The integration of wearable technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized healthcare, enabling advanced personal health monitoring systems. This article explores the transformative impact of wearabl...The integration of wearable technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized healthcare, enabling advanced personal health monitoring systems. This article explores the transformative impact of wearable technologies and AI on healthcare, highlighting the development and theoretical application of the Integrated Personal Health Monitoring System (IPHMS). By integrating data from various wearable devices, such as smartphones, Apple Watches, and Oura Rings, the IPHMS framework aims to revolutionize personal health monitoring through real-time alerts, comprehensive tracking, and personalized insights. Despite its potential, the practical implementation faces challenges, including data privacy, system interoperability, and scalability. The evolution of healthcare technology from traditional methods to AI-enhanced wearables underscores a significant advancement towards personalized care, necessitating further research and innovation to address existing limitations and fully realize the benefits of such integrated health monitoring systems.展开更多
Investigating the role of Big Five personality traits in relation to various health outcomes has been extensively studied. The impact of “Big Five” on physical health is here explored for older Europeans with a focu...Investigating the role of Big Five personality traits in relation to various health outcomes has been extensively studied. The impact of “Big Five” on physical health is here explored for older Europeans with a focus on examining age groups differences. The study sample included 378,500 respondents derived from the seventh data wave of Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The physical health status of older Europeans was estimated by constructing an index considering the combined effect of well-established health indicators such as the number of chronic diseases, mobility limitations, limitations with basic and instrumental activities of daily living, and self-perceived health. This index was used for an overall physical health assessment, for which the higher the score for an individual, the worst health level. Then, through a dichotomization process applied to the retrieved Principal Component Analysis scores, a two-group discrimination (good or bad health status) of SHARE participants was obtained as regards their physical health condition, allowing for further con-structing logistic regression models to assess the predictive significance of “Big Five” and their protective role for physical health. Results showed that neuroti-cism was the most significant predictor of physical health for all age groups un-der consideration, while extraversion, agreeableness and openness were not found to significantly affect the self-reported physical health levels of midlife adults aged 50 up to 64. Older adults aged 65 up to 79 were more prone to open-ness, whereas the oldest old individuals aged 80 up to 105 were mainly affected by openness and conscientiousness. .展开更多
Empirical evidence suggests that the stability of personality itself contributes to successful ageing and is associated with longer life. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between personality tr...Empirical evidence suggests that the stability of personality itself contributes to successful ageing and is associated with longer life. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between personality traits and the self-perceived health status, stratified by medical conditions in a representative sample of non-institutionalized elderly people in Chile. The data used for this study come from the fourth waves (2009) of the Chilean Social Protection Survey (SPS-2009). Included were a total of 2655 subjects aged 65 and over. The results showed that higher scores of all five personality factors were associated with good health. Those with the perception of poor health were more likely to be female, with lower education level and older than those with good health. With the exception of agreeableness, strong and significant associations with self-perceived health were demonstrated for extraversion, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness, among elderly with medical conditions. Among elderly without medical problems, significant associations with self-perceived health were demonstrated only for extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability. This study has shown that there is a consistent association between personality factors and self-perceived health throughout the older population. Our results suggest that extraversion and openness traits could be acting as “protector” factors and agreeableness and conscientiousness traits as “resilient” factors, facing to the health problems among elderly people.展开更多
