Setting research priorities for global pandemic preparedness: An international consensus and comparison with ChatGPT's output.

Background: In this priority-setting exercise, we sought to identify leading research priorities needed for strengthening future pandemic preparedness and response across countries. Methods: The International Society of Global Health (ISoGH) used the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) method to identify research priorities for future pandemic preparedness. Eighty experts in global health, translational and clinical research identified 163 research ideas, of which 42 experts then scored based on five pre-defined criteria. We calculated intermediate criterion-specific scores and overall research priority scores from the mean of individual scores for each research idea. We used a bootstrap (n = 1000) to compute the 95% confidence intervals. Results: Key priorities included strengthening health systems, rapid vaccine and treatment production, improving international cooperation, and enhancing surveillance efficiency. Other priorities included learning from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, managing supply chains, identifying planning gaps, and promoting equitable interventions. We compared this CHNRI-based outcome with the 14 research priorities generated and ranked by ChatGPT, encountering both striking similarities and clear differences. Conclusions: Priority setting processes based on human crowdsourcing - such as the CHNRI method - and the output provided by ChatGPT are both valuable, as they complement and strengthen each other. The priorities identified by ChatGPT were more grounded in theory, while those identified by CHNRI were guided by recent practical experiences. Addressing these priorities, along with improvements in health planning, equitable community-based interventions, and the capacity of primary health care, is vital for better pandemic preparedness and response in many settings.

The Associations of Experiencing the COVID-19 Pandemic With Religiosity and Spirituality: A Cross-Sectional Study in Czech Adults.

Objectives: We investigated the associations between religiosity/spirituality and respondents' changes in their relationships, feelings, thinking, and behaviour during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic. Methods: A sample of Czech adults (n = 1,434; 48.3 ± 16.4 years; 49.65% women) participated in the online survey. We measured spirituality, religiosity, self-reported changes in relationships, disrupted feelings, and changes in behaviour during the pandemic. Results: Spiritual respondents were more likely to report increased physical activity, sex, reading and self-education, with odds ratios (ORs) ranging from 1.26 (95% confidence interval 1.09-1.46) to 1.56 (1.31-1.86). The combination of spirituality and religiosity led to an increase in the range of ORs to 1.57-2.69. Spiritual and religious participants were less likely to feel the decrease of hope by 70%, while mere spirituality significantly reduced the decrease of hope by only 30%. Religiosity itself led to a lower risk of reporting a disrupted day structure with an OR = 0.74 (0.58-0.95). Conclusion: Religiosity and spirituality separately help people during a pandemic in some areas. Especially their combination has a more positive impact on relationships, feelings, and behaviour.

Religious Attendance in a Secular Country Protects Adolescents from Health-Risk Behavior Only in Combination with Participation in Church Activities.

Religiosity and spirituality have been considered to be protective factors of adolescent health-risk behavior (HRB). The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between adolescents' HRB and their religiosity, taking into account their parents' faith and their own participation in church activities. A nationally representative sample (n = 13377, 13.5 ± 1.7 years, 49.1% boys) of Czech adolescents participated in the 2018 Health Behavior in School-aged Children cross-sectional study. We measured religious attendance (RA), faith importance (FI) (both of respondents and their parents), participation in church activities and adolescent HRB (tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis use and early sexual intercourse). We found that neither RA nor FI of participants or their parents had a significant effect on adolescents' HRB. Compared to attending respondents who participate in church activities (AP), non-attending respondents who participate in church activities were more likely to report smoking and early sexual intercourse, with odds ratios (ORs) ranging from 3.14 (1.54-6.39) to 3.82 (1.99-7.35). Compared to AP, non-attending respondents who did not participate in church activities were more likely to report early sexual intercourse, with OR = 1.90 (1.14-3.17). Thus, our findings show that RA does not protect adolescents from HRB; they suggest that RA protects adolescents from HRB only in combination with participation in church activities.