Background Identifying common factors that affect public adherence to COVID-19 containment measur... more Background Identifying common factors that affect public adherence to COVID-19 containment measures can directly inform the development of official public health communication strategies. The present international longitudinal study aimed to examine whether prosociality, together with other theoretically derived motivating factors (self-efficacy, perceived susceptibility and severity of COVID-19, perceived social support) predict the change in adherence to COVID-19 containment strategies. Method In wave 1 of data collection, adults from eight geographical regions completed online surveys beginning in April 2020, and wave 2 began in June and ended in September 2020. Hypothesized predictors included prosociality, self-efficacy in following COVID-19 containment measures, perceived susceptibility to COVID-19, perceived severity of COVID-19 and perceived social support. Baseline covariates included age, sex, history of COVID-19 infection and geographical regions. Participants who reporte...
Mass media represents the primary source of information about organ donation for the general publ... more Mass media represents the primary source of information about organ donation for the general public. The present study explored the content of Romanian online media concerning organ donation. We conducted a content analysis of 313 media materials published online between October 2012 and October 2019 in Romanian. The coding categories were year of publication, media outlet, type of material, type of evidence, valence, topic, and proximity of the story. A semestral web-search was conducted between February 2016 and November 2019. The analysis revealed that the Romanian online coverage of organ donation was modest across time. Regarding the valence, results indicated that 57.2% of the materials presented organ donation in a positive way, 14.1% were neutral, 12.5% were negative, whereas 16.3% of the materials were mixed. Moreover, the valence of the materials varied across media outlets, proximity of the story and publication year. Promotion, information about organ donation and system...
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic fundamentally disrupted humans’ social life and behav... more The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic fundamentally disrupted humans’ social life and behavior. Public health measures may have inadvertently impacted how people care for each other. This study investigated prosocial behavior, its association well-being, and predictors of prosocial behavior during the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and sought to understand whether region-specific differences exist. Participants (N = 9,496) from eight regions clustering multiple countries around the world responded to a cross-sectional online-survey investigating the psychological consequences of the first upsurge of lockdowns in spring 2020. Prosocial behavior was reported to occur frequently. Multiple regression analyses showed that prosocial behavior was associated with better well-being consistently across regions. With regard to predictors of prosocial behavior, high levels of perceived social support were most strongly associated with prosocial behavior, followed by high levels of perce...
Considering the high impact strain that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS... more Considering the high impact strain that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has put on medical personnel worldwide, identifying means to alleviate stress on healthcare professionals and to boost their subjective and psychological wellbeing is more relevant than ever. This study investigates the extent to which the relationships between the status of working in healthcare and the subjective and psychological wellbeing are serially mediated by work recovery experiences and the need for recovery. Data were collected from 217 Romanian employees (44 health professionals and 173 employees from other domains) using a cross-sectional design with self-report instruments, during the first stage of the nationwide lockdown. The results of the serial mediation analyses revealed that working in the medical field is indirectly related to subjective and psychological wellbeing through the following: (i) mastery experiences and (ii) mastery experiences as an ant...
INTRODUCTION Aiming at generating evidence for cost-effective public health (PH) interventions fo... more INTRODUCTION Aiming at generating evidence for cost-effective public health (PH) interventions for suicidal behaviour (SB) prevention in South Eastern Europe, the objective was to identify adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) most strongly predicting SB in emerging adults. METHODS Survey data of 3283 students aged 18-29 from Montenegro and Romania were analysed by logistic regression. Based on estimation of risk-for-SB, the profiles with the highest values were identified. RESULTS The SB odds were the highest in respondents, experienced a suicide attempt in the household (OR: 13.81; p < 0.001), and whose primary family was not complete, in particular in those with the foster family background (OR: 18.30; p = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Magnitude of impact on emerging adults' mental health vulnerability tends to vary considerably with individual ACEs. This should be considered carefully when developing cost-effective response to SB burden through PH interventions in particular at the ...
