Publications by authors named "Tara French"

EDIFY (Eating Disorders: Delineating Illness and Recovery Trajectories to Inform Personalised Prevention and Early Intervention in Young People) is an ambitious research project aiming to revolutionise how eating disorders are perceived, prevented and treated. Six integrated workstreams will address key questions, including: What are young people's experiences of eating disorders and recovery? What are the unique and shared risk factors in different groups? What helps or hinders recovery? How do the brain and behaviour change from early- to later-stage illness? How can we intervene earlier, quicker and in a more personalised way? This 4-year project, involving over 1000 participants, integrates arts, design and humanities with advanced neurobiological, psychosocial and bioinformatics approaches. Young people with lived experience of eating disorders are at the heart of EDIFY, serving as advisors and co-producers throughout.

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Background: With most mental health problems established during childhood/adolescence, young people must be a key focus of public mental health approaches. Despite the range of factors known to influence mental health, evidence for effective interventions is lacking for this age group. This study aimed to define priorities for future public health intervention-focused research to support youth mental health by engaging with transdisciplinary stakeholder groups.

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Background: The sustainability of health and social care has led to an imperative to shift the balance of care to communities and support person-centered, integrated, preventive, comanaged, and sustainable care. The digital tool set can support this shift; however, it must extend beyond a clinical focus to include broader personal, social, and environmental needs, experiences, and outcomes. The existing digital health and care design and user requirements literature focuses mainly on specific digital products or design methods.

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Western developed health and care policy is shifting from a patriarchal medical model to a co-managed and integrated approach. Meanwhile, the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) is transforming manufacturing in line with the digital consumer revolution.

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Objectives: Providing access to hospice services will become increasingly difficult due to the pressures of an ageing population and limited resources. To help address this challenge, a small number of services called Virtual Hospice have been established. This paper presents early-stage design work on a Virtual Hospice to improve access to services provided by a hospice (Highland Hospice) serving a largely remote and rural population in Scotland, UK.

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Background: It is widely recognized that patients have increased anxiety before elective surgery, however, previous research investigating the effect of preassessment clinics (PACs) on anxiety levels has been limited specifically to patient information literature or multimedia use, rather than the consultation process itself. The aim was to investigate the effect attendance at PAC had on patients' anxiety levels, associated with their subsequent surgery and anesthetic.

Materials And Methods: This survey consisted of a cross-sectional, questionnaire-based, quantitative study investigating patients' anxiety levels before and after attendance at the PAC.

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Background: Online health information seeking is an activity that needs to be explored in Scotland. While there are a growing number of studies that adopt a qualitative approach to this issue and attempt to understand the behaviors associated with online health information seeking, previous studies focusing on quantifying the prevalence and pattern of online health seeking in the United Kingdom have been based on Internet users in general.

Objective: This exploratory study sought to describe the prevalence of online health information seeking in a rural area of Scotland based on primary data from a patient population.

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Until recently, the Western biomedical paradigm has been effective in delivering health care, however this model is not positioned to tackle complex societal challenges or solve the current problems facing health care and delivery. The future of medicine requires a shift to a patient-centric model and in so doing the Internet has a significant role to play. The disciplines of Health Web Science and Medicine 2.

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