Comprehensive profiling of social mixing patterns in resource poor countries: a mixed methods research protocol.

Background: Low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) bear a disproportionate burden of communicable diseases. Social interaction data inform infectious disease models and disease prevention strategies. The variations in demographics and contact patterns across ages, cultures, and locations significantly impact infectious disease dynamics and pathogen transmission. LMICs lack sufficient social interaction data for infectious disease modeling. Methods: To address this gap, we will collect qualitative and quantitative data from eight study sites (encompassing both rural and urban settings) across Guatemala, India, Pakistan, and Mozambique. We will conduct focus group discussions and cognitive interviews to assess the feasibility and acceptability of our data collection tools at each site. Thematic and rapid analyses will help to identify key themes and categories through coding, guiding the design of quantitative data collection tools (enrollment survey, contact diaries, exit survey, and wearable proximity sensors) and the implementation of study procedures.We will create three age-specific contact matrices (physical, nonphysical, and both) at each study site using data from standardized contact diaries to characterize the patterns of social mixing. Regression analysis will be conducted to identify key drivers of contacts. We will comprehensively profile the frequency, duration, and intensity of infants' interactions with household members using high resolution data from the proximity sensors and calculating infants' proximity score (fraction of time spent by each household member in proximity with the infant, over the total infant contact time) for each household member. Discussion: Our qualitative data yielded insights into the perceptions and acceptability of contact diaries and wearable proximity sensors for collecting social mixing data in LMICs. The quantitative data will allow a more accurate representation of human interactions that lead to the transmission of pathogens through close contact in LMICs. Our findings will provide more appropriate social mixing data for parameterizing mathematical models of LMIC populations. Our study tools could be adapted for other studies.

Changing social contact patterns among US workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: April 2020 to December 2021.

Non-pharmaceutical interventions minimize social contacts, hence the spread of respiratory pathogens such as influenza and SARS-CoV-2. Globally, there is a paucity of social contact data from the workforce. In this study, we quantified two-day contact patterns among USA employees. Contacts were defined as face-to-face conversations, involving physical touch or proximity to another individual and were collected using electronic self-kept diaries. Data were collected over 4 rounds from 2020 to 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mean (standard deviation) contacts reported by 1456 participants were 2.5 (2.5), 8.2 (7.1), 9.2 (7.1) and 10.1 (9.5) across round 1 (April-June 2020), 2 (November 2020-January 2021), 3 (June-August 2021), and 4 (November-December 2021), respectively. Between round 1 and 2, we report a 3-fold increase in the mean number of contacts reported per participant with no major increases from round 2-4. We then modeled SARS-CoV-2 transmission at home, work, and community settings. The model revealed reduced relative transmission in all settings in round 1. Subsequently, transmission increased at home and in the community but remained exceptionally low in work settings. To accurately parameterize models of infection transmission and control, we need empirical social contact data that capture human mixing behavior across time.

Behavioral interventions for vaccination uptake: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Human behavior and more specifically behavioral insight-based approaches to vaccine uptake have often been overlooked. While there have been a few narrative reviews indexed in Medline on behavioral interventions to increase vaccine uptake, to our knowledge, none have been systematic reviews and meta-analyses covering not just high but also low-and-middle income countries. METHODS: We included 613 studies from the Medline database in our systematic review and meta-analysis categorizing different behavioral interventions in 9 domains: education campaigns, on-site vaccination, incentives, free vaccination, institutional recommendation, provider recommendation, reminder and recall, message framing, and vaccine champion. Additionally, considering that there is variability in the acceptance of vaccines among different populations, we assessed studies from both high-income countries (HICs) and low- to middle-income countries (LMICs), separately. FINDINGS: Our results showed that behavioral interventions can considerably improve vaccine uptake in most settings. All domains that we examined improved vaccine uptake with the highest effect size associated with provider recommendation (OR: 3.4 (95%CI: 2.5-4.6); Domain: motivation) and on-site vaccination (OR: 2.9 (95%CI: 2.3-3.7); Domain: practical issues). While the number of studies conducted in LMICs was smaller, the quality of studies was similar with those conducted in HICs. Nevertheless, there were variations in the observed effect sizes. INTERPRETATION: Our findings indicate that "provider recommendation" and "on-site vaccination" along with other behavioral interventions can be employed to increase vaccination rates globally.

Clinicians' Perspectives on Equitable Health Care Delivery in Group Well-Child Care.

