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Bibliographic details:

Negev, M., Dahdal, Y., Khreis, H., Hochman, A., Shaheen, M., Jaghbir, M. T., ... & Davidovitch, N. (2021). Regional lessons from the COVID-19 outbreak in the Middle East: From infectious diseases to climate change adaptation. Science of the Total Environment768, 144434.

Abstract:

Global health threats including epidemics and climate change, know no political borders and require regional collaboration if they are to be dealt with effectively. This paper starts with a review of the COVID-19 outbreak in Israel, Palestine and Jordan, in the context of the regional health systems, demography and politics. We suggest that Israel and Palestine function as one epidemiological unit, due to extensive border crossing of inhabitants and tourists, resulting in cross-border infections and potential for outbreaks' transmission. Indeed, there is a correlation between the numbers of confirmed cases with a 2–3 weeks lag. In contrast, Jordan has the ability to seal its borders and better contain the spread of the virus. We then discuss comparative public health aspects in relation to the management of COVID-19 and long term adaptation to climate change. We suggest that lessons from the current crisis can inform regional adaptation to climate change. There is an urgent need for better health surveillance, data sharing across borders, and more resilient health systems that are prepared and equipped for emergencies. Another essential and currently missing prerequisite is close cooperation within and across countries amidst political conflict, in order to protect the public health of all inhabitants of the region.

Webpage: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7834362/

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Negev, M., Khreis, H., Rogers, B. C., Shaheen, M., & Erell, E. (2020). City design for health and resilience in hot and dry climates. bmj371.

Abstract:

The health of people living in cities is affected by urban design elements including density, distribution of land use, building design, transport infrastructure, green spaces, opportunities for social interaction, and accessibility to work, education, healthy food, and culture. Several of these elements pose particular challenges when designing healthy cities in hot and dry regions such as the Middle East, where weather may constrain active transport, outdoor recreational physical activity, and outdoor socializing. Studies of the impact of urban design on health in arid regions is scarce, with most research from the global north. A climate and culturally sensitive approach can, however, inform adaptation of evidence from temperate climates to hot and dry climates.

Webpage: https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/371/bmj.m3000.full.pdf

 

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Manheim, D., & Gesser-Edelsburg, A. (2018). The Structure of Tweets about Vaccine Safety Between Health Organizations, Experts and the Public: Analyzing Risk Communication Conversations. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 1-25.

 

Abstract:

Objective: This article considers how health education organizations in the World Health Organization's 9 Vaccine Safety Network (VSN) use Twitter to communicate about vaccines with the public, and whether they answer questions and engage in conversations. Almost no research in public health, to our knowledge, has explored conversational structure on social media among posts sent by different accounts.

Methods: Starting with 1,017,176 tweets by relevant users, we constructed 2 corpuses of multi-tweet conversations. The first was 1,814 conversations that included VSN members directly, whereas the second was 2,283 conversations mentioning vaccines or vaccine denialism. The tweets and user metadata were then analyzed using an adaptation of rhetorical structure theory.

Results: In the studied data, VSN members tweeted 12,677 times within conversations, compared to their 37,587 lone tweets. Their conversations were shorter than those in the comparison corpus (P < 0.0001), and they were involved in fewer multilogues (P < 0.0001).

Conclusion: While there is diversity among organizations, most were tied to the pre-social media broadcast model. In the future, they should try to converse more, rather than tweet more, and embrace best practices in risk communication.

Webpage: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-and-public-health-preparedness/article/structure-of-tweets-about-vaccine-safety-between-health-organizations-experts-and-the-public-analyzing-risk-communication-conversations/EE76CCEEFD82AF76024CEC503CE069B9

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Bibliographic details:

Gesser-Edelsburg, A., Shahbari, N. A. E., Cohen, R., Halavi, A. M., Hijazi, R., Paz-Yaakobovitch, G., & Birman, Y. (2019). Differences in perceptions of health information between the public and health care professionals: nonprobability sampling questionnaire survey. Journal of medical Internet research21(7), e14105.

 

Abstract:

Background: In the new media age, the public searches for information both online and offline. Many studies have examined how the public reads and understands this information but very few investigate how people assess the quality of journalistic articles as opposed to information generated by health professionals.