With a rapidly ageing population in Singapore, older adults and their family members face challenges of age-related diseases, caregiver stress, and increasing demand for caregiving services. To address this pressing i...With a rapidly ageing population in Singapore, older adults and their family members face challenges of age-related diseases, caregiver stress, and increasing demand for caregiving services. To address this pressing issue, this pilot study aims to introduce online health coaching for older adults in Singapore and evaluate its effectiveness on maintenance of personal healthcare. In the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, older adults’ activities were largely restricted by measures on social distancing. The online health coaching provided a solution for older adults to achieve a healthy lifestyle in a contactless manner. In this pilot study, 18 older adults (≥55 years old) who were willing to be coached by trained health coaches (n = 10) for 8 weeks (once a week) were recruited. Pre- and post-surveys with older adults were conducted. Furthermore, health coaching booklet was used to control the quality of coaching and to record diet and exercise plans. The pilot study demonstrated that the health coaching provided older adults with knowledge of nutrition and exercise, raised their awareness of well-being in terms of daily meals and regular exercise, and provided an alternative to maintain a healthy lifestyle amidst global pandemic. Additionally, we also identified that the older adults’ satisfactions with health coaching were positively associated with educational levels (R<sup>2</sup> = 0.31). Lastly, this pilot study highlighted that health coaching standardization process for older adults is critical for researchers and healthcare practitioners in the future.展开更多
Personal health record (PHR) enables patients to manage their own electronic medical records (EMR) in a centralized way, and it is oRen outsourced to be stored in a third-party server. In this paper we propose a n...Personal health record (PHR) enables patients to manage their own electronic medical records (EMR) in a centralized way, and it is oRen outsourced to be stored in a third-party server. In this paper we propose a novel secure and scalable system for sharing PHRs. We focus on the multiple data owner scenario, and divide the users in the system into multiple security domains that greatly reduce the key management complexity for owners and users. A high degree of patient privacy is guaranteed by exploiting hierarchical and multi- authority attribute-sets based encryption (HM- ASBE). Our system not only supports compound attributes due to flexible attribute sets combinations, but also achieves fine-grained access control. Our scheme supports efficient on-demand user/attribute revocation and break-glass access under emergency scenarios.展开更多
The rapid development of personal health records(PHR)systems enables an individual to collect,create,store and share his PHR to authorized entities.Health care systems within the smart city environment require a patie...The rapid development of personal health records(PHR)systems enables an individual to collect,create,store and share his PHR to authorized entities.Health care systems within the smart city environment require a patient to share his PRH data with a multitude of institutions’repositories located in the cloud.The cloud computing paradigm cannot meet such a massive transformative healthcare systems due to drawbacks including network latency,scalability and bandwidth.Fog computing relieves the load of conventional cloud computing by availing intermediate fog nodes between the end users and the remote servers.Assuming a massive demand of PHR data within a ubiquitous smart city,we propose a secure and fog assisted framework for PHR systems to address security,access control and privacy concerns.Built under a fog-based architecture,the proposed framework makes use of efficient key exchange protocol coupled with ciphertext attribute based encryption(CP-ABE)to guarantee confidentiality and fine-grained access control within the system respectively.We also make use of digital signature combined with CP-ABE to ensure the system authentication and users privacy.We provide the analysis of the proposed framework in terms of security and performance.展开更多
The main aim of the research is survey of relationship between personality characteristics with academic staffs’ job satisfaction and mental health in the University of Guilan. The statistic population was all these ...The main aim of the research is survey of relationship between personality characteristics with academic staffs’ job satisfaction and mental health in the University of Guilan. The statistic population was all these academic staffs in the year of 2014 (500). 196 individuals have selected by Kerjecy & Morgan (1970) and random sampling method. The research instruments were personality characteristics (NEO), General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and self-made questionnaires. Pearson’s Correlation, Multiple Regression and Multiple Variant (Manova) have used for analyzing data. Results showed that there was a relationship among neurotic and settlement’s personality characteristics with job satisfaction and neurotic, openness, extroversion personality characteristics and settlement with mental health. Some of personality characteristics had been anticipators of mental health and job satisfaction and personality characteristics with mental health and job satisfaction had differenced depend on sociologic variances relationships.展开更多
This paper reports on two studies using different measures of both Modern Health Worries (MHW) and the Personality Disorders (PDs) to establish the relationship between the two concepts. Study 1 used the PID-5 which i...This paper reports on two studies using different measures of both Modern Health Worries (MHW) and the Personality Disorders (PDs) to establish the relationship between the two concepts. Study 1 used the PID-5 which is a measure of maladaptive personality traits and the extended 40 item MHW scale. Study 2 used the original 28 item measure of MHW and PDs as measured by the Coolidge Axis-II Inventory—Short Form: SCATI. In study 1 a regression on the total MHW scale accounted for 14% of the variance: those who scored higher on Antagonism and Negative Affect had higher MHW scores. In the study 2 regressions showed four variables consistently related to MHW: sex (females with higher scores), optimism, political beliefs (left wing liberals with higher scores) and those with Cluster B personality disorders (dramatic, overly emotional, erratic). There was enough overlap in the two studies to conclude that various PDs mainly from Cluster B (Moving Against others) were modestly related to MHW as predicted. Limitations and implications are considered.展开更多