OBJECTIVE: To explore clinicians' perspectives about the impact of group well-child care (GWCC) on equitable health care delivery. METHODS: In this qualitative study, we conducted semistructured interviews with clinicians engaged in GWCC recruited via purposive and snowball sampling. We first conducted a deductive content analysis using constructs from Donabedian's framework for health care quality (structure, process, and outcomes) followed by inductive thematic analysis within these constructs. RESULTS: We completed 20 interviews with clinicians who deliver or research GWCC in 11 institutions across the United States. Four major themes around equitable health care delivery in GWCC emerged from clinicians' perspectives: 1) shifts in power dynamics (process); 2) enabling relational care, social support, and a sense of community (process, outcome); 3) centering multidisciplinary care delivery around patient and family needs (structure, process, and outcomes); and 4) unaddressed social and structural barriers limit patient and family participation. CONCLUSIONS: Clinicians perceived that GWCC enhances equity in health care delivery by shifting hierarchies in clinical visits and promoting relational, patient, and family-centered care. However, potential opportunities exist to further address provider implicit bias in group care delivery and structural inequities at the level of the health care institution. Clinicians underscored the need to address barriers to participation so that GWCC can more fully enhance equitable health care delivery.

Overcoming Vaccine Hesitancy for Future COVID-19 and HIV Vaccines: Lessons from Measles and HPV Vaccines.

BACKGROUND: The discovery of vaccines significantly reduced morbidity and mortality of infectious diseases and led to the elimination and eradication of some. Development of safe and effective vaccines is a critical step to the control of infectious diseases; however, there is the need to address vaccine hesitancy because of its potential impact on vaccine uptake. METHODS: We conducted a narrative review of studies on interventions to address measles and human papillomavirus vaccine hesitancy. We discussed how lessons learned from these studies could be applied towards COVID-19 and future human immunodeficiency virus vaccines. RESULTS: We found that there are several successful approaches to improving vaccine acceptance. Interventions should be context specific and build on the challenges highlighted in various settings. CONCLUSION: Strategies could be used alone or in combination with others. The most successful interventions directly targeted the population for vaccination. Use of financial incentives could be a potential tool to improve vaccine uptake.

A microfluidic-informatics assay for quantitative physical occlusion measurement in sickle cell disease.

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a genetic condition that causes abnormalities in hemoglobin mechanics. Those affected are at high risk of vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC), which can induce life-threatening symptoms. The development of measurements related to vaso-occlusion facilitates the diagnosis of the patient's disease state. To complement existing readouts, we design a microfluidic-informatics analytical system with varied confined geometries for the quantification of sickle cell disease occlusion. We detect an increase in physical occlusion events in the most severe hemoglobin SS group. We use bioinformatics and modeling to quantify the in vitro disease severity score (DSS) of individual patients. We also show the potential effect of hydration, clinically recommended for crisis management, on reducing the disease severity of high-risk patients. Overall, we demonstrate the device as an easy-to-use assay for quick occlusion information extraction with a simple setup and minimal additional instruments. We show the device can provide physical readouts distinct from clinical data. We also show the device sensitivity in separate samples from patients with different disease severity. Finally, we demonstrate the system as a potential platform for testing the effectiveness of therapeutic strategies (e.g. hydration) on reducing sickle cell disease severity.

Changing social contact patterns among US workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: April 2020 to December 2021.

Non-pharmaceutical interventions minimize social contacts, hence the spread of SARS-CoV-2. We quantified two-day contact patterns among USA employees from 2020-2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Contacts were defined as face-to-face conversations, involving physical touch or proximity to another individual and were collected using electronic diaries. Mean (standard deviation) contacts reported by 1,456 participants were 2.5 (2.5), 8.2 (7.1), 9.2 (7.1) and 10.1 (9.5) across round 1 (April-June 2020), 2 (November 2020-January 2021), 3 (June-August 2021), and 4 (November-December 2021), respectively. Between round 1 and 2, we report a 3-fold increase in the mean number of contacts reported per participant with no major increases from round 2-4. We modeled SARS-CoV-2 transmission at home, work, and community. The model revealed reduced relative transmission in all settings in round 1. Subsequently, transmission increased at home and in the community but remained very low in work settings. Contact data are important to parameterize models of infection transmission and control. Teaser: Changes in social contact patterns shape disease dynamics at workplaces in the USA.