Environmental Infrastructure Maintenance Bottlenecks in Healthcare Facilities and Coping Strategies Among Healthcare Workers in Niger.

Infrastructure for water, sanitation, hygiene, cleaning, and waste management is essential for supporting safe environmental conditions in healthcare facilities. Routine maintenance is important for preventing infrastructure breakdowns, but few studies have examined healthcare facility maintenance practices. This study documented environmental maintenance tasks in healthcare facilities in Niger, described bottlenecks to maintenance, and assessed strategies for coping with breakdowns.

Effects of environmental conditions on healthcare worker wellbeing and quality of care: A qualitative study in Niger.

Environmental conditions (water, sanitation, hygiene, waste management, cleaning, energy, building design) are important for a safe and functional healthcare environment. Yet their full range of impacts are not well understood. In this study, we assessed the impact of environmental conditions on healthcare workers' wellbeing and quality of care, using qualitative interviews with 81 healthcare workers at 26 small healthcare facilities in rural Niger.

The lasting influence of Ebola: a qualitative study of community-level behaviors, trust, and perceptions three years after the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in Liberia.

The majority of disease transmission during the 2014-16 West Africa Ebola epidemic was driven by community-based behaviors that proved difficult to change in a social paradigm of misinformation, denial, and deep-seated distrust of government representatives and institutions. In Liberia, perceptions and beliefs about Ebola during and since the epidemic can provide insights useful to public health strategies aimed at improving community preparedness. In this 2018 study, we conducted nine focus groups with Liberians from three communities who experienced Ebola differently, to evaluate behaviors, attitudes, and trust during and after the epidemic.

Contextualizing mobility during the Ebola epidemic in Liberia.

Based on findings from focus groups and key informant interviews conducted at five sites in Liberia between 2018 and 2019, we explore some of the key factors that influenced people's motivation to travel during the 2014-2016 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). We discuss how these factors led to certain mobility patterns and the implications these had for EVD response. The reasons for individual mobility during the epidemic were multiple and diverse.

Community trust of government and non-governmental organizations during the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in Liberia.

The West African Ebola Virus Disease epidemic of 2014-16 cost more than 11,000 lives. Interventions targeting key behaviors to curb transmission, such as safe funeral practices and reporting and isolating the ill, were initially unsuccessful in a climate of fear, mistrust, and denial. Building trust was eventually recognized as essential to epidemic response and prioritized, and trust was seen to improve toward the end of the epidemic as incidence fell.

Barriers and Opportunities for Sustainable Hand Hygiene Interventions in Rural Liberian Hospitals.

Hand hygiene is central to hospital infection control. During the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola virus disease epidemic in Liberia, gaps in hand hygiene infrastructure and health worker training contributed to hospital-based Ebola transmission. Hand hygiene interventions were undertaken post-Ebola, but many improvements were not sustainable.

Feasibility, Acceptability, and Behavioral Outcomes from a Technology-enhanced Behavioral Change Intervention (Prostate 8): A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial in Men with Prostate Cancer.

Background: Increasing evidence suggests that lifestyle factors may decrease the risk of prostate cancer progression. Lifestyle guidelines and tools may support lifestyle modification after diagnosis.

Objective: To determine the feasibility and acceptability of a digital lifestyle intervention among men with prostate cancer.

Household chaos and screen media use among preschool-aged children: a cross-sectional study.

Background: Excess screen media use is a robust predictor of childhood obesity. Understanding how household factors may affect children's screen use is needed to tailor effective intervention efforts. The preschool years are a critical time for obesity prevention, and while it is likely that greater household disorder influences preschool-aged children's screen use, data on that relationship are absent.

The Fitbit One Physical Activity Tracker in Men With Prostate Cancer: Validation Study.

Background: Physical activity after cancer diagnosis improves quality of life and may lengthen survival. However, objective data in cancer survivors are limited and no physical activity tracker has been validated for use in this population.

Objective: The aim of this study was to validate the Fitbit One's measures of physical activity over 7 days in free-living men with localized prostate cancer.