The focus on facility based health setting to provide sexual and reproductive health to the youth has been tested in several settings and achieved varying results. This study examined whether facility based sexual and...The focus on facility based health setting to provide sexual and reproductive health to the youth has been tested in several settings and achieved varying results. This study examined whether facility based sexual and reproductive health services met the needs of Ghanaian youth. Adopting the descriptive cross sectional design, 170 youths between the ages of 10 and 24 were sampled. A three-stage stratified random sampling technique was adopted. The results of the study are presented using descriptive statistics. The study established that a total of 55.8% (95/170) of the youth had utilized at least one or more of a sexual and reproductive health service in life time. However, only 45.2% (43/95) of youth used or accessed sexual and reproductive health services from a facility based setting. Facility based sexual and reproductive health service provided specifically for the youth is very limited. This calls for the provision of out-of health facility services located within the communities and at strategic places while ensuring confidentiality to the youth. More rigorous research is recommended on a national scale to examine youth preference for the type of facility based and out-of-facility based sexual and reproductive health services to meet the needs of young people.展开更多
Attention to disease and risk factor management is increasingly a feature of people with intellectual disability (ID) as an augmented life expectancy also exposes a growing number of age-related diseases. An additiona...Attention to disease and risk factor management is increasingly a feature of people with intellectual disability (ID) as an augmented life expectancy also exposes a growing number of age-related diseases. An additional concern is little attention to date to physical activity, nutrition, access to social support and other personal health choices and to environmental issues such as the impact of access to social support and the implications of individual’s living arrangements. Method: Using a sample of 753 persons with ID from the intellectual disability supplement to the Irish longitudinal study on ageing (IDS-TILDA), forty three variables were grouped into environmental, predisposing, enabling, need and personal health choices clusters and hierarchical ordinary least squares regression examined the contribution of environmental, enabling, predisposing, need and all combinations of the sets of variables to personal health choices. Findings: Almost 32% of variance was explained primarily by need variables. Most significant relationships were with meeting up with family and friends (environmental), age, rating of health and worries about getting older (predisposing), having public health insurance and nursing who come into the home (enabling) and presence of stroke, chronic constipation, functional limitations, high assistance needs with activities of daily living (need). Discussion: Taken together, the groupings of variables from the Anderson Model explained a modest amount of variance in the pursuit of positive personal health choices by people with ID. More work is clearly needed in developing evidence-based interventions and strategies, and in understanding the relationship between positive personal health choices of people with ID and health outcomes.展开更多
We investigated associations between smartphone dependence and general health status or personality traits. To 197 medical university students, we administered a set of self-reporting questionnaires designed to evalua...We investigated associations between smartphone dependence and general health status or personality traits. To 197 medical university students, we administered a set of self-reporting questionnaires designed to evaluate these parameters. For males, smartphone dependence positively correlated with somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, and emotional instability, and negatively correlated with agreeableness. For females, smartphone dependence positively correlated with somatic symptoms, severe depression, and extraversion, and negatively correlated with social dysfunction. These findings suggest that smartphone dependence may be associated with general health status or personality traits and that there may be a gender difference in these associations.展开更多
The main goal of this research was the scrutiny of relationship between students’ personality characteristics and mental health at the University of Guilan. The population was the students of the Faculty of Humanitie...The main goal of this research was the scrutiny of relationship between students’ personality characteristics and mental health at the University of Guilan. The population was the students of the Faculty of Humanities in 2009 with 3000 which 196 were selected using Kerjeci & Morgan table and stratified sampling method. They answered to the NEO and GHQ questionnaires. Results showed that there was relationship between personality characteristic of neurotic, openness, extraversion and being conscionable with mental health. Meanwhile, openness had the highest and extraversion with the lowest correlation scale and most of students (65%) had low mental health. Also, there were no significant differences among students with respect to different courses but significant difference with respect to gender and age.展开更多
