The language of vaccination campaigns during COVID-19.

Understanding what makes communication effective when designing public health messages is of key importance. This applies in particular to vaccination campaigns, which aim to encourage vaccine uptake and respond to vaccine hesitancy and dispel any myth or misinformation. This paper explores the ways in which the governments of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) promoted COVID-19 vaccination as a first-line strategy and studies health message effectiveness by examining the language of official vaccination campaigns, vaccine uptake across the different nations and the health message preferences of unvaccinated and vaccine sceptic individuals. The study considers communications beginning at the first lockdown until the point when daily COVID-19 updates ended for each nation. A corpus linguistic analysis of official government COVID-19 updates is combined with a qualitative examination of the expression of evaluation in governmental discourses, feedback from a Public Involvement Panel and insights from a nationally representative survey of adults in Great Britain to explore message production and reception. Fully vaccinated, unvaccinated and sceptic respondents showed similar health messaging preferences and perceptions of health communication efficacy, but unvaccinated and sceptic participants reported lower levels of compliance for all health messages considered. These results suggest that issues in health communication are not limited to vaccination hesitancy, and that in the future, successful vaccination campaigns need to address the determining factors of public attitudes and beliefs besides communication strategies.

Quantitative and qualitative analysis of individual experiences post botulinum toxin injection - United Kingdom Survey.

Introduction: In the United Kingdom (UK), complications that arise following the administration of Botulinum Toxin are reported to the Medicines and Health Regulatory Agency (MHRA) via the Yellow Card Reporting Scheme. Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the number of non-surgical aesthetic procedures. Concerns have been raised that the MHRA is not fully capturing complications in terms of volume and impact on patients. Aim: This novel study explores the lived experiences of individuals who have experienced an adverse event following administration of Botulinum Toxin for aesthetic purposes. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, this analysis evaluates data relating to long-lasting physical, psychological, emotional, and financial sequelae of complications arising from cosmetic Botulinum Toxin injections in the UK. Methods: A mixed method, qualitative and quantitative approach was adopted to gain comprehensive insights into patients' experiences. A focus group which comprised patient representatives, psychologists, and researchers reached a consensus on a 17-question survey which was disseminated via social media channels. Deductive thematic analysis was used to analyse coded themes. Furthermore, for secondary analysis, sentiment analysis was used computationally as an innovative approach to identify and categorise free text responses associated with sentiments using natural language processing (NLP). Results: In the study, 655 responses were received, with 287 (44%) of respondents completing all questions. The mean age of respondents was 42.6 years old. 94.1% of respondents identified as female. In the sample, 79% of respondents reported an adverse event following their procedure, with the most common event being reported as 'anxiety'. Findings revealed that 69% of respondents reported long-lasting adverse effects. From the responses, 68.4% reported not having recovered physically, 63.5% of respondents stated that they had not recovered emotionally from complications, and 61.7% said that they have not recovered psychologically. In addition, 84% of respondents stated that they do not know who regulates the aesthetics industry. Furthermore, 92% of participants reported that their clinic or practitioner did not inform them about the Yellow Card Reporting Scheme. The sentiment analysis using the AFINN Lexicon yielded adjusted scores ranging from -3 to +2, with a mean value of -1.58. Conclusion: This is the largest survey in the UK completed by patients who experienced an adverse outcome following the aesthetic administration of Botulinum Toxin. Our study highlights the extent of the challenges faced by patients who experience an adverse event from physical, emotional, psychological, and financial perspectives. The lack of awareness of MHRA reporting structures and the lack of regulation within the UK's cosmetic injectables sector represent a significant public health challenge.

