Search

Background: Patients with disabilities often require healthcare accommodations in order to access high-quality, equitable healthcare services. While attention has been paid to accommodation needs in specific disability populations, limited research to date has explored healthcare accommodations that cross-cut diverse disability populations.Objective: To identify a deeper understanding regarding accommodations in healthcare settings that could apply across disability populations and promote equitable healthcare.Design: We conducted qualitative focus groups with patients with disabilities and caregivers to understand their experiences and preferences for healthcare accommodations.Participants: We recruited patients and caregivers across all major disability categories to participate in focus groups. Participants were recruited through advocacy organizations and healthcare settings in Southeastern Minnesota.Approach: A total of eight focus groups were conducted with 56 participants. Participants described their healthcare experiences and desires for healthcare accommodations. The multidisciplinary research team recorded, transcribed verbatim, and coded all focus groups. The team thematically coded transcripts using content analysis within and across focus groups to identify major themes.Key Results: Patients identified four challenges and corresponding steps healthcare team could take to promote equitable care: (1) consistent documentation of disabilities and needed accommodations in the medical record; (2) allowance for accommodations to the environment, including adapting physical space, physical structures, and scheduling and rooming processes; (3) provide accommodations for administrative tasks, such as completing paper or electronic forms; and (4) adapt communication during interactions, such as speaking slower or using terms that patients can easily understand.Conclusion: These identified themes represent specific opportunities for healthcare teams to effectively provide accessible care to patients with disabilities. Many of the accommodations require minimal financial investment, but did require behavioral changes by the healthcare team to ensure equitable healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses secondary analysis to understand how COVID-19 shaped people's experiences with psychosocial support services in Australia. Data are drawn from questionnaires (n = 66) and semi-structured interviews (n = 62), conducted for a national service evaluation, with 121 people living with enduring mental health conditions and using psychosocial support services. Data relating to COVID-19 were inductively coded and analysed using constant comparative analysis. Most people's experiences included tele-support. While some people described minimal disruption to their support, many reported reduced engagement. People's wellbeing and engagement were influenced by: their location, living situation and pre-COVID lifestyles; physical health conditions; access to, comfort with, and support worker facilitation of technology; pre-COVID relationships with support workers; and communication from the organisation. The findings can help services prepare for future pandemics, adjust their services for a 'COVID-normal' world, and consider how learnings from COVID-19 could be incorporated into a flexible suite of service delivery options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Joyuus is a culturally diverse, comprehensive online tool designed to address the self-care needs of underserved postpartum women. The tool provides actionable self-care information, knowledge, and skills to improve postpartum health and identifies red flags for when self-care shifts to seeking care. Methods: We employed a mixed-methods multiphase design to evaluate the Joyuus prototype, including a pre-post evaluation (N = 87) to assess behavioral health outcomes before and after using the tool for a one-month period. 91% completed the post-test (N = 79). The analysis focused on estimation of treatment effect (via 95% confidence intervals) and fitness of instruments in this population. Results: Participants were between 6 months pregnant and one year postpartum, a mean age of 30 years, 100% female, 99% Black, with nearly equal distribution of married (55%) and not married (44%), and above (47%) and below (46%) annual income of $60 K. Key measures saw significant improvement from pre- (mean = 26.44, SD = 5.39) to post (mean = 28.29, SD = 5.26) on the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (p < 0.001) Trends toward improvement (not statistically significant) were noted for Depression (EPDS) (p = 0.624) and Anxiety (STAI) (p = 0.286), and no meaningful change on MOS Social Support or COVID-19 Mental Health Impacts Measures. Conclusions for Practice: This pilot study demonstrates that a self-care mobile tool has the potential to address significant health outcomes related to maternal morbidity and mortality. By providing a continuously available companion addressing physical, mental, and real-life questions, it creates value during postpartum for mothers who can often feel overwhelmed or isolated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Aspirations refer to wishes, ways of defining quality of life (QOL), and life goals. Living with chronic illness likely impacts a person's life aspirations. Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is an inherited disorder characterized by the inevitable and progressive loss of ambulation and independence. The present cross-sectional case–control study investigated how aspirations differed between people with DMD and a stratified comparison group of nationally representative children/adults. Methods: A web-based survey was administered October through December 2020. Recruitment was stratified by age group: 8–12, 13–17, and > = 18, reflecting the DMD disability trajectory. Aspirations were measured using qualitative (open-ended) and quantitative (closed-ended) questions. Qualitative prompts asked participants about wishes, how they would define "QOL"; and goals; answers to the prompts were then coded by six trained raters. Quantitative questions included 29 closed-ended goal-delineation items from the QOL Appraisal Profilev2. These data were analyzed using multivariate models adjusting for propensity scores (demographic differences), and testing for the effects of role (patient or comparison), age, and role-by-age interactions. Results: The study sample of DMD (n = 285) and comparison (n = 292) participants provided open-text data: 577 wishes statements, 283 QOL-definition statements, and 149 goals statements. Inter-rater reliability (kappa = 0.77) reflected good agreement between different raters' codes. Results suggested that people with DMD have aspirations that differ from their peers in several important ways. Both open-text and closed-ended data in both unadjusted and adjusted analyses generally showed that people with DMD were more focused on intrinsic aspirations such as health, healthcare, and independence than their peers. Compared to non-DMD persons, DMD individuals were much less focused on financial or housing concerns, community contributions, or spiritual growth. With age, patients' aspirations focused less on extrinsic aspirations such as careers and work and increasingly emphasized emotion-oriented goals. Patients were markedly less likely to give a direct answer to the open-ended goals question. Conclusion: There were important differences in aspirations between people with DMD and their peers. These findings may be helpful for developing psychosocial interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to explore the factor structure of the MOS-SSS in a sample of community-dwelling Spanish older adults. The sample comprised 406 community-dwelling older adults aged between 65 to 99 years old (Mage = 74.88, SD = 6.75). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed, and four possible models were compared: the one-factor, the three-factor, the four-factor and the five-factor model, using an additional analysis with a second-order factor. The internal consistency reliability and convergent validity of the scale were also assessed. For the 19-item MOS-SSS scale, the five-factor model had the best fit to the data. All five subscales of the MOS-SSS showed adequate internal consistency, good convergent and discriminant validity. These findings contribute to the literature on the factor structure of the MOS-SSS in Spanish older adults. The MOS-SSS is a reliable and valid scale that can be used to assess Spanish older adults' social support perception for social services, health and in research contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: A small number of adverse events of seizure in patients using desloratadine (DL) have been reported. The European Medicines Agency requested a post-authorization safety study to investigate whether there is an association between DL exposure and seizure.Objective: The aim was to study the association between DL exposure and incidence of first seizure.Methods: A new-user cohort study of individuals redeeming a first-ever prescription of DL in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden in 2001-2015 was conducted. DL exposure was defined as days' supply plus a 4-week grace period. DL unexposed periods were initiated 27 weeks after DL prescription redemption. Poisson regression was used to estimate the adjusted incidence rate and adjusted incidence rate ratio (aIRR) of incident seizure.Results: A total of 1,807,347 first-ever DL users were included in the study, with 49.3% male and a mean age of 29.5 years at inclusion; 20.3% were children aged 0-5 years. The adjusted incidence rates of seizure were 21.7 and 31.6 per 100,000 person-years during DL unexposed and exposed periods, respectively. A 46% increased incidence rate of seizure was found during DL exposed periods (aIRR = 1.46, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.34-1.59). The aIRR ranged from 1.85 (95% CI 1.65-2.08) in children aged 0-5 years to 1.01 in adults aged 20 years or more (95% CI 0.85-1.19).Conclusion: This study found an increased incidence rate of seizure during DL exposed periods as compared to unexposed periods among individuals younger than 20 years. No difference in incidence rate of seizure was observed in adults between DL exposed and unexposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Cancer Prevention and Research (ICMR-NICPR) has been conducting online cancer screening training certificate courses since 2017. Thereafter, multiple cohorts have been trained successfully in cancer screening using the Extensions for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) platform. A 14-week course was designed for various cadres of healthcare professionals (HCP), through which they were trained in cancer screening and their roles and responsibilities in implementing the population-based cancer screening, as per the operational framework released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Then, a contact program was held to upskill the participants in cancer screening techniques. Eight cohorts have been successfully trained using the hybrid model of online training and hands-on training. Cancer screening conducted utilizing the hybrid model, consisting of the online ECHO model, followed by hands-on training is a suitable training model to train large cohorts, such as the one in populous countries like India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]