Frontiers in public health
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Front Public Health · Jan 2020
Public Health and Risk Communication During COVID-19-Enhancing Psychological Needs to Promote Sustainable Behavior Change.
Background: The current COVID-19 pandemic requires sustainable behavior change to mitigate the impact of the virus. A phenomenon which has arisen in parallel with this pandemic is an infodemic-an over-abundance of information, of which some is accurate and some is not, making it hard for people to find trustworthy and reliable guidance to make informed decisions. This infodemic has also been found to create distress and increase risks for mental health disorders, such as depression and anxiety. ⋯ Findings: We propose five practical guidelines for public health and risk communication that will cut through the infodemic and support well-being and sustainable behavior change: (1) create an autonomy-supportive health care climate; (2) provide choice; (3) apply a bottom-up approach to communication; (4) create solidarity; (5) be transparent and acknowledge uncertainty. Conclusion: Health communication that starts by fostering well-being and basic human psychological needs has the potential to cut through the infodemic and promote effective and sustainable behavior change during such pandemics. Our guidelines provide a starting point for developing a concrete public health communication strategy.
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Front Public Health · Jan 2020
Economic Consequences of the COVID-19 Outbreak: the Need for Epidemic Preparedness.
COVID-19 is not only a global pandemic and public health crisis; it has also severely affected the global economy and financial markets. Significant reductions in income, a rise in unemployment, and disruptions in the transportation, service, and manufacturing industries are among the consequences of the disease mitigation measures that have been implemented in many countries. It has become clear that most governments in the world underestimated the risks of rapid COVID-19 spread and were mostly reactive in their crisis response. As disease outbreaks are not likely to disappear in the near future, proactive international actions are required to not only save lives but also protect economic prosperity.
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Front Public Health · Jan 2020
Lessons From Italy's and Sweden's Policies in Fighting COVID-19: The Contribution of Biomedical and Social Competences.
We start (section The COVID-19 Pandemic and Italy's Response to It) by focusing on Italy's "tough" response to COVID-19 pandemic, which included total lockdown with very limited possibility of movement for over 60 million individuals. We analyse (section Sweden's Softer Approach) Sweden's softer approach, which is based on relatively lax measures and tends to safeguard fundamental constitutional rights. We problematise (section General Disagreement Among Experts: A Pressing Epistemic Problem) around the stalemate that arises as a consequence of the implementation of these different approaches, both epistemically grounded and equally justified, in the face of an unknown virus, in society. ⋯ On these grounds (section The Need of More Public Discourse in Fighting Covid-19) we call for an increase role of different types of expertise in public debates thus for the inclusion of ethicists, bioethicists, economists, psychologists, moral and legal philosophers in any scientific committee responsible for taking important decisions for public health, especially during situations like pandemics. Likewise, in the interest of public reason and representativeness, we also claim that it may be fruitful to bring in non-experts, or experts whose expertise is not based solely on "epistemic status," but rather on either experience or political advocacy, of either the homeless, the immigrant, or other disenfranchised groups. This, in expanding the epistemic-expert pool, may also make it "more representative of society as a whole."
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Front Public Health · Jan 2020
Analysis of COVID-19 Cases' Spatial Dependence in US Counties Reveals Health Inequalities.
On March 13, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV2 a pandemic. Since then the virus has infected over 9.1 million individuals and resulted in over 470,000 deaths worldwide (as of June 24, 2020). Here, we discuss the spatial correlation between county population health rankings and the incidence of COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 related deaths in the United States. ⋯ This study showed significant but weak spatial autocorrelation between the number of intensive care unit beds and COVID-19 cases (Moran I = 0.08, p < 0.0001) and deaths (Moran I = 0.15, p < 0.0001), respectively. These findings provide more detail into the interplay between the infectious disease and healthcare-related characteristics of the population. Only by understanding these relationships will it be possible to mitigate the rate of spread and severity of the disease.
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The COVID-19 outbreak was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) as global pandemic in March 2020. Considering the necessity to implement rapid response to control the pandemic and the fragility and the state of need of low income countries, it will be mandatory to develop a global approach in order to reduce the spread of infection and the creation of community viral reservoirs. So far, we could hypothesize a worst case scenario in which when the COVID-19 outbreak hits a peak in Africa and in low-income countries, the majority of such countries will be unprepared, with low resources allocated for affording the viral emergency and the consequences will be catastrophic with no lesson learnt. In the best case scenario, the COVID-19 will not affect Africa or South America on a large scale and, if the prevention measures will be implemented, we could register a lower incidence of hygiene linked diseases that still represent leading causes of death.