Negotiating Safety and Wellbeing: The Collaboration Between Faith-Based Communities and Public Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to lockdown measures where congregational faith-based activities were prohibited. With time, the collateral impacts of confinement emerged as priorities, and impositions had to be balanced with the collaboration of the population. In this process, faith-based organizations played a key role in encouraging their congregations to adhere to lockdown measures while fostering their mental wellbeing and resilience.

Pandémie et communautés minoritaires marginalisées : vers une approche inclusive en santé publique?

The pandemic has highlighted the complexity of public health measures and their side effects, the intricacy of the underlying health, social and political phenomena at play as well as their specificity for marginalized minority communities. Based on this experience, this commentary suggests that it would be relevant in the future to develop consultation mechanisms that take into account the entire population, including marginalized minority groups, in order to better inform decision-making processes in times of pandemic. In a context of fluid crisis, any consultation process must take into account the limits of what is possible and mourn the comprehensiveness in favour of repeated iterations of dialogue, mediation and decision-making.

Could symptom burden predict subsequent healthcare use in patients with end stage kidney disease on hemodialysis care? A prospective, preliminary study.

Patients treated with maintenance hemodialysis experience significant symptom burden resulting in impaired quality of life. However, the association of patient reported symptom burden and the risk of healthcare use for patients with end stage kidney disease on hemodialysis has not been fully explored. To investigate if higher symptom burden, assessed by the Edmonton Symptom Assessment System-revised (ESASr), is associated with increased healthcare use in patients with end stage kidney disease on hemodialysis.

Psychosocial Distress and Health Service Utilization in Patients Undergoing Hemodialysis: A Prospective Study.

Background: End-stage renal disease is associated with significant morbidity, high-symptom burden, and health care use. Studies have not yet assessed psychosocial distress and health care utilization in this population.

Objective: This study examines psychosocial distress and its association with hospitalization and emergency room (ER) visits in patients on maintenance hemodialysis (HD).