Objective: Illness perceptions (IP) are important predictors of emotional and behavioral response... more Objective: Illness perceptions (IP) are important predictors of emotional and behavioral responses in many diseases. The current study aims to investigate the COVID-19-related IP throughout Europe. The specific goals are to understand the temporal development, identify predictors (within demographics and contact with COVID-19) and examine the impacts of IP on perceived stress and preventive behaviors.Methods: This was a time-series-cross-section study of 7,032 participants from 16 European countries using multilevel modeling from April to June 2020. IP were measured with the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire. Temporal patterns were observed considering the date of participation and the date recoded to account the epidemiological evolution of each country. The outcomes considered were perceived stress and COVID-19 preventive behaviors.Results: There were significant trends, over time, for several IP, suggesting a small decrease in negativity in the perception of COVID-19 in the ...
Romanian Journal of Diabetes Nutrition and Metabolic Diseases, 2015
Background and Aims: The aim of the present study was to validate the Diabetes Distress Scale (DD... more Background and Aims: The aim of the present study was to validate the Diabetes Distress Scale (DDS) on Romanian diabetes patients. Material and Methods: A total number of 529 type 1 and type 2 diabetes outpatients were included in the study. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to assess the construct validity, Cronbach’s Alpha for internal consistency and Pearson’s correlation for predictive properties. Results: Distress level was lower in Romanian diabetes patients when compared to other studies. Model fit for the scale was moderate. The four factor structure of the original scale was maintained, with a good internal consistency for the entire scale (0.824) and for the four subscales: emotional burden (0.775), distress related to the physician (0.798), distress related to diabetes regimen (0.708), and interpersonal distress (0.733). Regarding predictive properties, DDS-Ro was positively correlated to depressive symptoms measured with the Beck Depression Inventory...
World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 2009
Data on the prevalence and correlates of anxiety, mood, behavioral, and substance disorders are p... more Data on the prevalence and correlates of anxiety, mood, behavioral, and substance disorders are presented from a 2007-8 national survey of the Iraq population, the Iraq Mental Health Survey (IMHS). The IMHS was carried out by the Iraq Ministry of Health in collaboration with the Iraq Ministry of Planning and the World Health Organization (WHO) World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative. Interviews were administered to a probability sample of Iraqi household residents by trained lay interviewers. The WHO Composite International Diagnostic interview (CIDI) was used to assess DSM-IV disorders. The response rate was 95.2%. The estimated lifetime prevalence of any disorder was 18.8%. Cohort analysis documented significantly increasing lifetime prevalence of most disorders across generations. This was most pronounced for panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, with lifetime-to-date prevalence 5.4-5.3 times as high at comparable ages in the youngest (ages 18-34) as oldest (ages...
Objective: To estimate the prevalence of smoking among the college students and to identify the f... more Objective: To estimate the prevalence of smoking among the college students and to identify the factors associated with smoking. Material & Methods: This is a cross sectional study carried out on 304 college students in Kathmandu valley using purposive sampling during the months of December 2009 to January 2010. The self administrated questionnaire was adopted from Global Youth Tobacco Survey 2007 (GYTS) and data were collected after the verbal consent taken. The statistical analysis was done using descriptive statistics, univariate and binary logistic regression to measure prevalence of smoking and to identify the association between dependent and independent variables. Results: We found 7 in 10 students were currently smokers. Among currently smokers, 78% were established smokers. The mean age of smoking onset was 14.15 years (SD=2.62). The mean number of cigarettes smoked per day was 5.03(SD=3.72) and average daily expenditure was Rs. 15.18 (SD=7.87). About 90% students tried to ...
Aim. This paper reports a patient survey exploring the possible relationship between illness per... more Aim. This paper reports a patient survey exploring the possible relationship between illness perception and self‐efficacy following a cardiac event, and the implications this could have for nursing practice.Background. Cardiac rehabilitation guidelines endorse the need to improve psychological care; suggesting that individualized support will improve the effectiveness of cardiac rehabilitation. Surveys, however, continue to identify that psychosocial factors are poorly assessed. Illness representation and self‐efficacy are two prominent research approaches that have been developed as separate foci for the treatment of patients.Method. A cross‐sectional survey with patients diagnosed with either myocardial infarction or angina over an 8‐month period in two hospitals. The Illness Perception Questionnaire, General Self‐Efficacy Questionnaire, Cardiac Diet Self‐efficacy Instrument and Cardiac Exercise Self‐efficacy Instrument were used, alongside two specifically‐designed scales: the...
