Pandemic Disruptions to Private Pathology Testing Uptake in Australia, 2019-2024.

A new human pathogen triggering a pandemic can impact health directly through disease resulting from infection and indirectly through health system disruption. The COVID-19 pandemic is hypothesised to have impacted pathology testing by impacting healthcare and pathology operations and reducing healthcare attendance for fear of infection. The impacts of COVID-19 incidence and pandemic control measures on non-COVID pathology testing were assessed in four Australian states/territories using pathology data (histology, prostate-specific antigen, gynaecological cytology, complete blood count, haemoglobin A1c, and human immunodeficiency virus) from a large national private pathology provider (January 2019-December 2024).

Father Involvement in Pregnancy and Postnatal Care: Combined Perspectives of Fathers, Mothers, and Service Providers.

Involving fathers in pregnancy and postnatal healthcare services can enhance family wellbeing, yet father-inclusive practice remains limited. This study explored the perspectives of key stakeholders (fathers, mothers and service providers) regarding father-inclusive healthcare. Separate online focus groups were held with Australian fathers (n = 4) and mothers (n = 10) of infants up to 12 months old.

Impact of COVID-19 on hospitalization for heart failure: a perspective from Victoria, Australia.

Aims: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted healthcare systems and possibly impacted the management of heart failure (HF). This study examined the impact of the pandemic on HF hospitalization activities, outcomes, and costs in Victoria, Australia.

Methods And Results: Data on HF hospitalizations were acquired from the Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset.

How do we fund Public Health in Australia? How should we?

Objective: To map how public health is funded in Australia. To assess whether changes to funding methods might improve system performance.

Methods: Review of publicly accessible documents and discussions with public health key informants.

Gender-sensitive community weight-loss programmes to address overweight and obesity in men: a scoping review.

Objectives: To examine how gender-sensitive community weight-loss programmes have been used to address overweight and obesity in men and to identify what can be learnt from this rapidly evolving field.

Design: Scoping review following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping review checklist for reporting.

Data Sources: A database search was conducted using EBSCOhost (Academic Search Complete, CINAHL Complete, Global Health, Health Source: Consumer Edition, Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition and Medline Complete), Google, Google Scholar, Open Access Theses and Dissertations platform and Scopus.

"I always felt like I wasn't supposed to be there". An international qualitative study of fathers' engagement in family healthcare during transition to fatherhood.

Objective: Engagement of fathers in family health services confers benefits for the health and wellbeing of the whole family. The childbirth continuum is traditionally considered a feminine event, however, commensurate with the changing paradigm of gender equity in family healthcare worldwide, the role of fathers is in transformation. The aim of the study is to explore father's perceptions and experiences of healthcare engagement during pregnancy and early infant care.

Health literacy among fathers and fathers-to-be: a multi-country, cross-sectional survey.

During pregnancy and early fatherhood, men are at higher risk of poor health, exacerbated by low engagement by healthcare services. Yet the transition to fatherhood presents an opportunity for men to improve their health and health behaviours. Health literacy refers to individuals' competence in accessing and applying health information.

Individual and community experiences of posttraumatic growth after disaster: 10 years after the Australian Black Saturday bushfires.

Objective: To understand longer-term posttraumatic growth (PTG) and how this is associated with individual and community bushfire experiences.

Method: Survey data ( = 391) from the Beyond Bushfires and the 10-year Beyond Bushfires studies were analyzed. Multilevel modeling examined relationships between basic individual demographics, bushfire exposure, and community-level variables at 3-4 years after the fires, and PTG at 10 years using the short form of the PTG Inventory.

Icing or cake? Grant competitions as a model for funding chronic disease prevention in Tasmania, Australia.

Competitive grant funding is a well-established mechanism for generating activity and interventions in the field of chronic disease prevention. Yet grant competitions may be burdensome for organizations, and money may not be enough to bring about lasting change in communities. In this study, we explore the dynamics of awarding and receiving money in the context of a state-level government grant competition to support community organizations and promote community-driven action for health and well-being in Tasmania, Australia.

Soft infrastructure: the critical community-level resources reportedly needed for program success.

Background: The mechanisms typically used to fund health promotion in communities, either as part of an effort to scale-up programs or to support the design of local activities, often pay insufficient attention to the foundational means of enhancing well-being. Only recently have researchers begun to critically 'unpack' how funding processes connect with and activate local community capacities.

Methods: We conducted a thematic analysis of 33 interviews with policy and program administrators in public health and local community workers and volunteers.

P043 Resource Utilization and Productivity Loss among Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Sweden: A Longitudinal Nationwide Population-based Study.

Background: Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are the two most prevalent forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) causing frequent diarrhea, rectal bleeding, fatigue, and abdominal pain. IBD may result in complications requiring hospitalizations and surgical procedure, hence IBD can negatively impact patients' quality of life, work productivity, and increase societal economic burden. Limited data exists assessing epidemiologic trends and population-level health outcomes among patients with IBD in Sweden.

