Publications by authors named "Helms Y"

Background: Contact tracing (CT) is a key intervention to contain outbreaks of communicable diseases. During large-scale outbreaks, public health services may lack the resources required to perform CT effectively. One way of mitigating this issue is to shift some of the tasks in CT normally performed by public health services to cases and their contacts, supported by digital tools.

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Contact tracing (CT) can be a resource intensive task for public health services. To alleviate their workload and potentially accelerate the CT-process, public health professionals (PHPs) may transfer some tasks in the identification, notification, and monitoring of contacts to cases and their contacts themselves, using 'digital contact tracing support tools' (DCTS-tools). In this study, we aimed to identify determinants of PHPs' intention to use DCTS-tools.

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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that with high infection rates, health services conducting contact tracing (CT) could become overburdened, leading to limited or incomplete CT. Digital CT support (DCTS) tools are designed to mimic traditional CT, by transferring a part of or all the tasks of CT into the hands of citizens. Besides saving time for health services, these tools may help to increase the number of contacts retrieved during the contact identification process, quantity and quality of contact details, and speed of the contact notification process.

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Background: Contact tracing (CT) is a key strategy when dealing with outbreaks of infectious diseases such as COVID-19. The scale of the COVID-19 pandemic has often left public health professionals (PHPs), who are responsible for the execution of CT, unable to keep up with the rapid and largescale spread of the virus. To enhance or support its execution, and potentially lower the workload for PHPs, citizens may be more actively involved in CT-tasks that are commonly executed by PHPs (referred to as 'self-led CT').

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Background: Contact tracing (CT) is an important, but resource-intensive tool to control outbreaks of communicable diseases. Under pandemic circumstances, public health services may not have sufficient resources at their disposal to effectively facilitate CT. This may be addressed by giving cases and their contact persons more autonomy and responsibility in the execution of CT by public health professionals, through digital contact tracing support tools (DCTS-tools).

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Background: Online respondent-driven detection (RDD) is a novel method of case finding that can enhance contact tracing (CT). However, the advantages and challenges of RDD for CT have not yet been investigated from the perspective of public health professionals (PHPs). Therefore, it remains unclear if, and under what circumstances, PHPs are willing to apply RDD for CT.

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Background: Web-based respondent-driven sampling is a novel sampling method for the recruitment of participants for generating population estimates, studying social network characteristics, and delivering health interventions. However, the application, barriers and facilitators, and recruitment performance of web-based respondent-driven sampling have not yet been systematically investigated.

Objective: Our objectives were to provide an overview of published research using web-based respondent-driven sampling and to investigate factors related to the recruitment performance of web-based respondent-driven sampling.

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The use of renewable energy in Europe offers the possibility of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and contributes to energy security and independence. With the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and a variety of recently introduced national directives supporting renewable energy sources in the European Union, the economic attractiveness of bioenergy production has distinctly increased. This article combines an economic evaluation of biomass production with site-related natural conditions of the Havelland region, situated in the north-east area of Germany.

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