Maternal prenatal stress places a substantial burden on mother’s mental health. Expectant mothers... more Maternal prenatal stress places a substantial burden on mother’s mental health. Expectant mothers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have thus far received less attention than mothers in high-income settings. This is particularly problematic, as a range of triggers, such as exposure to traumatic events (e.g. natural disasters, previous pregnancy losses) and adverse life circumstances (e.g. poverty, community violence), put mothers at increased risk of experiencing prenatal stress. The ten-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) is a widely recognised index of subjective experience of stress that is increasingly used in LMICs. However, evidence for its measurement equivalence across settings is lacking. This study aims to assess measurement invariance of the PSS-10 across eight LMICs and across birth parity. This research was carried out as part of the Evidence for Better Lives Study (EBLS, vrc.crim.cam.ac.uk/vrcresearch/EBLS). The PSS-10 was administered to N = 1,208 expectant...
Background Childhood adversities, such as poor parental practices, exposure to violence, and risk... more Background Childhood adversities, such as poor parental practices, exposure to violence, and risk behaviours strongly impact children’s future mental and behavioural problems. Adversities affect families living in disadvantaged environments and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to a greater extent than in high-income countries. Parenting programmes are an effective way to alleviate them, although their outreach and scalability is still limited in LMICs. Methods/design A multi-site randomised controlled trial will be conducted in North Macedonia, Republic of Moldova and Romania to test the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of an optimised version of the promising Parenting for Lifelong Health Programme for Young Children (PLH-YC, 5 sessions), against a standard lecture on parenting issues (control group, 1 session). At least 864 participants who report having children between 2 and 9 years old who display elevated levels of behavioural difficulties will be randomised on a 1:1 ba...
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people’s engagement in health behaviors, especiall... more Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people’s engagement in health behaviors, especially those that protect individuals from SARS-CoV-2 transmission, such as handwashing/sanitizing. Associations between the pandemic’s trajectory and engagement in the protective behavior of handwashing are unclear. This study investigated whether adherence to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) handwashing guidelines is associated with (i) total cases of COVID-19 morbidity/mortality accumulated since the onset of the pandemic, (ii) recent cases (country-level COVID-19 morbidity/mortality in the 14 days prior to data collection), (iii) increases/acceleration in recent cases (country-level COVID-19 morbidity/mortality in the previous 14 days minus cases recorded 14-28 days earlier), and (iv) stringency of the national containment-and-health policies (in the 7 days prior to data collection).Methods: The observational study (#NCT04367337) enrolled 6,064 adults residing in Australia, Canada, C...
Background: It is known that pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) is effective in reducing mild to... more Background: It is known that pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) is effective in reducing mild to moderate urinary incontinence (UI) in women. However, there are factors hampering effectiveness of PFMT such as low discipline to exercise, interference with routines, low self-efficacy, all of which make elements of delivery important in treatment effectiveness. Aim: We investigated whether and which theory-grounded strategies used in interventions increase effectiveness of PFMT. Method: A meta-analysis was conducted with 55 interventions reporting effects of PFMT. A literature search was performed on ISI WOS, PubMed, PsychInfo, Cochrane, and included experimental and cvasiexperimental (pre-post) reports of interventions comprising PFMT for women with mild and moderate UI, regardless of age. Intervention strategies were coded by using the behavior change techniques taxonomy. Results: Overall, there was a significant effect, of medium size of PFMT on behavioral indices of UI, , g = .52,...
