in 2019 and 2021 using previously validated text mining algorithms of transparency indicators. We evaluated 1338 articles: 216 from 2019 and 1122 from 2021 (of which 818 were on COVID-19); almost a six-fold increase in publications within the field. 511 (39.2%) were compartmental models, 337 (25.2%) were time series, 279 (20.9%) were spatiotemporal, 186 (13.9%) were agent-based and 25 (1.9%) contained multiple model types. 288 (21.5%) articles shared code, 332 (24.8%) shared data, 6 (0.4%) were registered, and 1197 (89.5%) and 1109 (82.9%) contained COI and funding statements, respectively. There was no major changes in transparency indicators between 2019 and 2021. COVID-19 articles were less likely to have funding statements and more likely to share code. Further validation was performed by manual assessment of 10% of the articles identified by text mining as fulfilling transparency indicators and of 10% of the articles lacking them. Correcting estimates for validation performance, 26.0% of papers shared code and 41.1% shared data. On manual assessment, 5/6 articles identified as registered had indeed been registered. Of articles containing COI and funding statements, 95.8% disclosed no conflict and 11.7% reported no funding. Transparency in infectious disease modelling is relatively low, especially for data and code sharing. This is concerning, considering the nature of this research and the heightened influence it has acquired.

Does CSR performance improve corporate immunity to the COVID-19 pandemic? Evidence from China's stock market.

This paper studies the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance on corporate financial performance during the COVID-19 by examining a sample of Chinese listed firms. Based on the PSM-DID methodology, we find that the pandemic-induced decline in stock returns is stronger with more CSR engagement. The results remain robust even after the dynamic effect test and placebo test. It means CSR performance does not improve Chinese corporate immunity to the pandemic. This inadequate response of CSR could be due to the "relatively few good things effect". Furthermore, our study indicates that increasing awareness of responsible investment and improving the quality of CSR disclosure could facilitate CSR engagement in China.

A longitudinal study of COVID-19 disclosure stigma and COVID-19 testing hesitancy in the United States.

OBJECTIVES: This study examines the relationship between COVID-19 disclosure stigma and COVID-19 testing hesitancy and assesses their changes between November 2020 and 2021. STUDY DESIGN: This was a longitudinal cohort. METHODS: A total of 355 participants completed four study waves between November 2020 and November 2021. Factor analyses and Cronbach's alpha assessed the factor structure and internal consistency of the COVID-19 Disclosure Stigma scale. Paired t-tests and McNemar's Chi-squared test assessed change between the study waves. Multivariable logistic regression models examined the relationship between COVID-19 disclosure stigma and testing hesitancy at four study waves. RESULTS: COVID-19 disclosure stigma declined significantly between the last study waves (P = 0.030). The greatest disclosure concern was reporting a positive test to close contacts (range: 19%-21%) followed by disclosure to friends (range: 10%-15%) and family (range: 4%-10%). Over the course of the four study waves, COVID-19 testing hesitancy when symptomatic ranged from 23% to 30%. Older age, female gender, and having received a COVID-19 vaccine were associated with decreased odds of testing hesitancy. Greater COVID-19 disclosure stigma and more conservative political ideology showed a consistent relationship with increased odds of COVID-19 testing hesitancy. CONCLUSIONS: Study findings suggest that many people anticipate feeling stigmatized when disclosing positive test results, especially to close contacts. A substantial percentage of study participants reported hesitancy to be tested when symptomatic. This study identifies a need for interventions that normalize COVID-19 testing (e.g. engaging leaders with conservative followings), provide strategies for disclosing positive results, and allow anonymous notification of potential COVID-19 exposure.

Information disclosure, practical actions and dynamics of employees' health and safety issues in Chinese family businesses-Evidence based on Chinese a-share listed companies.

Introduction: Global health emergency as COVID-19 has brought unprecedented concerns to the health and safety of employees, which is important yet long-neglected. This paper studies the mechanism and influencing factors of Chinese family enterprises performance in employees' health and safety from information disclosure, practical action and dynamic change. And based on theoretical framework and empirical model, this paper provides feasible regulatory policies on the behavior of family business. Methods: This study construct a game theory framework and uses a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies. The database is provided by a third-party corporate social responsibility rating agency, SynTao Green Finance. We use empirical models to test the hypothesis from the theoretical model of game theory. Results: In practice, family businesses are less likely to fulfill the health and safety responsibilities of employees compared to non-family businesses. Family businesses are likely to be more motivated than other businesses to send signals that they are performing their responsibilities well. From the view of operation term, family businesses will be gradually inclined to better fulfill the health and safety responsibilities of their employees, while this process will show a "U" shape change over operation time. Conclusions: As there is inconsistency between the information disclosure and actual practice of family enterprises when it comes to the issue of employee health and safety, more related regulatory policies and stakeholder monitoring are needed. Although the performance of family enterprises in this regard will be better in the long run, it is still necessary to improve employees' legal and rights awareness and enhance the effectiveness of supervision over external stakeholders.

Reporting of funding and conflicts of interest improved from preprints to peer-reviewed publications of biomedical research.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: To assess changes in the reporting of funding and conflicts of interest (COI) in biomedical research between preprint server publications and their corresponding versions in peer-reviewed journals. METHODS: We selected preprint servers publishing exclusively biomedical research. From these, we screened articles by order of publication date and identified 200 preprints first published in 2020 with subsequent versions in peer-reviewed journals. We judged eligibility and extracted data about authorship, funding, and COI in duplicate and independently. We performed descriptive statistics. RESULTS: A quarter of the studies added at least one author to the peer-reviewed version. Most studies reported funding in both versions (87%), and a quarter of these added at least one funder to the peer-reviewed version. Eighteen studies (9%) reported funding only in the peer-reviewed version. A majority of studies reported COI in both versions (69%) and 5% of these had authors reporting more COI in the peer-reviewed version. A minority of studies (23%) reported COI only in the peer-reviewed version. None of the studies justified any changes in authorship, funding, or COI. CONCLUSION: Reporting of funding and COI improved in peer-reviewed versions. However, substantive percentages of studies added authors, funders, and COI disclosures in their peer-reviewed versions.