The reception of public health messages during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Understanding the reception of public health messages in public-facing communications is of key importance to health agencies in managing crises, pandemics, and other health threats. Established public health communications strategies including self-efficacy messaging, fear appeals, and moralising messaging were all used during the Coronavirus pandemic. We explore the reception of public health messages to understand the efficacy of these established messaging strategies in the COVID-19 context. Taking a community-focussed approach, we combine a corpus linguistic analysis with methods of wider engagement, namely, a public survey and interactions with a Public Involvement Panel to analyse this type of real-world public health discourse. Our findings indicate that effective health messaging content provides manageable instructions, which inspire public confidence that following the guidance is worthwhile. Messaging that appeals to the audience's morals or fears in order to provide a rationale for compliance can be polarising and divisive, producing a strongly negative emotional response from the public and potentially undermining social cohesion. Provenance of the messaging alongside text-external political factors also have an influence on messaging uptake. In addition, our findings highlight key differences in messaging uptake by audience age, which demonstrates the importance of tailored communications and the need to seek public feedback to test the efficacy of messaging with the relevant demographics. Our study illustrates the value of corpus linguistics to public health agencies and health communications professionals, and we share our recommendations for improving the public health messaging both in the context of the ongoing pandemic and for future novel and re-emerging infectious disease outbreaks.

A retrospective case-control study on menstrual cycle changes following COVID-19 vaccination and disease.

There has been increasing public concern that COVID-19 vaccination causes menstrual disturbance regarding the relative effect of vaccination compared to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Our objectives were to test potential risk factors for reporting menstrual cycle changes following COVID-19 vaccination and to compare menstrual parameters following COVID-19 vaccination and COVID-19 disease. We performed a secondary analysis of a retrospective online survey conducted in the UK in March 2021. In pre-menopausal vaccinated participants (n = 4,989), 18% reported menstrual cycle changes after their first COVID-19 vaccine injection. The prevalence of reporting any menstrual changes was higher for women who smoke, have a history of COVID-19 disease, or are not using estradiol-containing contraceptives. In a second sample including both vaccinated and unvaccinated participants (n = 12,579), COVID-19 vaccination alone was not associated with abnormal menstrual cycle parameters, while a history of COVID-19 disease was associated with an increased risk of reporting heavier bleeding, "missed" periods, and inter-menstrual bleeding.

Prospective evaluation of a novel enteral feeding guideline based on individual gastric emptying times: an improvement project in a pediatric intensive care unit.

BACKGROUND: On a 20-bed, mixed cardiac and general, UK pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), we aimed to determine if a physiologically based enteral feeding guideline for critically ill children, using feed frequency tailored to individual gastric emptying times, resulted in earlier establishment of full feeds (when 100% of fluid allowance (FA) available to be given as intravenous maintenance fluid or feed, defined as free FA [FFA], is given as enteral nutrition [EN]) and an increase in FFA given as EN. METHODS: Four prospective audits (totaling 331 patients and 19,771 hours) were conducted at 1 year before guideline introduction and 1, 5, and 10 years after. Patient feeding data were collected from admission until day 4 or discharge, including reasons why feed was withheld. RESULTS: The median time from admission to establishing full feeds decreased from 18 to 10 hours preguideline and postguideline and was sustained over 10 years. After adjustment for 5 confounders, this represented a reduction in the geometric mean time to full feeds of 30% (2009), 29% (2013), and 48% (2019) compared with 2007 (all P < .01). Nil-per-oral (NPO) hours were categorized as due to modifiable and nonmodifiable factors. Preguideline and postguideline NPO hours from modifiable factors decreased from 21 (2007) to 10 (2009) per 100 audit hours, which was sustained across 10 years (all P < .01). Conversely, NPO hours from nonmodifiable factors ranged from 27 to 36 per 100 audit hours throughout the audits, with no consistent trend over time. Similar inconsistency was shown in the proportion of FFA given as EN: 48% (2007), 71% (2009), 51% (2013), and 64% (2019). Continuous nasogastric and hourly bolus feeds decreased over time; they comprised 66% of feeds in 2007 but only 4%-11% in subsequent periods, being replaced with more 2-6 hour bolus, on-demand, or continuous nasojejunal feeds. CONCLUSION: The guideline was associated with sustained reduction in the time to establishing full feeds and NPO hours due to modifiable factors and more or no less FFA being given as EN.