Background: Pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) is the recommended approach to address mild to mo... more Background: Pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) is the recommended approach to address mild to moderate urinary incontincence (UI), although the adherence is variable. This makes elements of training delivery important in treatment effectiveness. Hence, the conversion of biofeedback approach into serious games played on a mobile phone is innovative and may prove effective in motivating women to adhere to their PFMT schedules. Methods: A mixed approach was implemented to develop serious game scenarios and test the biofeedback and games in a pilot trial. The game functionalities were amended and further tested together with biofeedback system in a trial with 21 women with UI, recruited in 2 hospitals. We collected quantitative (number of sessions performed, rating of different game functionalities etc) and qualitative data (interviews focused on satisfaction with using the system and barriers to adherence; think aloud protocols focused on the momentum experience of women with using th...
Background The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people’s engagement in health behaviors, especially... more Background The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people’s engagement in health behaviors, especially those that protect individuals from SARS-CoV-2 transmission, such as handwashing/sanitizing. This study investigated whether adherence to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) handwashing guidelines (the outcome variable) was associated with the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic, as measured by the following 6 indicators: (i) the number of new cases of COVID-19 morbidity/mortality (a country-level mean calculated for the 14 days prior to data collection), (ii) total cases of COVID-19 morbidity/mortality accumulated since the onset of the pandemic, and (iii) changes in recent cases of COVID-19 morbidity/mortality (a difference between country-level COVID-19 morbidity/mortality in the previous 14 days compared to cases recorded 14–28 days earlier). Methods The observational study (#NCT04367337) enrolled 6064 adults residing in Australia, Canada, China, France, Gambia, Germany, Israel, I...
The prevalence of child emotional and behavioral problems is an international problem but is high... more The prevalence of child emotional and behavioral problems is an international problem but is higher in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMIC) where there are often less mental health supports for families. Parenting programs can be an effective means of prevention, but must be low‐cost, scalable, and suitable for the local context. The RISE project aims to systematically adapt, implement, and evaluate a low‐cost parenting program for preventing/reducing child mental health problems in three middle‐income countries in Southeastern Europe. This small pre–post pilot study is informed by the Reach, Efficacy, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance (RE‐AIM) framework and tested the feasibility of the intervention, the implementation, and evaluation procedures: Phase 1 of the three‐phase Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST) for program adaptation. Local facilitators delivered the Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) for Young Children program to parents of children aged 2–9 in North ...
Background Identifying common factors that affect public adherence to COVID-19 containment measur... more Background Identifying common factors that affect public adherence to COVID-19 containment measures can directly inform the development of official public health communication strategies. The present international longitudinal study aimed to examine whether prosociality, together with other theoretically derived motivating factors (self-efficacy, perceived susceptibility and severity of COVID-19, perceived social support) predict the change in adherence to COVID-19 containment strategies. Method In wave 1 of data collection, adults from eight geographical regions completed online surveys beginning in April 2020, and wave 2 began in June and ended in September 2020. Hypothesized predictors included prosociality, self-efficacy in following COVID-19 containment measures, perceived susceptibility to COVID-19, perceived severity of COVID-19 and perceived social support. Baseline covariates included age, sex, history of COVID-19 infection and geographical regions. Participants who reporte...
Mass media represents the primary source of information about organ donation for the general publ... more Mass media represents the primary source of information about organ donation for the general public. The present study explored the content of Romanian online media concerning organ donation. We conducted a content analysis of 313 media materials published online between October 2012 and October 2019 in Romanian. The coding categories were year of publication, media outlet, type of material, type of evidence, valence, topic, and proximity of the story. A semestral web-search was conducted between February 2016 and November 2019. The analysis revealed that the Romanian online coverage of organ donation was modest across time. Regarding the valence, results indicated that 57.2% of the materials presented organ donation in a positive way, 14.1% were neutral, 12.5% were negative, whereas 16.3% of the materials were mixed. Moreover, the valence of the materials varied across media outlets, proximity of the story and publication year. Promotion, information about organ donation and system...
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic fundamentally disrupted humans’ social life and behav... more The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic fundamentally disrupted humans’ social life and behavior. Public health measures may have inadvertently impacted how people care for each other. This study investigated prosocial behavior, its association well-being, and predictors of prosocial behavior during the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and sought to understand whether region-specific differences exist. Participants (N = 9,496) from eight regions clustering multiple countries around the world responded to a cross-sectional online-survey investigating the psychological consequences of the first upsurge of lockdowns in spring 2020. Prosocial behavior was reported to occur frequently. Multiple regression analyses showed that prosocial behavior was associated with better well-being consistently across regions. With regard to predictors of prosocial behavior, high levels of perceived social support were most strongly associated with prosocial behavior, followed by high levels of perce...
