"The dream is that there's one place you go": a qualitative study of women's experiences seeking care from Long COVID clinics in the USA.

BACKGROUND: Seeking and obtaining effective health care for Long COVID remains a challenge in the USA. Women have particularly been impacted, as they are both at higher risk of developing Long COVID and of facing gendered barriers to having symptoms acknowledged. Long COVID clinics, which provide multidisciplinary and coordinated care, have emerged as a potential solution. To date, however, there has been little examination of U.S. patient experiences with Long COVID clinics and how patients may or may not have come to access care at a Long COVID clinic. METHODS: We conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 U.S. women aged 18 or older who had experienced Long COVID symptoms for at least 3 months, who had not been hospitalized for acute COVID-19, and who had seen at least one medical provider about their symptoms. Participants were asked about experiences seeking medical care for Long COVID. Long COVID clinic-related responses were analyzed using qualitative framework analysis to identify key themes in experiences with Long COVID clinics. RESULTS: Of the 30 women, 43.3% (n = 13) had been seen at a Long COVID clinic or by a provider affiliated with a Long COVID clinic and 30.0% (n = 9) had explored or attempted to see a Long COVID clinic but had not been seen at time of interview. Participants expressed five key themes concerning their experiences with seeking care from Long COVID clinics: (1) Access to clinics remains an issue, (2) Clinics are not a one stop shop, (3) Not all clinic providers have sufficient Long COVID knowledge, (4) Clinics can offer validation and care, and (5) Treatment options are critical and urgent. CONCLUSIONS: While the potential for Long COVID clinics is significant, findings indicate that ongoing barriers to care and challenges related to quality and coordination of care hamper that potential and contribute to distress among women seeking Long COVID care. Since Long COVID clinics are uniquely positioned and framed as being the place to go to manage complex symptoms, it is critical to patient wellbeing that they be properly resourced to provide a level of care that complies with emerging best practices.

Reading, sharing, creating Pinterest recipes: Parental engagement and feeding behaviors.

Pediatric overweight and obesity are associated with serious health concerns both during childhood and in adulthood. Visual social media platform Pinterest is often used to curate recipe content, but little is known about how, if at all, parents use the platform as a resource for meal planning for their families. This study focused on (1) describing how Pinterest using parents use the platform related to recipe searches and meal planning and (2) examining the association between parental feeding behaviors and frequency of Pinterest use related to recipes. Survey research firm Qualtrics was used to collect a nationwide sample of 659 Pinterest-using parents with children between ages 3-11 years of age. Data collection was initiated and completed in February of 2019. Measures included both parent and child demographics, Pinterest recipe use and engagement, and parental feeding practices using the Child Feeding Questionnaire (CFQ). Results showed that 26.9% of the respondents reported using Pinterest daily to read recipes, 17.9% to share recipes; 14.9% to comment on recipes on Pinterest; 10.3% reported creating and posting new recipes; and 13.8% mentioned making a recipe they find on Pinterest daily. Pinterest engagement was significantly negatively associated with parental age and with income insecurity, while positively associated with level of education. Hispanic participants showed higher levels of engagement as compared to White non-Hispanic participants. Among the CFQ subscales, Pressure and Perceived responsibility were significantly positively associated with Pinterest engagement while Monitoring and Restriction were not.

Tweeting a Pandemic: Communicating #COVID19 Across the Globe.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about an urgent need for public health departments to clearly communicate their prevention, testing, and treatment recommendations. Previous research supports that Twitter is an important platform that public health departments use to communicate crisis information to stakeholders. This study aimed to shed light on how international health departments shared relevant information about COVID-19 on Twitter in 2020. We conducted a quantitative content analysis of N = 1,200 tweets from twelve countries, across six continents. COVID-19 prevention behaviors were consistently referenced far more than testing or treatment recommendations across countries. Disease severity and susceptibility were referenced more than recommendation benefits, barriers, and efficacy. Results provide support for how public health departments can better communicate recommendations related to COVID-19 behaviors. Based on these results, implications for public health organizations and public relations practitioners worldwide are discussed, and hands-on action guidelines are provided.

COVID-19-Related Misinformation among Parents of Patients with Pediatric Cancer.

We conducted a survey among 735 parents to determine differences in endorsement of misinformation related to the coronavirus disease pandemic between parents of children in cancer treatment and those with children who had no cancer history. Parents of children with cancer were more likely to believe misinformation than parents of children without cancer.

HPV Vaccine Searches on Pinterest: Before and After Pinterest's Actions to Moderate Content.

