One size doesn't fit all: regional dynamics in pediatric emergency visits during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Background And Aims: The Swiss government implemented lockdown measures during the COVID-19 pandemic to contain outbreaks and prevent healthcare system overload. Emergency department (ED) visits were discouraged, leading to a decline in utilization, except for urgent cases. However, little is known about regional variations in pediatric ED use and spatial distribution patterns across Switzerland.

Mitigating Sports-Related Concussions in Adolescent Athletes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Communication and Education Interventions.

Objectives: Sports-related concussions (SRCs) in adolescents may pose severe health consequences, which underscores the importance of adequate prevention, early detection, and management. This systematic literature review and meta-analysis aims to synthesize findings from studies evaluating SRC communication and education interventions targeting adolescent athletes and/or their caregivers.

Methods: We included original, peer-reviewed studies published in English between 2014 and 2024.

Spatiotemporal clusters of acute respiratory infections associated with socioeconomic, meteorological, and air pollution factors in South Punjab, Pakistan.

Background: In Pakistan, acute respiratory infections (ARI) continue to be a major public health problem. However, there is still a lack of scholarly work regarding different environmental and socioeconomic influencing factors and how they interact with respiratory infections. Furthermore, we do not know much about geographic variation in this context.

Mental health challenges and digital platform opportunities in patients and families affected by pediatric neuromuscular diseases - experiences from Switzerland.

Receiving the diagnosis of a severe disease may present a traumatic event for patients and their families. To cope with the related challenges, digital interventions can be combined with traditional psychological support to help meet respective needs. We aimed to 1) discuss the most common consequences and challenges for resilience in Neuro Muscular Disease patients and family members and 2) elicit practical needs, concerns, and opportunities for digital platform use.

Reproducibility and Scientific Integrity of Big Data Research in Urban Public Health and Digital Epidemiology: A Call to Action.

The emergence of big data science presents a unique opportunity to improve public-health research practices. Because working with big data is inherently complex, big data research must be clear and transparent to avoid reproducibility issues and positively impact population health. Timely implementation of solution-focused approaches is critical as new data sources and methods take root in public-health research, including urban public health and digital epidemiology.

A global portrait of expressed mental health signals towards COVID-19 in social media space.

Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has induced a mental health crisis. Social media data offer a unique opportunity to track the mental health signals of a given population and quantify their negativity towards COVID-19. To date, however, we know little about how negative sentiments differ across countries and how these relate to the shifting policy landscape experienced through the pandemic.

Digital Platform Uses for Help and Support Seeking of Parents With Children Affected by Disabilities: Scoping Review.

Background: Receiving a diagnosis that leads to severe disability in childhood can cause a traumatic experience with long-lasting emotional stress for patients and family members. In recent decades, emerging digital technologies have transformed how patients or caregivers of persons with disabilities manage their health conditions. As a result, information (eg, on treatment and resources) has become widely available to patients and their families.

Opportunities and challenges of using social media big data to assess mental health consequences of the COVID-19 crisis and future major events.

The present commentary discusses how social media big data could be used in mental health research to assess the impact of major global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We first provide a brief overview of the COVID-19 situation and the challenges associated with the assessment of its global impact on mental health using conventional methods. We then propose social media big data as a possible unconventional data source, provide illustrative examples of previous studies, and discuss the advantages and challenges associated with their use for mental health research.

Small Area Variation of Adherence to Clinical Recommendations: An Example from Switzerland.

Background: Unwarranted variation in healthcare utilization can only partly be explained by variation in the health care needs of the population, yet it is frequently found globally. This is the first cross-sectional study that systematically assessed geographic variation in the adherence to clinical recommendations in Switzerland. Specifically, we explored 1) the geographic variation of adherence to clinical recommendations across 24 health services at the sub-cantonal level, 2) assessed and mapped statistically significant spatial clusters, and 3) explored possible influencing factors for the observed geographic variation.

Ethical issues of collecting, storing, and analyzing geo-referenced tweets for mental health research.

Spatial approaches to epidemiological research with big social media data provide tremendous opportunities to study the relationship between the socio-ecological context where these data are generated and health indicators of interest. Such research poses a number of ethical challenges, particularly in relation to issues such as privacy, informed consent, data security, and storage. While these issues have received considerable attention by researchers in relation to research for physical health purposes in the past 10 years, there have been few efforts to consider the ethical challenges of conducting mental health research, particularly with geo-referenced social media data.