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine how public health care workers (HCWs) and the general public seek, read, and understand health information and to investigate the criteria by which they assess the quality of journalistic articles.

Methods: A Web-based nonprobability sampling questionnaire survey was distributed to Israeli HCWs and members of the public via 3 social media outlets: Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. A total of 979 respondents participated in the online survey via the Qualtrics XM platform.

Results: The findings indicate that HCWs find academic articles more reliable than do members of the general public (44.4% and 28.4%, respectively, P<.001). Within each group, we found disparities between the places where people search for information and the sources they consider reliable. HCWs consider academic articles to be the most reliable, yet these are not their main information sources. In addition, HCWs often use social networks to search for information (18.2%, P<.001), despite considering them very unreliable (only 2.2% found them reliable, P<.001). The same paradoxes were found among the general public, where 37.5% (P<.001) seek information via social networks yet only 8.4% (P<.001) find them reliable. Out of 6 quality criteria, 4 were important both to HCWs and to the general public.

Conclusions: In the new media age where information is accessible to all, the quality of articles about health is of critical importance. It is important that the criteria examined in this research become the norm in health writing for all stakeholders who write about health, whether they are professional journalists or citizen journalists writing in the new media.

Webpage:  https://www.jmir.org/2019/7/e14105

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Gesser-Edelsburg, A., Cohen, R., Hijazi, R., & Shahbari, N. A. E. (2020). Analysis of public perception of the Israeli government’s early emergency instructions regarding COVID-19: online survey study. Journal of medical Internet research22(5), e19370.

Abstract:

Background: On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared coronavirus disease (COVID-19) to be a pandemic. This posed challenges to many countries, prominent among which is communication with the public to gain their cooperation. Israel faces different challenges from other countries in its management of the COVID-19 crisis because it is in the midst of a deep constitutional crisis.

Objective: The objective of this paper was to examine the response of the Israeli public to the government’s emergency instructions regarding the pandemic in terms of correlations between overall risk perception and crisis management; overall risk perception and economic threat perception; crisis management and compliance with behavioral guidelines; and crisis management and economic threat perception. We also made comparisons between crisis management and spokesperson credibility and between crisis management and the credibility of information sources.

Methods: The sample was established using an online survey that enabled rapid and effective distribution of an online questionnaire during the COVID-19 crisis. The self-selection online survey method of nonprobability sampling was used to recruit participants (N=1056) through social network posts asking the general public (aged ≥18 years) to answer the survey.

Results: Participants aged ≥65 years perceived higher personal risk compared to those aged 18-30 years (mean difference 0.33, 95% CI 0.04-0.61) and those aged 46-64 years (mean difference 0.38, 95% CI 0.12-0.64). Significant correlations were found between overall risk perception and attitudes toward crisis management (r=0.19, P<.001), overall risk perception and economic threat perception (r=0.22, P<.001), attitudes toward crisis management and compliance with behavioral guidelines (r=0.15, P<.001), and attitudes toward crisis management and economic threat perception (r=–0.15, P<.001). Participants who perceived that the prime minister was the most credible spokesperson evaluated the crisis management significantly higher than all other groups. The crisis management was evaluated significantly lower by participants who stated that infectious disease specialists were the most credible spokespersons. Participants for whom the Ministry of Health website was the most credible source of information evaluated the crisis management higher than all other groups. Participants for whom scientific articles were the most credible source of information evaluated the crisis management lower than those who perceived that the WHO/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention websites or Ministry of Health/hospital websites and health care workers were the most credible.

Conclusions: The higher the public trust and evaluation of crisis management, the greater the compliance of the public with guidelines. It was also found that crisis management and information cannot be approached in the same way for the overall public. Furthermore, unlike other epidemics, the COVID-19 crisis has widespread economic and social consequences; therefore, it is impossible to focus only on health risks without communicating economic and social risks as well.

 

Webpage: https://www.jmir.org/2020/5/e19370/

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Bibliographic details:

Gesser-Edelsburg, A., Cohen, R., & Diamant, A. (2019). Experts’ Views on the Gaps in Public Health Emergency Preparedness in Israel: A Qualitative Case Study. Disaster medicine and public health preparedness, 1-8.