Considering the high impact strain that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS... more Considering the high impact strain that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has put on medical personnel worldwide, identifying means to alleviate stress on healthcare professionals and to boost their subjective and psychological wellbeing is more relevant than ever. This study investigates the extent to which the relationships between the status of working in healthcare and the subjective and psychological wellbeing are serially mediated by work recovery experiences and the need for recovery. Data were collected from 217 Romanian employees (44 health professionals and 173 employees from other domains) using a cross-sectional design with self-report instruments, during the first stage of the nationwide lockdown. The results of the serial mediation analyses revealed that working in the medical field is indirectly related to subjective and psychological wellbeing through the following: (i) mastery experiences and (ii) mastery experiences as an ant...
INTRODUCTION Aiming at generating evidence for cost-effective public health (PH) interventions fo... more INTRODUCTION Aiming at generating evidence for cost-effective public health (PH) interventions for suicidal behaviour (SB) prevention in South Eastern Europe, the objective was to identify adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) most strongly predicting SB in emerging adults. METHODS Survey data of 3283 students aged 18-29 from Montenegro and Romania were analysed by logistic regression. Based on estimation of risk-for-SB, the profiles with the highest values were identified. RESULTS The SB odds were the highest in respondents, experienced a suicide attempt in the household (OR: 13.81; p < 0.001), and whose primary family was not complete, in particular in those with the foster family background (OR: 18.30; p = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Magnitude of impact on emerging adults' mental health vulnerability tends to vary considerably with individual ACEs. This should be considered carefully when developing cost-effective response to SB burden through PH interventions in particular at the ...
Objective: Illness perceptions (IP) are important predictors of emotional and behavioral response... more Objective: Illness perceptions (IP) are important predictors of emotional and behavioral responses in many diseases. The current study aims to investigate the COVID-19-related IP throughout Europe. The specific goals are to understand the temporal development, identify predictors (within demographics and contact with COVID-19) and examine the impacts of IP on perceived stress and preventive behaviors.Methods: This was a time-series-cross-section study of 7,032 participants from 16 European countries using multilevel modeling from April to June 2020. IP were measured with the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire. Temporal patterns were observed considering the date of participation and the date recoded to account the epidemiological evolution of each country. The outcomes considered were perceived stress and COVID-19 preventive behaviors.Results: There were significant trends, over time, for several IP, suggesting a small decrease in negativity in the perception of COVID-19 in the ...
Romanian Journal of Diabetes Nutrition and Metabolic Diseases, 2015
Background and Aims: The aim of the present study was to validate the Diabetes Distress Scale (DD... more Background and Aims: The aim of the present study was to validate the Diabetes Distress Scale (DDS) on Romanian diabetes patients. Material and Methods: A total number of 529 type 1 and type 2 diabetes outpatients were included in the study. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to assess the construct validity, Cronbach’s Alpha for internal consistency and Pearson’s correlation for predictive properties. Results: Distress level was lower in Romanian diabetes patients when compared to other studies. Model fit for the scale was moderate. The four factor structure of the original scale was maintained, with a good internal consistency for the entire scale (0.824) and for the four subscales: emotional burden (0.775), distress related to the physician (0.798), distress related to diabetes regimen (0.708), and interpersonal distress (0.733). Regarding predictive properties, DDS-Ro was positively correlated to depressive symptoms measured with the Beck Depression Inventory...