<b>Introduction:</b> The recent COVID-19 pandemic has prompted concern about the compatibility of IPC guidelines with health care workers, their working practices and behaviours. These guidelines can be di...<b>Introduction:</b> The recent COVID-19 pandemic has prompted concern about the compatibility of IPC guidelines with health care workers, their working practices and behaviours. These guidelines can be difficult and time-consuming to adhere to in practice. By identifying barriers and facilitators to IPC guideline adherence, especially using personal protective equipment (PPE), we can identify focussed strategies that will support health care workers to undertake the IPC measures needed at such a critical time in health care internationally. <b>Material & Methods:</b> This was a cross-sectional study designed during the COVID-19 pandemic management in the South Gujarat region, to analyse the knowledge, attitude and practices of health care workers about their usage of personal protective equipment. A semi-structured questionnaire-based study was prepared, deriving pointers from our previous experience of seasonal flu outbreaks. 225 participants enrolled who were doctors, resident doctors, nurses, lab technicians, ward boys and food distributors. <b>Result:</b> Analysis of the barriers-related questions show good preparedness by the medical institution. Overall we found good knowledge, attitude and practice related to PPE during COVID-19 pandemic management. There are few gaps found in the knowledge of donning of PPE (p-0.0075), N-95 mask related knowledge (p-0.01) and the attitude that PPE use causes discomfort while nursing patients (0.0001).展开更多
Introduction: During 1986-2009, an estimated 1.6 million persons were internally displaced from northern and eastern regions of Uganda due to civil war. We investigated accessibility to and availability of health care...Introduction: During 1986-2009, an estimated 1.6 million persons were internally displaced from northern and eastern regions of Uganda due to civil war. We investigated accessibility to and availability of health care services for the internally displaced persons in Kitgum and Pader districts, northern Uganda. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted in Kitgum and Pader districts, northern Uganda. We interviewed a total of 1383 respondents comprising 968 (70%) adults and 415 (30%) adolescents;60% were females and 40% males, randomly selected from 35 of 67 (52.2%) internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. We held 27 key informant interviews and 52 focus group discussions. Data were entered in EPI data version 3.02 and analysed using SPSS version 12.00 statistical packages. Findings: Two thirds of the respondents 67.5% lived within 5 km distance of a health facility. The majority 62.9% of respondents mentioned that health related information was readily provided. 43.5% of health providers were always available in a health facility. A quarter 25.1% of health facilities always had drugs available, while 56.9% of the drugs prescribed were always available. Two thirds of the respondents 65.9% were satisfied with the health care services provided. The main reasons for the choice of a health facility were proximity 29.6%, provision of free treatment 24.7% and availability of drugs 17.2%. Main barriers to health care access were due to the lack of financial resources, trained personnel, and inadequate drugs and supplies in the health facilities. Conclusions and Recommendations: The majority of IDPs lived in close proximity to health facilities and obtained health care services from public health facilities. Access to health care was determined mainly by proximity and availability of free services and drugs. Although geographic accessibility to health services was high, lack of finances, information and decision power hindered access to health care services.展开更多
One of the most significant annual expenses that a person has is their health insurance coverage. Health insurance accounts for one-third of GDP, and everyone needs medical treatment to varying degrees. Changes in med...One of the most significant annual expenses that a person has is their health insurance coverage. Health insurance accounts for one-third of GDP, and everyone needs medical treatment to varying degrees. Changes in medicine, pharmaceutical trends, and political factors are only a few of the many factors that cause annual fluctuations in healthcare costs. This paper describes how a system may analyse a person’s medical history to display their insurance plans and make predictions about their health insurance premiums. The performance of four ML models—XGBoost, Lasso, KNN, and Ridge—is evaluated using R2-score and RMSE. The analysis of medical health insurance cost prediction using Lasso regression, Ridge regression, and K-Nearest Neighbours (KNN), and XGBoost (XGB) highlights notable differences in performance. KNN has the lowest R2-score of 55.21 and an RMSE of 4431.1, indicating limited predictive ability. Ridge Regression improves on this by an R2-score of 78.38 but has a higher RMSE of 4652.06. Lasso Regression slightly edges out Ridge with an R2-score of 79.78, yet it suffers from an advanced RMSE of 5671.6. In contrast, XGBoost excels with the highest R2-score of 86.81 and the lowermost RMSE of 4450.4, demonstrating superior predictive accuracy and making it the most effective model for this task. The best method for accurately predicting health insurance premiums was XGBoost Regression. The findings beneficial for policymakers, insurers, and healthcare providers as they can use this information to allocate resources more efficiently and enhance cost-effectiveness in the healthcare industry.展开更多
