Addressing obstetric violence: a scoping review of interventions in healthcare and their impact on maternal care quality.

Background: The mistreatment and abuse of women during childbirth have been recognized as a major global health challenge, impeding facility-based delivery and contributing to the high maternal mortalities globally. The World Health Organization has specifically called for interventions to deal with obstetric violence. This scoping review consolidates the existing literature on interventions aimed at reducing obstetric violence and synthesizes existing knowledge on their impact in promoting respectful maternity care.

COVID-19 Pandemic and Food Insecurity Fuel the Mental Health Crisis in Africa.

Providing country-level estimates for prevalence rates of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), COVID-19 exposure and food insecurity (FI) and assessing the role of persistent threats to survival-exemplified by exposure to COVID-19 and FI-for the mental health crisis in Africa. Original phone-based survey data from Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda (12 consecutive cross-sections in 2021; = 23,943) were analyzed to estimate prevalence rates of GAD. Logistic regression models and mediation analysis using structural equation models identify risk and protective factors.

The Life with Corona survey.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis affecting everyone. Yet, its challenges and countermeasures vary significantly over time and space. Individual experiences of the pandemic are highly heterogeneous and its impacts span and interlink multiple dimensions, such as health, economic, social and political impacts.

Life With Corona: Increased Gender Differences in Aggression and Depression Symptoms Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic Burden in Germany.

Gender differences (GD) in mental health have come under renewed scrutiny during the COVID-19 pandemic. While rapidly emerging evidence indicates a deterioration of mental health in general, it remains unknown whether the pandemic will have an impact on GD in mental health. To this end, we investigate the association of the pandemic and its countermeasures affecting everyday life, labor, and households with changes in GD in aggression, anxiety, depression, and the somatic symptom burden.

Safer spaces: The impact of a reduction in road fatalities on the life expectancy of South Africans.

In this paper we determine the burden on society of fatalities resulting from road traffic injuries (RTIs) in South Africa. We express the burden in terms of reduced life expectancy and years of potential life lost (YPLL). Our main data source is the Injury Mortality Survey (IMS), a retrospective descriptive study carried out in South Africa.

Patient-centered communication in type 2 diabetes: The facilitating and constraining factors in clinical encounters.

Objective: To explore the perceptions of the constraining and facilitating factors to patient-centered communication in clinical encounters of patients with type 2 diabetes and the providers involved in their care.

Data Sources/study Setting: Patients (n = 12) and providers (n = 33) involved in diabetes care in northern Portugal.

Study Design: Seven focus groups.

The Role of Distributed Health Literacy in Asthma Integrated Care: A Public Medical Context from Portugal.

Background: Improvements in asthma integrated care might be achieved through in-depth knowledge about how health literacy is dispersed through a group. This study intends to map out health literacy mediators (those who and how they enable self-management skills in patients with asthma.

Methods: Twenty interviews were conducted in a Primary Care Center of Porto using the McGill Illness Narrative Interview.

Distributed health literacy among people living with type 2 diabetes in Portugal: Defining levels of awareness and support.

This study embraces a patient-centred and narrative-oriented notion of health literacy, exploring how social networks and personal experiences constitute distributed health literacy (DHL) by mapping out health literacy mediators of each individual and how they enable self-management skills and knowledge of health conditions. Semi-structured interviews with 26 patients with type 2 diabetes were conducted in a Primary Care Center of Porto (Portugal) from October 2014 to December 2015. Data were collected based on McGill Illness Narrative Interview (MINI).

"That Should Be Left to Doctors, That's What They are There For!"-Exploring the Reflexivity and Trust of Young Adults When Seeking Health Information.

This paper explores the health information-seeking practices of healthy young adults and how they assess and rank sources of information through a qualitative study. The findings show that participants (a) are strongly committed to searching for information about health and lifestyle, especially via the Internet; (b) healthcare professionals were perceived as the most reliable source of health information and advice; (c) online health information, although frequently accessed and experienced as empowering, is seen as a potentially unreliable source. Findings evidence how becoming better informed about health-related topics plays a pivotal role in individuals' lives, most notably by using the Internet.