World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 2009
Data on the prevalence and correlates of anxiety, mood, behavioral, and substance disorders are p... more Data on the prevalence and correlates of anxiety, mood, behavioral, and substance disorders are presented from a 2007-8 national survey of the Iraq population, the Iraq Mental Health Survey (IMHS). The IMHS was carried out by the Iraq Ministry of Health in collaboration with the Iraq Ministry of Planning and the World Health Organization (WHO) World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative. Interviews were administered to a probability sample of Iraqi household residents by trained lay interviewers. The WHO Composite International Diagnostic interview (CIDI) was used to assess DSM-IV disorders. The response rate was 95.2%. The estimated lifetime prevalence of any disorder was 18.8%. Cohort analysis documented significantly increasing lifetime prevalence of most disorders across generations. This was most pronounced for panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, with lifetime-to-date prevalence 5.4-5.3 times as high at comparable ages in the youngest (ages 18-34) as oldest (ages...
Objective: To estimate the prevalence of smoking among the college students and to identify the f... more Objective: To estimate the prevalence of smoking among the college students and to identify the factors associated with smoking. Material & Methods: This is a cross sectional study carried out on 304 college students in Kathmandu valley using purposive sampling during the months of December 2009 to January 2010. The self administrated questionnaire was adopted from Global Youth Tobacco Survey 2007 (GYTS) and data were collected after the verbal consent taken. The statistical analysis was done using descriptive statistics, univariate and binary logistic regression to measure prevalence of smoking and to identify the association between dependent and independent variables. Results: We found 7 in 10 students were currently smokers. Among currently smokers, 78% were established smokers. The mean age of smoking onset was 14.15 years (SD=2.62). The mean number of cigarettes smoked per day was 5.03(SD=3.72) and average daily expenditure was Rs. 15.18 (SD=7.87). About 90% students tried to ...
Aim. This paper reports a patient survey exploring the possible relationship between illness per... more Aim. This paper reports a patient survey exploring the possible relationship between illness perception and self‐efficacy following a cardiac event, and the implications this could have for nursing practice.Background. Cardiac rehabilitation guidelines endorse the need to improve psychological care; suggesting that individualized support will improve the effectiveness of cardiac rehabilitation. Surveys, however, continue to identify that psychosocial factors are poorly assessed. Illness representation and self‐efficacy are two prominent research approaches that have been developed as separate foci for the treatment of patients.Method. A cross‐sectional survey with patients diagnosed with either myocardial infarction or angina over an 8‐month period in two hospitals. The Illness Perception Questionnaire, General Self‐Efficacy Questionnaire, Cardiac Diet Self‐efficacy Instrument and Cardiac Exercise Self‐efficacy Instrument were used, alongside two specifically‐designed scales: the...
Maternal prenatal stress places a substantial burden on mother’s mental health. Expectant mothers... more Maternal prenatal stress places a substantial burden on mother’s mental health. Expectant mothers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have thus far received less attention than mothers in high-income settings. This is particularly problematic, as a range of triggers, such as exposure to traumatic events (e.g. natural disasters, previous pregnancy losses) and adverse life circumstances (e.g. poverty, community violence), put mothers at increased risk of experiencing prenatal stress. The ten-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) is a widely recognised index of subjective experience of stress that is increasingly used in LMICs. However, evidence for its measurement equivalence across settings is lacking. This study aims to assess measurement invariance of the PSS-10 across eight LMICs and across birth parity. This research was carried out as part of the Evidence for Better Lives Study (EBLS, vrc.crim.cam.ac.uk/vrcresearch/EBLS). The PSS-10 was administered to N = 1,208 expectant...
Background Childhood adversities, such as poor parental practices, exposure to violence, and risk... more Background Childhood adversities, such as poor parental practices, exposure to violence, and risk behaviours strongly impact children’s future mental and behavioural problems. Adversities affect families living in disadvantaged environments and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to a greater extent than in high-income countries. Parenting programmes are an effective way to alleviate them, although their outreach and scalability is still limited in LMICs. Methods/design A multi-site randomised controlled trial will be conducted in North Macedonia, Republic of Moldova and Romania to test the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of an optimised version of the promising Parenting for Lifelong Health Programme for Young Children (PLH-YC, 5 sessions), against a standard lecture on parenting issues (control group, 1 session). At least 864 participants who report having children between 2 and 9 years old who display elevated levels of behavioural difficulties will be randomised on a 1:1 ba...