Nowadays the system of public health is constructed in such a manner so that its main objective is the recovery of an already sick person, while prediction and prevention receive little attention. Meanwhile the develo...Nowadays the system of public health is constructed in such a manner so that its main objective is the recovery of an already sick person, while prediction and prevention receive little attention. Meanwhile the development of these aspects of medicine can lead to the ability to control morbidity among the population, to identify chronic and genetic diseases in the early stages of development, and thus to prevent their further progression. This will reduce traditionally high costs of sick people treatment and the number of disabled population, and improve the quality and duration of life. The elaboration of new fields of science that are working on the study and interpretation of data obtained during laboratory and clinical research, creation of new methods for diagnosis, prognosis and treatment, provides an opportunity now to implement a new strategy, called PPPM, and gets promising results, which should lead to further development of an existing medicine.展开更多
文摘The integration of wearable technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized healthcare, enabling advanced personal health monitoring systems. This article explores the transformative impact of wearable technologies and AI on healthcare, highlighting the development and theoretical application of the Integrated Personal Health Monitoring System (IPHMS). By integrating data from various wearable devices, such as smartphones, Apple Watches, and Oura Rings, the IPHMS framework aims to revolutionize personal health monitoring through real-time alerts, comprehensive tracking, and personalized insights. Despite its potential, the practical implementation faces challenges, including data privacy, system interoperability, and scalability. The evolution of healthcare technology from traditional methods to AI-enhanced wearables underscores a significant advancement towards personalized care, necessitating further research and innovation to address existing limitations and fully realize the benefits of such integrated health monitoring systems.
文摘Investigating the role of Big Five personality traits in relation to various health outcomes has been extensively studied. The impact of “Big Five” on physical health is here explored for older Europeans with a focus on examining age groups differences. The study sample included 378,500 respondents derived from the seventh data wave of Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The physical health status of older Europeans was estimated by constructing an index considering the combined effect of well-established health indicators such as the number of chronic diseases, mobility limitations, limitations with basic and instrumental activities of daily living, and self-perceived health. This index was used for an overall physical health assessment, for which the higher the score for an individual, the worst health level. Then, through a dichotomization process applied to the retrieved Principal Component Analysis scores, a two-group discrimination (good or bad health status) of SHARE participants was obtained as regards their physical health condition, allowing for further con-structing logistic regression models to assess the predictive significance of “Big Five” and their protective role for physical health. Results showed that neuroti-cism was the most significant predictor of physical health for all age groups un-der consideration, while extraversion, agreeableness and openness were not found to significantly affect the self-reported physical health levels of midlife adults aged 50 up to 64. Older adults aged 65 up to 79 were more prone to open-ness, whereas the oldest old individuals aged 80 up to 105 were mainly affected by openness and conscientiousness. .
文摘Empirical evidence suggests that the stability of personality itself contributes to successful ageing and is associated with longer life. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between personality traits and the self-perceived health status, stratified by medical conditions in a representative sample of non-institutionalized elderly people in Chile. The data used for this study come from the fourth waves (2009) of the Chilean Social Protection Survey (SPS-2009). Included were a total of 2655 subjects aged 65 and over. The results showed that higher scores of all five personality factors were associated with good health. Those with the perception of poor health were more likely to be female, with lower education level and older than those with good health. With the exception of agreeableness, strong and significant associations with self-perceived health were demonstrated for extraversion, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness, among elderly with medical conditions. Among elderly without medical problems, significant associations with self-perceived health were demonstrated only for extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability. This study has shown that there is a consistent association between personality factors and self-perceived health throughout the older population. Our results suggest that extraversion and openness traits could be acting as “protector” factors and agreeableness and conscientiousness traits as “resilient” factors, facing to the health problems among elderly people.