Objectives. To compare how human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination was portrayed on Pinterest before and after the platform acted to moderate vaccine-related search results to understand (1) what the information environment looked like previously and (2) whether Pinterest's policy decisions improved this environment in terms of sources and content.Methods. In this quantitative content analysis, we compared 2 samples of 500 HPV vaccine-focused Pinterest posts ("pins") collected before and after Pinterest's actions to provide more reliable vaccine-related information. Pins were based on search results and were analyzed using the Health Belief Model.Results. The majority of preaction search results leaned toward vaccine skepticism, specifically focused on perceived vaccine barriers. Few pins were published by public health-related Pinterest accounts. Postaction search results showed a significant shift to HPV vaccination benefits, and the number of pins by government or medical accounts increased. However, the proportion of pins in search results containing HPV content of any type was significantly lower.Conclusions. Pinterest's efforts to moderate vaccination discussions were largely successful. However, the ban also appeared to limit HPV vaccination search results overall, which may contribute to confusion or an information vacuum.

Sexual Violence in the Media: An Exploration of Traditional Print Media Reporting in the United States, 2014-2017.

Sexual violence is prevalent and, for many victims, begins early in life (1). In the United States, one in five women and one in 38 men report completed or attempted rape victimization during their lifetime, with 43.2% of female and 51.3% of male victims reporting that their first rape victimization occurred before age 18 years (1). Media have been shown to act as a socializing agent for a range of health and social behaviors (2). Media portrayals might influence, reinforce, or modify how the public responds to incidents of sexual violence and their support for prevention efforts and media might construct a lens through which the public can understand who is affected by sexual violence, what forms it takes, why it happens, and who is responsible for addressing it (3). Media portrayals of sexual violence were assessed using a systematic random sample of newspaper articles from 48 of the top 50 distributed traditional print media outlets that were examined for sexual violence content and potential differences by geographic region and year of publication. Differences by year and region in type of sexual violence covered, media language used, and outcomes reported were identified, highlighting an opportunity for public health officials, practitioners, and journalists to frame sexual violence as a preventable public health issue and to incorporate best practices from CDC and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center's Sexual Violence Media Guide (4).

Using the Health Belief Model to Analyze Instagram Posts about Zika for Public Health Communications.

We analyzed Instagram posts about Zika by using the Health Belief Model. We found a high presence of threat messages, yet little engagement with these posts. Public health professionals should focus on posting messages to increase self-efficacy and benefits of protective behavior, especially when a vaccine becomes available.

News Stories of Intimate Partner Violence: An Experimental Examination of Participant Sex, Perpetrator Sex, and Violence Severity on Seriousness, Sympathy, and Punishment Preferences.

This study experimentally examines the effects of participant sex, perpetrator sex, and severity of violence on perceptions of intimate partner violence (IPV) seriousness, sympathy toward the victim, and punishment preferences for the perpetrator. Participants (N = 449) were randomly assigned to a condition, exposed to a composite news story, and then completed a survey. Ratings of seriousness of IPV for stories with male perpetrators were significantly higher than ratings of seriousness for stories with female perpetrators. Men had significantly higher sympathy for female victims in any condition than for male victims in the weak or strong severity of violence conditions. Men's sympathy for male victims in the fatal severity of violence condition did not differ from their sympathy for female victims. Women had the least sympathy for female victims in the weak severity condition and men in the weak or strong severity conditions. Women reported significantly higher sympathy for female victims in the strong and fatal severity of violence conditions. Women's ratings of sympathy for male victims in the fatal severity of violence condition were statistically indistinguishable from any other group. Participants reported stronger punishment preferences for male perpetrators and this effect was magnified among men. Theoretical implications are presented with attention provided to practical considerations about support for public health services.

A Mixed Method Study of Intimate Partner Violence: How Sex and Severity Impact Perpetrator Prior Involvement, Abnormality, and Responsibility.

This study employed a mixed method approach to examine the effects of participant sex, perpetrator sex, and severity of violence on perceptions of intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetrators. Quantitative participants (n = 449) completed a survey and qualitative participants (n = 31) participated in a focus group or an interview. Participants believed that it was more likely male perpetrators had prior involvement in IPV. Participants rated stories of female perpetrators as more abnormal than stories of male perpetrators. Participants in the weak severity of violence condition had lower evaluations of responsibility than the strong or fatal severity of violence conditions and only women were discerning about perpetrator sex in their ratings of responsibility. Theoretical implications extend intimate terrorism and defensive attribution theory.