A public health approach to reducing violence within the CARICOM region.

Widespread crime has become a worldwide problem so much so that violence is now ranked fourth globally in its contribution to disability-adjusted life years in the 10 to 24 age group. Homicides, a surrogate marker of violent crime, have shown an upward trend in almost all of the CARICOM countries, and homicide rates over the past 3 years have consistently increased, though the pattern of violence varies by country. This background has informed the need for greater emphasis on the need for a different approach to dealing with crime in the CARICOM region.

FOMO (fate of online media only) in infectious disease modeling: a review of compartmental models.

Mathematical models played in a major role in guiding policy decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic. These models while focusing on the spread and containment of the disease, largely ignored the impact of media on the disease transmission. Media plays a major role in shaping opinions, attitudes and perspectives and as the number of people online increases, online media are fast becoming a major source for news and health related information and advice.

Food-Focused Media Literacy for Remotely Acculturating Adolescents and Mothers: A Randomized Controlled Trial of the "JUS Media? Programme".

Purpose: Unhealthy eating is a major modifiable risk factor for noncommunicable diseases and obesity, and remote acculturation to U.S. culture is a recently identified cultural determinant of unhealthy eating among adolescents and families in low/middle-income countries.

Harnessing Social Media in the Modelling of Pandemics-Challenges and Opportunities.

As COVID-19 spreads throughout the world without a straightforward treatment or widespread vaccine coverage in the near future, mathematical models of disease spread and of the potential impact of mitigation measures have been thrust into the limelight. With their popularity and ability to disseminate information relatively freely and rapidly, information from social media platforms offers a user-generated, spontaneous insight into users' minds that may capture beliefs, opinions, attitudes, intentions and behaviour towards outbreaks of infectious disease not obtainable elsewhere. The interactive, immersive nature of social media may reveal emergent behaviour that does not occur in engagement with traditional mass media or conventional surveys.