Journal of community health
-
Review Historical Article
The Convergence of a Virus, Mosquitoes, and Human Travel in Globalizing the Zika Epidemic.
The Zika virus was first identified in 1947 in the Zika Forest of Uganda. It was discovered in a rhesus monkey that had been placed in a cage on a sentinel platform in the forest by the Virus Research Institute. When this writer visited the institute and the Zika Forest in 1961, work was underway to identify mosquito species at various levels of the tree canopy. ⋯ The globalization of the Zika virus was made possible by the widespread presence in various parts of the world of Aedes vectors and increased human travel that facilitated geographic spread. This globalization of Zika follows upon that of West Nile, Ebola, Dengue, and Chikungunya. Its ultimate spread is difficult to predict, but will hopefully be restricted through vigorous preventive measures.
-
Low emotional support is associated with poor health outcomes. Engagement with face-to-face social networks is one way of increasing emotional support. However, it is not yet known whether engagement with proliferating electronic social networks is similarly associated with increased emotional support. ⋯ A multivariable model including all sociodemographic covariates and accounting for survey weights demonstrated that, compared with the lowest quartile of time on social media, being in the highest quartile (spending two or more hours per day) was significantly associated with decreased odds of having higher perceived emotional support (AOR 0.62, 95 % CI 0.40, 0.94). However, compared with those in the lowest quartile, being in the highest quartile regarding frequency of social media use was not significantly associated with perceived emotional support (AOR 0.70, 95 % CI 0.45, 1.09). In conclusion, while the cross-sectional nature of these data hinder inference regarding directionality, it seems that heavy users of social media may actually feel less and not more emotional support.