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people’s engagement in health behaviors, especiall... more Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people’s engagement in health behaviors, especially those that protect individuals from SARS-CoV-2 transmission, such as handwashing/sanitizing. Associations between the pandemic’s trajectory and engagement in the protective behavior of handwashing are unclear. This study investigated whether adherence to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) handwashing guidelines is associated with (i) total cases of COVID-19 morbidity/mortality accumulated since the onset of the pandemic, (ii) recent cases (country-level COVID-19 morbidity/mortality in the 14 days prior to data collection), (iii) increases/acceleration in recent cases (country-level COVID-19 morbidity/mortality in the previous 14 days minus cases recorded 14-28 days earlier), and (iv) stringency of the national containment-and-health policies (in the 7 days prior to data collection).Methods: The observational study (#NCT04367337) enrolled 6,064 adults residing in Australia, Canada, C...
Background: It is known that pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) is effective in reducing mild to... more Background: It is known that pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) is effective in reducing mild to moderate urinary incontinence (UI) in women. However, there are factors hampering effectiveness of PFMT such as low discipline to exercise, interference with routines, low self-efficacy, all of which make elements of delivery important in treatment effectiveness. Aim: We investigated whether and which theory-grounded strategies used in interventions increase effectiveness of PFMT. Method: A meta-analysis was conducted with 55 interventions reporting effects of PFMT. A literature search was performed on ISI WOS, PubMed, PsychInfo, Cochrane, and included experimental and cvasiexperimental (pre-post) reports of interventions comprising PFMT for women with mild and moderate UI, regardless of age. Intervention strategies were coded by using the behavior change techniques taxonomy. Results: Overall, there was a significant effect, of medium size of PFMT on behavioral indices of UI, , g = .52,...
Background: Pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) is the recommended approach to address mild to mo... more Background: Pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) is the recommended approach to address mild to moderate urinary incontincence (UI), although the adherence is variable. This makes elements of training delivery important in treatment effectiveness. Hence, the conversion of biofeedback approach into serious games played on a mobile phone is innovative and may prove effective in motivating women to adhere to their PFMT schedules. Methods: A mixed approach was implemented to develop serious game scenarios and test the biofeedback and games in a pilot trial. The game functionalities were amended and further tested together with biofeedback system in a trial with 21 women with UI, recruited in 2 hospitals. We collected quantitative (number of sessions performed, rating of different game functionalities etc) and qualitative data (interviews focused on satisfaction with using the system and barriers to adherence; think aloud protocols focused on the momentum experience of women with using th...
Background The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people’s engagement in health behaviors, especially... more Background The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people’s engagement in health behaviors, especially those that protect individuals from SARS-CoV-2 transmission, such as handwashing/sanitizing. This study investigated whether adherence to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) handwashing guidelines (the outcome variable) was associated with the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic, as measured by the following 6 indicators: (i) the number of new cases of COVID-19 morbidity/mortality (a country-level mean calculated for the 14 days prior to data collection), (ii) total cases of COVID-19 morbidity/mortality accumulated since the onset of the pandemic, and (iii) changes in recent cases of COVID-19 morbidity/mortality (a difference between country-level COVID-19 morbidity/mortality in the previous 14 days compared to cases recorded 14–28 days earlier). Methods The observational study (#NCT04367337) enrolled 6064 adults residing in Australia, Canada, China, France, Gambia, Germany, Israel, I...
The prevalence of child emotional and behavioral problems is an international problem but is high... more The prevalence of child emotional and behavioral problems is an international problem but is higher in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMIC) where there are often less mental health supports for families. Parenting programs can be an effective means of prevention, but must be low‐cost, scalable, and suitable for the local context. The RISE project aims to systematically adapt, implement, and evaluate a low‐cost parenting program for preventing/reducing child mental health problems in three middle‐income countries in Southeastern Europe. This small pre–post pilot study is informed by the Reach, Efficacy, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance (RE‐AIM) framework and tested the feasibility of the intervention, the implementation, and evaluation procedures: Phase 1 of the three‐phase Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST) for program adaptation. Local facilitators delivered the Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) for Young Children program to parents of children aged 2–9 in North ...
Uploads
Papers by adriana baban