文摘With a rapidly ageing population in Singapore, older adults and their family members face challenges of age-related diseases, caregiver stress, and increasing demand for caregiving services. To address this pressing issue, this pilot study aims to introduce online health coaching for older adults in Singapore and evaluate its effectiveness on maintenance of personal healthcare. In the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, older adults’ activities were largely restricted by measures on social distancing. The online health coaching provided a solution for older adults to achieve a healthy lifestyle in a contactless manner. In this pilot study, 18 older adults (≥55 years old) who were willing to be coached by trained health coaches (n = 10) for 8 weeks (once a week) were recruited. Pre- and post-surveys with older adults were conducted. Furthermore, health coaching booklet was used to control the quality of coaching and to record diet and exercise plans. The pilot study demonstrated that the health coaching provided older adults with knowledge of nutrition and exercise, raised their awareness of well-being in terms of daily meals and regular exercise, and provided an alternative to maintain a healthy lifestyle amidst global pandemic. Additionally, we also identified that the older adults’ satisfactions with health coaching were positively associated with educational levels (R<sup>2</sup> = 0.31). Lastly, this pilot study highlighted that health coaching standardization process for older adults is critical for researchers and healthcare practitioners in the future.
基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract NO 61271235 and No.60973146,and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant No.BUPT2013RC0308
文摘Personal health record (PHR) enables patients to manage their own electronic medical records (EMR) in a centralized way, and it is oRen outsourced to be stored in a third-party server. In this paper we propose a novel secure and scalable system for sharing PHRs. We focus on the multiple data owner scenario, and divide the users in the system into multiple security domains that greatly reduce the key management complexity for owners and users. A high degree of patient privacy is guaranteed by exploiting hierarchical and multi- authority attribute-sets based encryption (HM- ASBE). Our system not only supports compound attributes due to flexible attribute sets combinations, but also achieves fine-grained access control. Our scheme supports efficient on-demand user/attribute revocation and break-glass access under emergency scenarios.
基金the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University for funding this work through Vice Deanship of Scientific Research Chairs:Chair of Pervasive and Mobile Computing.
文摘The rapid development of personal health records(PHR)systems enables an individual to collect,create,store and share his PHR to authorized entities.Health care systems within the smart city environment require a patient to share his PRH data with a multitude of institutions’repositories located in the cloud.The cloud computing paradigm cannot meet such a massive transformative healthcare systems due to drawbacks including network latency,scalability and bandwidth.Fog computing relieves the load of conventional cloud computing by availing intermediate fog nodes between the end users and the remote servers.Assuming a massive demand of PHR data within a ubiquitous smart city,we propose a secure and fog assisted framework for PHR systems to address security,access control and privacy concerns.Built under a fog-based architecture,the proposed framework makes use of efficient key exchange protocol coupled with ciphertext attribute based encryption(CP-ABE)to guarantee confidentiality and fine-grained access control within the system respectively.We also make use of digital signature combined with CP-ABE to ensure the system authentication and users privacy.We provide the analysis of the proposed framework in terms of security and performance.
文摘The main aim of the research is survey of relationship between personality characteristics with academic staffs’ job satisfaction and mental health in the University of Guilan. The statistic population was all these academic staffs in the year of 2014 (500). 196 individuals have selected by Kerjecy & Morgan (1970) and random sampling method. The research instruments were personality characteristics (NEO), General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and self-made questionnaires. Pearson’s Correlation, Multiple Regression and Multiple Variant (Manova) have used for analyzing data. Results showed that there was a relationship among neurotic and settlement’s personality characteristics with job satisfaction and neurotic, openness, extroversion personality characteristics and settlement with mental health. Some of personality characteristics had been anticipators of mental health and job satisfaction and personality characteristics with mental health and job satisfaction had differenced depend on sociologic variances relationships.
文摘This paper reports on two studies using different measures of both Modern Health Worries (MHW) and the Personality Disorders (PDs) to establish the relationship between the two concepts. Study 1 used the PID-5 which is a measure of maladaptive personality traits and the extended 40 item MHW scale. Study 2 used the original 28 item measure of MHW and PDs as measured by the Coolidge Axis-II Inventory—Short Form: SCATI. In study 1 a regression on the total MHW scale accounted for 14% of the variance: those who scored higher on Antagonism and Negative Affect had higher MHW scores. In the study 2 regressions showed four variables consistently related to MHW: sex (females with higher scores), optimism, political beliefs (left wing liberals with higher scores) and those with Cluster B personality disorders (dramatic, overly emotional, erratic). There was enough overlap in the two studies to conclude that various PDs mainly from Cluster B (Moving Against others) were modestly related to MHW as predicted. Limitations and implications are considered.
