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The simple act of informing patients about side-effects increases the likelihood they will experience them (i.e. the nocebo effect). Explaining this psychological phenomenon could help to reduce side-effect experience, however, it is yet to be explored if this can be applied to clinical settings where new medication is prescribed. In addition, the degree to which a health-care provider empathetically communicates this to patients may have an impact. To investigate this, we carried out 2 × 2 factorial trial to assess the effect of nocebo explanation and empathy (plus their interaction) on side-effect expectations following a fictional GP consultation prescribing a new medication. Overall, 208 participants were randomised to watch one of the four fictive GP consultations and play the role of the patient. In all videos, participants received information about the reason for the consultation, the recommendation of a new fictive medicine, how to take it, benefits and side-effects. The videos differed in whether the GP provided an explanation of the nocebo effect (yes/no) and whether they communicated in an empathetic style (yes/no). After watching the video, participants were asked about their side-effect expectations and rated the quality of the GP's communication. Two-way ANOVAs revealed no main effect of nocebo explanation on expectation of side-effects warned or not warned about in the consultation. However, there was a main effect of empathy, with participants watching the empathetic consultations having significantly lower expectations of non-warned-about side-effects. There was no significant interaction. Findings suggest that explaining the nocebo effect and GP empathy did little to allay expectations of side-effects that were specifically mentioned in the consultation. However, GP empathy had an effect by helping to reduce additional side-effect expectations participants still had. Future work should extend these findings to real GP consultations where the full dimensions of empathy can be explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During an emergency, it is necessary to quickly disseminate messages to the public. These communications often provide information about the emergency as well as guidance or advice aimed at ensuring the safety of the population. Successful emergency communication depends upon how rapidly and reliably a message can be disseminated, but also on how people respond to the message that they receive. To assist emergency planners tasked with developing message sets for future incidents, in this paper we report a systematic review of all studies that assessed the impact of mobile telephone alerting systems on intended and actual behaviour, to identify factors that affect their likely impact. We searched multiple databases and conferred with topic experts, resulting in a total of 22 studies which met the inclusion criteria. Our results indicate that limited data exist on how people respond to text-based warning messages and that much of the data is poor quality, indicating a need for more real-world studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the United Kingdom government imposed public health policies in England to reduce social contacts in hopes of curbing virus transmission. We conducted a repeated cross-sectional study to measure contact patterns weekly from March 2020 to March 2021 to estimate the impact of these policies, covering 3 national lockdowns interspersed by periods of less restrictive policies. Methods and findings The repeated cross-sectional survey data were collected using online surveys of representative samples of the UK population by age and gender. Survey participants were recruited by the online market research company Ipsos MORI through internet-based banner and social media ads and email campaigns. The participant data used for this analysis are restricted to those who reported living in England. We calculated the mean daily contacts reported using a (clustered) bootstrap and fitted a censored negative binomial model to estimate age-stratified contact matrices and estimate proportional changes to the basic reproduction number under controlled conditions using the change in contacts as a scaling factor. To put the findings in perspective, we discuss contact rates recorded throughout the year in terms of previously recorded rates from the POLYMOD study social contact study. The survey recorded 101,350 observations from 19,914 participants who reported 466,710 contacts over 53 weeks. We observed changes in social contact patterns in England over time and by participants' age, personal risk factors, and perception of risk. The mean reported contacts for adults 18 to 59 years old ranged between 2.39 (95% confidence interval [CI] 2.20 to 2.60) contacts and 4.93 (95% CI 4.65 to 5.19) contacts during the study period. The mean contacts for school-age children (5 to 17 years old) ranged from 3.07 (95% CI 2.89 to 3.27) to 15.11 (95% CI 13.87 to 16.41). This demonstrates a sustained decrease in social contacts compared to a mean of 11.08 (95% CI 10.54 to 11.57) contacts per participant in all age groups combined as measured by the POLYMOD social contact study in 2005 to 2006. Contacts measured during periods of lockdowns were lower than in periods of eased social restrictions. The use of face coverings outside the home has remained high since the government mandated use in some settings in July 2020. The main limitations of this analysis are the potential for selection bias, as participants are recruited through internet-based campaigns, and recall bias, in which participants may under- or overreport the number of contacts they have made. Conclusions In this study, we observed that recorded contacts reduced dramatically compared to prepandemic levels (as measured in the POLYMOD study), with changes in reported contacts correlated with government interventions throughout the pandemic. Despite easing of restrictions in the summer of 2020, the mean number of reported contacts only returned to about half of that observed prepandemic at its highest recorded level. The CoMix survey provides a unique repeated cross-sectional data set for a full year in England, from the first day of the first lockdown, for use in statistical analyses and mathematical modelling of COVID-19 and other diseases., Author(s): Amy Gimma 1,*, James D. Munday 1, Kerry L. M. Wong 1, Pietro Coletti 2, Kevin van Zandvoort 1, Kiesha Prem 1, CMMID COVID-19 working group, Petra Klepac 1, [...]

Objectives: We aimed to identify psychological factors associated with the use of facemasks in shops in England following removal of legal requirements to do so, and to compare associations with and without legal restrictions. Design: Repeated cross‐sectional online surveys (n ≈ 2000 adults) between August 2020 and April 2022 (68,716 responses from 45,682 participants) using quota sampling. Methods: The outcome measure was whether those who had visited a shop for essentials in the previous seven days reported always having worn a facemask versus sometimes or not at all. Psychological predictor variables included worry, perceived risk and severity of COVID‐19 and the perceived effectiveness of facemasks. Socio‐demographic variables and measures of clinical vulnerability were also measured. For the period following removal of legal restrictions, multivariable regression was used to assess associations between the primary outcome variable and predictors adjusting for socio‐demographic and clinical vulnerability measures. The analysis was repeated including interactions between psychological predictors and presence versus absence of legal restrictions. Results: Worry about COVID‐19, beliefs about risks and severity of COVID‐19 and effectiveness of facemasks were substantially and independently associated with the use of facemasks. Removal of legal obligations to wear facemasks was associated with a 25% decrease in wearing facemasks and stronger associations between psychological predictors and wearing facemasks. Conclusions: Legal obligations increase rates of wearing a facemask. Psychological factors associated with wearing a facemask could be targets for interventions aiming to alter rates of wearing a facemask. These interventions may be more effective when there are no legal obligations to wear a face covering in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]