Surgical procedures in inpatient versus outpatient settings and its potential impact on follow-up costs.

Objective: We examined real-world effects of cantonal legislations to direct surgery patients from the inpatient to the outpatient setting in Switzerland.

Methods: Analyses were based on claims data of the Helsana Group, a leading Swiss health insurance. The study population consisted of 13'145 (in 2014), 12'455 (in 2016), and 12'875 (in 2018) insured persons aged >18 years who had haemorrhoidectomy, inguinal hernia repair, varicose vein surgery, knee arthroscopy/meniscectomy or surgery of the cervix/uterus.

Space-Time Dependence of Emotions on Twitter after a Natural Disaster.

Natural disasters can have significant consequences for population mental health. Using a digital spatial epidemiologic approach, this study documents emotional changes over space and time in the context of a large-scale disaster. Our aims were to (a) explore the spatial distribution of negative emotional expressions of Twitter users before, during, and after Superstorm Sandy in New York City (NYC) in 2012 and (b) examine potential correlations between socioeconomic status and infrastructural damage with negative emotional expressions across NYC census tracts over time.

Are weak or negative clinical recommendations associated with higher geographical variation in utilisation than strong or positive recommendations? Cross-sectional study of 24 healthcare services.

Objectives: When research evidence is lacking, patient and provider preferences, expected to vary geographically, might have a stronger role in clinical decisions. We investigated whether the strength or the direction of recommendation is associated with the degree of geographic variation in utilisation.

Design: In this cross-sectional study, we selected 24 services following a comprehensive approach.

Does diet map with mortality? Ecological association of dietary patterns with chronic disease mortality and its spatial dependence in Switzerland.

We investigated the associations between dietary patterns and chronic disease mortality in Switzerland using an ecological design and explored their spatial dependence, i.e. the tendency of near locations to present more similar and distant locations to present more different values than randomly expected.

Geospatial Analysis of COVID-19: A Scoping Review.

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, China in late December 2019 became the harbinger of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, geospatial techniques, such as modeling and mapping, have helped in disease pattern detection. Here we provide a synthesis of the techniques and associated findings in relation to COVID-19 and its geographic, environmental, and socio-demographic characteristics, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) methodology for scoping reviews.

Public Health Interventions, Epidemic Growth, and Regional Variation of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic Outbreak in a Swiss Canton and Its Greater Regions.

Public health interventions implemented during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic are based on experience gained from past pandemics. The 1918 influenza pandemic is the most extensively researched historical influenza outbreak. All 9335 reports available in the State Archives on 121 152 cases of influenza-like illness from the canton of Bern from 473 of 497 municipalities (95.

Temporal trends and regional disparities in cancer screening utilization: an observational Swiss claims-based study.

Background: We examined colorectal, breast, and prostate cancer screening utilization in eligible populations within three data cross-sections, and identified factors potentially modifying cancer screening utilization in Swiss adults.

Methods: The study is based on health insurance claims data of the Helsana Group. The Helsana Group is one of the largest health insurers in Switzerland, insuring approximately 15% of the entire Swiss population across all regions and age groups.

Degree of regional variation and effects of health insurance-related factors on the utilization of 24 diverse healthcare services - a cross-sectional study.

Background: Regional variation in healthcare utilization could reflect unequal access to care, which may lead to detrimental consequences to quality of care and costs. The aims of this study were to a) describe the degree of regional variation in utilization of 24 diverse healthcare services in eligible populations in Switzerland, and b) identify potential drivers, especially health insurance-related factors, and explore the consistency of their effects across the services.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study using health insurance claims data for the year of 2014.

Insights into the protective effects of influenza vaccination: More hospitalizations but lower follow-up mortality during the 2014/15 influenza season in a Swiss cohort.

Background: Observational studies of influenza vaccination are criticized as flawed due to unmeasured confounding. The goal of this cohort study was to explore the value and role of secondary claims data to inform the effectiveness of influenza vaccination, while systematically trying to reduce potential bias.

Methods: We iteratively reviewed the components of the PICO approach to refine study design.