文摘The focus on facility based health setting to provide sexual and reproductive health to the youth has been tested in several settings and achieved varying results. This study examined whether facility based sexual and reproductive health services met the needs of Ghanaian youth. Adopting the descriptive cross sectional design, 170 youths between the ages of 10 and 24 were sampled. A three-stage stratified random sampling technique was adopted. The results of the study are presented using descriptive statistics. The study established that a total of 55.8% (95/170) of the youth had utilized at least one or more of a sexual and reproductive health service in life time. However, only 45.2% (43/95) of youth used or accessed sexual and reproductive health services from a facility based setting. Facility based sexual and reproductive health service provided specifically for the youth is very limited. This calls for the provision of out-of health facility services located within the communities and at strategic places while ensuring confidentiality to the youth. More rigorous research is recommended on a national scale to examine youth preference for the type of facility based and out-of-facility based sexual and reproductive health services to meet the needs of young people.
文摘Attention to disease and risk factor management is increasingly a feature of people with intellectual disability (ID) as an augmented life expectancy also exposes a growing number of age-related diseases. An additional concern is little attention to date to physical activity, nutrition, access to social support and other personal health choices and to environmental issues such as the impact of access to social support and the implications of individual’s living arrangements. Method: Using a sample of 753 persons with ID from the intellectual disability supplement to the Irish longitudinal study on ageing (IDS-TILDA), forty three variables were grouped into environmental, predisposing, enabling, need and personal health choices clusters and hierarchical ordinary least squares regression examined the contribution of environmental, enabling, predisposing, need and all combinations of the sets of variables to personal health choices. Findings: Almost 32% of variance was explained primarily by need variables. Most significant relationships were with meeting up with family and friends (environmental), age, rating of health and worries about getting older (predisposing), having public health insurance and nursing who come into the home (enabling) and presence of stroke, chronic constipation, functional limitations, high assistance needs with activities of daily living (need). Discussion: Taken together, the groupings of variables from the Anderson Model explained a modest amount of variance in the pursuit of positive personal health choices by people with ID. More work is clearly needed in developing evidence-based interventions and strategies, and in understanding the relationship between positive personal health choices of people with ID and health outcomes.
文摘We investigated associations between smartphone dependence and general health status or personality traits. To 197 medical university students, we administered a set of self-reporting questionnaires designed to evaluate these parameters. For males, smartphone dependence positively correlated with somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, and emotional instability, and negatively correlated with agreeableness. For females, smartphone dependence positively correlated with somatic symptoms, severe depression, and extraversion, and negatively correlated with social dysfunction. These findings suggest that smartphone dependence may be associated with general health status or personality traits and that there may be a gender difference in these associations.
文摘The main goal of this research was the scrutiny of relationship between students’ personality characteristics and mental health at the University of Guilan. The population was the students of the Faculty of Humanities in 2009 with 3000 which 196 were selected using Kerjeci & Morgan table and stratified sampling method. They answered to the NEO and GHQ questionnaires. Results showed that there was relationship between personality characteristic of neurotic, openness, extraversion and being conscionable with mental health. Meanwhile, openness had the highest and extraversion with the lowest correlation scale and most of students (65%) had low mental health. Also, there were no significant differences among students with respect to different courses but significant difference with respect to gender and age.