Pelvic pain: What are the symptoms and predictors for surgery, endometriosis and endometriosis severity.

Background: Chronic pelvic pain (CPP) is a common condition which significantly impacts the quality of life and wellbeing of many women. Laparoscopy with histopathology is recommended for investigation of pelvic pain and identification of endometriosis with concurrent removal. Never-the-less, the association between endometriosis and pelvic pain is challenging, with endometriosis identified in only 30-50% of women with pain.

Correction: Quantifying the handprint-Footprint balance into a single score: The example of pharmaceuticals.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Quantifying the handprint-Footprint balance into a single score: The example of pharmaceuticals.

Life Cycle Assessment typically focuses on the footprint of products and services, expressed on three Areas of Protection (AoP): Human Health, Ecosystems and Resources. While the handprint is often expressed qualitatively, quantified handprints have recently been compared directly to the footprint concerning one AoP: Human Health. We propose to take this one step further by simultaneously comparing the quantified handprint and footprint on all AoPs through normalization and weighting of the results towards a single score.

Factors that predict good Active Support in services for people with intellectual disabilities: A multilevel model.

Background: Active Support, now widely adopted by disability support organizations, is difficult to implement. The study aim was to identify the factors associated with good Active Support.

Methods: Data on service user and staff characteristics, quality of Active Support and practice leadership were collected from a sample of services from 14 organizations annually for between 2 and 7 years, using questionnaires, structured observations and interviews.

Human health benefit and burden of the schizophrenia health care pathway in Belgium: paliperidone palmitate long-acting injections.

Background: Environmental impact assessments of pharmaceuticals typically consider only a part of the pharmaceutical supply chain, e.g. tablet formulation.

The public health benefit and burden of mass drug administration programs in Vietnamese schoolchildren: Impact of mebendazole.

Background: Mass anthelmintic drug administration is recommended in developing countries to address infection by soil-transmitted helminthiases (STH). We quantified the public health benefit of treatment with mebendazole in eight million Vietnamese children aged 5-14 years from 2006 to 2011. This was compared to the environmental impact of the pharmaceutical supply chain of mebendazole, as the resource use and emissions associated with pharmaceutical production can be associated with a public health burden, e.

Evidence suggests a need to rethink social capital and social capital interventions.

In the 21 years since social capital first appeared in the public health literature, the evidence base has grown enormously, now reaching 28 systematic reviews encompassing more than 850 individual studies. We summarise this evidence and explain why conclusions relating to both the relationship between social capital and health, and the effectiveness of interventions to promote population health remain elusive and contradictory. A critical factor is the inadequate way that context is treated in the research, and especially how context interacts with efforts to promote health in a dynamic fashion.

Is gender inequity a risk factor for men reporting poorer self-rated health in the United States?

Theoretical approaches suggest that gender inequity increases men's health risks. Previous findings from the United States support this contention, however only a small number of health outcomes have been explored. This study extends the range of health outcomes examined by using a cross-sectional, multilevel analysis to investigate whether measures of state-level gender inequity are predictors of men's self-rated health.

Does gender inequity increase men's mortality risk in the United States? A multilevel analysis of data from the National Longitudinal Mortality Study.

A number of theoretical approaches suggest that gender inequity may give rise to health risks for men. This study undertook a multilevel analysis to ascertain if state-level measures of gender inequity are predictors of men's mortality in the United States. Data for the analysis were taken primarily from the National Longitudinal Mortality Study, which is based on a random sample of the non-institutionalised population.

Human health benefits and burdens of a pharmaceutical treatment: Discussion of a conceptual integrated approach.

The effects of a pharmaceutical treatment have until now been evaluated by the field of Health Economics on the patient health benefits, expressed in Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) versus the monetary costs. However, there is also a Human Health burden associated with this process, resulting from emissions that originate from the pharmaceutical production processes, Use Phase and End of Life (EoL) disposal of the medicine. This Human Health burden is evaluated by the research field of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and expressed in Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), a metric similar to the QALY.

Use of pregnancy counselling services in Australia 2007-2012.

Objective: To assess the uptake of Medicare Benefit payments for non-directive pregnancy support counselling which commenced in November 2006.

Methods: Counts of services for pregnancy counselling from 1 July 2007 to 30 June 2012, where a Medicare rebate was paid, were used to calculate age-, state- and provider-specific rates per 100,000 women aged 15-44 years, and rates per 100,000 births for each study year.

Results: Rates of Medicare rebates for pregnancy counselling were low, with a mean of 90.

Bowel function after tapentadol and oxycodone immediate release (IR) treatment in patients with low back or osteoarthritis pain.

Objectives: Constipation is a common side effect of opioid therapy. Tapentadol immediate release (IR) was better tolerated than oxycodone IR in 2 clinical trials involving patients with low back or osteoarthritis pain. The objective of this study was to examine patient-reported bowel function during those trials.