 

Abstract:

Background: Despite the significant improvement in all components of preparedness in the past decade, there are still gaps between the guidelines and the reality on the ground. The purpose of this study is to explore how Israeli public health and emergency medicine experts perceive the demands for health organization emergency preparedness and the actual practice.

Methods: Qualitative phenomenological research. We interviewed 22 Israeli public health and emergency medicine experts face-to-face and conducted a content analysis.

Results: The findings revealed barriers in the following areas: preparation and readiness of hospitals, preparedness and readiness in the community, connection between the community and the hospital, inter-agency coordination and interface, interdisciplinary integration, preparedness resources, postcrisis evaluation, assimilating smart technologies, information accessibility, and communication.

Conclusions: To reduce the gap between theory and practice, retrospective research and evaluation must be included to learn in depth what strategies and resources should be used during a health crisis. Likewise, profiles should be constructed and the community should be segmented in order to design resilience programs and accommodate information to subpopulations.

Webpage: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-and-public-health-preparedness/article/abs/experts-views-on-the-gaps-in-public-health-emergency-preparedness-in-israel-a-qualitative-case-study/6B68A34A401ED532E591314369BC8714

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Bibliographic details:

Gesser-Edelsburg, A. (2021). Using Narrative Evidence to Convey Health Information on Social Media: The Case of COVID-19. Journal of Medical Internet Research23(3), e24948.

Abstract:

During disease outbreaks or pandemics, policy makers must convey information to the public for informative purposes (eg, morbidity or mortality rates). They must also motivate members of the public to cooperate with the guidelines, specifically by changing their usual behavior. Policy makers have traditionally adopted a didactic and formalistic stance by conveying dry, statistics-based health information to the public. They have not yet considered the alternative of providing health information in the form of narrative evidence, using stories that address both cognitive and emotional aspects. The aim of this viewpoint paper is to introduce policy makers to the advantages of using narrative evidence to provide health information during a disease outbreak or pandemic such as COVID-19. Throughout human history, authorities have tended to employ apocalyptic narratives during disease outbreaks or pandemics. This viewpoint paper proposes an alternative coping narrative that includes the following components: segmentation; barrier reduction; role models; empathy and support; strengthening self-efficacy, community efficacy, and coping tools; preventing stigmatization of at-risk populations; and communicating uncertainty. It also discusses five conditions for using narrative evidence to produce an effective communication campaign on social media: (1) identifying narratives that reveal the needs, personal experiences, and questions of different subgroups to tailor messaging to produce targeted behavioral change; (2) providing separate and distinct treatment of each information unit or theory that arises on social networks; (3) identifying positive deviants who found creative solutions for stress during the COVID-19 crisis not found by other members of the community; (4) creating different stories of coping; and (5) maintaining a dialogue with population subgroups (eg, skeptical and hesitant groups). The paper concludes by proposing criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of a narrative.

Webpage: https://www.jmir.org/2021/3/e24948

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Gesser-Edelsburg, A., Cohen, R., Shahbari, N. A. E., & Hijazi, R. (2020). A mixed-methods sequential explanatory design comparison between COVID-19 infection control guidelines’ applicability and their protective value as perceived by Israeli healthcare workers, and healthcare executives’ response. Antimicrobial Resistance & Infection Control9(1), 1-7.

Abstract:

Background: Healthcare workers (HCWs) are on the front line of the COVID-19 outbreak, and their constant exposure to infected patients and contaminated surfaces puts them at risk of acquiring and transmitting the infection. Therefore, they must employ protective measures. In practice, HCWs in Israel were not fully prepared for this sudden COVID-19 outbreak. This research aimed to identify and compare: (1) Israeli HCWs’ perceptions regarding the official COVID-19 guidelines’ applicability and their protective value, and (2) HCWs executives’ response to HWCs’ concern regarding personal protective equipment (PPE) shortage.

Methods: A mixed-methods sequential explanatory design consists of: (1) An online survey of 242 HCWs about the application of the guidelines and PPE, and (2) Personal interviews of 15 HCWs executives regarding PPE shortage and the measures they are taking to address it.