文摘<b>Introduction:</b> The recent COVID-19 pandemic has prompted concern about the compatibility of IPC guidelines with health care workers, their working practices and behaviours. These guidelines can be difficult and time-consuming to adhere to in practice. By identifying barriers and facilitators to IPC guideline adherence, especially using personal protective equipment (PPE), we can identify focussed strategies that will support health care workers to undertake the IPC measures needed at such a critical time in health care internationally. <b>Material & Methods:</b> This was a cross-sectional study designed during the COVID-19 pandemic management in the South Gujarat region, to analyse the knowledge, attitude and practices of health care workers about their usage of personal protective equipment. A semi-structured questionnaire-based study was prepared, deriving pointers from our previous experience of seasonal flu outbreaks. 225 participants enrolled who were doctors, resident doctors, nurses, lab technicians, ward boys and food distributors. <b>Result:</b> Analysis of the barriers-related questions show good preparedness by the medical institution. Overall we found good knowledge, attitude and practice related to PPE during COVID-19 pandemic management. There are few gaps found in the knowledge of donning of PPE (p-0.0075), N-95 mask related knowledge (p-0.01) and the attitude that PPE use causes discomfort while nursing patients (0.0001).
文摘Introduction: During 1986-2009, an estimated 1.6 million persons were internally displaced from northern and eastern regions of Uganda due to civil war. We investigated accessibility to and availability of health care services for the internally displaced persons in Kitgum and Pader districts, northern Uganda. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted in Kitgum and Pader districts, northern Uganda. We interviewed a total of 1383 respondents comprising 968 (70%) adults and 415 (30%) adolescents;60% were females and 40% males, randomly selected from 35 of 67 (52.2%) internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. We held 27 key informant interviews and 52 focus group discussions. Data were entered in EPI data version 3.02 and analysed using SPSS version 12.00 statistical packages. Findings: Two thirds of the respondents 67.5% lived within 5 km distance of a health facility. The majority 62.9% of respondents mentioned that health related information was readily provided. 43.5% of health providers were always available in a health facility. A quarter 25.1% of health facilities always had drugs available, while 56.9% of the drugs prescribed were always available. Two thirds of the respondents 65.9% were satisfied with the health care services provided. The main reasons for the choice of a health facility were proximity 29.6%, provision of free treatment 24.7% and availability of drugs 17.2%. Main barriers to health care access were due to the lack of financial resources, trained personnel, and inadequate drugs and supplies in the health facilities. Conclusions and Recommendations: The majority of IDPs lived in close proximity to health facilities and obtained health care services from public health facilities. Access to health care was determined mainly by proximity and availability of free services and drugs. Although geographic accessibility to health services was high, lack of finances, information and decision power hindered access to health care services.
文摘One of the most significant annual expenses that a person has is their health insurance coverage. Health insurance accounts for one-third of GDP, and everyone needs medical treatment to varying degrees. Changes in medicine, pharmaceutical trends, and political factors are only a few of the many factors that cause annual fluctuations in healthcare costs. This paper describes how a system may analyse a person’s medical history to display their insurance plans and make predictions about their health insurance premiums. The performance of four ML models—XGBoost, Lasso, KNN, and Ridge—is evaluated using R2-score and RMSE. The analysis of medical health insurance cost prediction using Lasso regression, Ridge regression, and K-Nearest Neighbours (KNN), and XGBoost (XGB) highlights notable differences in performance. KNN has the lowest R2-score of 55.21 and an RMSE of 4431.1, indicating limited predictive ability. Ridge Regression improves on this by an R2-score of 78.38 but has a higher RMSE of 4652.06. Lasso Regression slightly edges out Ridge with an R2-score of 79.78, yet it suffers from an advanced RMSE of 5671.6. In contrast, XGBoost excels with the highest R2-score of 86.81 and the lowermost RMSE of 4450.4, demonstrating superior predictive accuracy and making it the most effective model for this task. The best method for accurately predicting health insurance premiums was XGBoost Regression. The findings beneficial for policymakers, insurers, and healthcare providers as they can use this information to allocate resources more efficiently and enhance cost-effectiveness in the healthcare industry.
文摘Nowadays the system of public health is constructed in such a manner so that its main objective is the recovery of an already sick person, while prediction and prevention receive little attention. Meanwhile the development of these aspects of medicine can lead to the ability to control morbidity among the population, to identify chronic and genetic diseases in the early stages of development, and thus to prevent their further progression. This will reduce traditionally high costs of sick people treatment and the number of disabled population, and improve the quality and duration of life. The elaboration of new fields of science that are working on the study and interpretation of data obtained during laboratory and clinical research, creation of new methods for diagnosis, prognosis and treatment, provides an opportunity now to implement a new strategy, called PPPM, and gets promising results, which should lead to further development of an existing medicine.