Results: A significant difference between the perceived applicability and protective value was found for most of the guidelines. Some of the guidelines were perceived as more applicable than protective (hand hygiene, signage at entrance, alcohol rub sanitizers at entrance, and mask for contact with symptomatic patients). Other were perceived as less applicable than protective (prohibited gathering of over 10 people, maintaining a distance of 2 m’, and remote services).

Conclusions: HCWs need the support of the healthcare authorities not only to provide missing equipment, but also to communicate the risk to them. Conveying the information with full transparency, while addressing the uncertainty element and engaging the HCWs in evaluating the guidelines, are critical for establishing trust.

Webpage: https://aricjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13756-020-00812-8

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Padan, C., & Gal, R. (2020). A Multi-dimensional Matrix for Better Defining and Conceptualizing Resilience. Connections QJ 19 no. 3 (2020): 33-46 
https://doi.org/10.11610/Connections.19.3.02

Abstract:

The emerging challenges for the resilience of nations and societies, as well as for communities and individuals, are numerous and diverse. Nevertheless, the multiplicity of definitions existing in the literature for resilience, as well as the discrepancies between them, make it difficult to evaluate, operationalize, or to compare resilience research findings across studies. The purpose of the current article is to provide a coherent and general definition for the term resilience and other sub-types of this general concept. This will be achieved through presenting a two-dimensional matrix, divided into four content categories (social, economic, political, and military) and three level categories (individual, community, and State). The recent COVID-19 pandemic may advocate Global as a fourth level, yet its full implication is too premature to be assessed. The proposed matrix generates twelve cells, which present twelve different sub-types of resilience. Subsequently, this matrix can be used for a comprehensive definition of resilience and its sub-types, as well as for possible assessments of resilience at its various facesץ

Link: https://procon.bg/bg/system/files/19.3.02_padan_and_gal.pdf

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פרטים בבליוגרפיים:

פדן, כרמית וגל, ראובן (2020) . הצעה למסגרת רב־ממדית להגדרת המושג "חוסן". חוסן לאומי, פוליטיקה וחברה גיליון 2 ,מס' 1 ,אביב 2020 ,עמ' 41-*78*

 תקציר:

האתגרים שיש להם זיקה למידת החוסן של חברות, מדינות, קהילות ויחידים הם רבים ומגוונים – החל באירועי טרור או מלחמות, שמקורם במעשי ידי אדם, וכלה בשיטפונות, רעידות אדמה ואירועים אחרים, שמקורם בטבע. בהתאמה לכך, ספרות המחקר שעוסקת במושג "חוסן" )resilience )היא רחבה ומגוונת, ובין השאר היא כוללת גישות אקולוגיות, פסיכולוגיות, סוציולוגיות, היסטוריות, כלכליות ופוליטיות. גישות אלו שונות זו מזו ונבדלות גם בתוך עצמן, ומוקדי הניתוח שלהן מגוונים אף הם – החל ברובד שמתמקד ביחיד וכלה ברובד שבוחן את החברה בכללותה. ריבוי ההגדרות והיעדר ההתאמה ביניהן מקשים על ההערכה, האופרציונליזציה וההשוואה בין ממצאי מחקרים שונים הדנים בחוסן. מטרת מאמר זה היא להציע הגדרה מקיפה, אחידה ומגובשת לחוסן ולתתי־הסוגים הנכללים בו. מטרה זו תושג באמצעות הצגת מסגרת )framework )בעלת שני ממדים המחולקת לארבע קטגוריות "תוכן" )חברתי, כלכלי, פוליטי וביטחוני( ולשלוש קטגוריות "רובד" )יחיד, קהילה ולאום(. המסגרת יוצרת 12 תאים המשקפים 12 תתי־סוגים של חוסן. טענת המאמר היא, שמסגרת זו מסייעת ליצור הגדרה רחבה ומקיפה של חוסן, לסוגיו השונים, ושיש בכוחה לתרום להערכה ולמדידה של חוסן בצורותיו השונות.

קישור: https://www.ariel.ac.il/wp/nrps/wp-content/uploads/sites/145/2020/06/%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%9F-%D7%95%D7%92%D7%9C.pdf

 

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