This study attempts to answer the following questions: Is civic engagement a social activity among 18-25-year-old college students? How are opinions regarding civic and political engagement impacted by social settings? How are civic and political engagement atmospheres impacted by social distancing and isolation protocol? In this study, the researcher hypothesized that civic and political engagement are social activities, so they are therefore susceptible to changing social context. Since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted typical social interaction through social distancing and isolation protocol, the researcher hypothesized that it also altered mechanisms of civic and political engagement. Political engagement would be more prevalent among students who participate with others even in pandemic conditions that may otherwise decrease close contact and social interactions. These findings seem to disagree with the literature that suggests young people are supplanting voting with other forms of engagement (Zukin et al., 2006). Rather, the “complexity” denoted in interviews and in reports of engagements on the pre- and post-election surveys suggests that young people are voting as well as dedicating their time to other activities. Voting does seem to be a social activity according to the interviews, poll observations, and the surveys. This is consistent with the literature regarding social norms and group predictors. However, this social aspect of engagement seems to manifest in a wider variety of formats that originally thought. Finally, students continued to engage in the context of the pandemic that surrounded the election in question. It seems that the formats through which students engaged have expanded to maintain the connections that are crucial to civic participation.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, increased burdens have been placed on the Arizona healthcare system, and its healthcare providers. Using a survey with a sample of N=308 prescribing providers and nurses in the Arizona healthcare system, the impact of COVID-19 on the wellbeing of healthcare providers was assessed. The survey used measures to evaluate for physical and emotional wellbeing, burnout, stressors associated with COVID-19, and work-life experiences, and found an overall negative impact on the wellbeing of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic with increased levels of reported stress and tiredness, concern for the health of family and loved ones, concern for the hardships of patients, lack of alignment between organizational priorities and personal values, and low levels of support and appreciation from socially and from leadership at work.
Background: Performance-based incentives (PBIs) have garnered global attention as a promising strategy to improve healthcare delivery to vulnerable populations. However, literature gaps in the context in which an intervention is implemented and how the PBIs were developed exist. Therefore, we (1) characterized the barriers and promoters to prevention of vertical transmission of HIV (PVT) service delivery in rural Mozambique, where the vertical transmission rate is 12 %, and (2) assessed the appropriateness for a PBI’s intervention and application to PVT.
Methods: We conducted 24 semi-structured interviews with nurses, volunteers, community health workers, and traditional birth attendants about the barriers and promoters they experienced delivering PVT services. We then explored emergent themes in subsequent focus group discussions (n = 7, total participants N = 92) and elicited participant perspectives on PBIs. The ecological motivation-opportunity-ability framework guided our iterative data collection and thematic analysis processes.
Results: The interviews revealed that while all health worker cadres were motivated intrinsically and by social recognition, they were dissatisfied with low and late remuneration. Facility-based staff were challenged by factors across the rest of the ecological levels, primarily in the opportunity domain, including the following: poor referral and record systems (work mandate), high workload, stock-outs, poor infrastructure (facility environment), and delays in obtaining patient results and donor payment discrepancies (administrative). Community-based cadres’ opportunity challenges included lack of supplies, distance (work environment), lack of incorporation into the health system (administration), and ability challenges of incorrect knowledge (health worker). PBIs based on social recognition and that enable action on intrinsic motivation through training, supervision, and collaboration were thought to have the most potential for targeting improvements in record and referral systems and better integrating community-based health workers into the health system. Concerns about the implementation of incentives included neglect of non-incentivized tasks and distorted motivation among colleagues.
Conclusions: We found that highly motivated health workers encountered severe opportunity challenges in their PVT mandate. PBIs have the potential to address key barriers that facility- and community-based health workers encounter when delivering PVT services, specifically by building upon existing intrinsic motivation and leveraging highly valued social recognition. We recommend a controlled intervention to monitor incentives’ effects on worker motivation and non-incentivized tasks to generate insights about the feasibility of PBIs to improve the delivery of PVT services.
The goal of this thesis was to better understand the lived experiences of an ethnically and linguistically diverse sample of mothers who gave birth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pregnant women experience higher risk for severe COVID-19 outcomes compared to non-pregnant women. Yet the impact on women’s psychosocial wellbeing may be just as problematic, given new mothers’ increased risk for depression postpartum coupled with the loss of multiple forms of support so critical during the postpartum period and new stressors created by the pandemic. A universal testing strategy at a Labor & Delivery Unit at a hospital in the Southwestern U.S early in the pandemic identified that Communities of Color – particularly resettled refugee women - experienced COVID-19 infection at higher rates compared to White women. Therefore, this study investigates stressors and coping strategies specific to the pregnancy, birth, and postpartum periods in a linguistically diverse sample of 140 women (Swahili n=18 , Kinyarwanda n=18 , Burmese n=13, Arabic=11, Spanish n=35, English n=45) who gave birth between May and December 2020. Across groups, the most severe health stressor was fear of self or infant contracting COVID-19, leading to strict adherence to prevention measures among women, and feelings of social isolation. This was followed by anxiety for lack of social support at birth, and, in some women, management of other health concerns related to increased risk for adverse pregnancy or severe COVID-19 outcomes. Coping strategies included looking to religion or spirituality for comfort, as well as spending more time with family. This analysis of how the pandemic affected women’s psychosocial wellbeing from pregnancy to postpartum informs adaptation of care for linguistically and ethnically minoritized groups and their infants.
The goal of this thesis was to better understand the lived experiences of an ethnically and linguistically diverse sample of mothers who gave birth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pregnant women experience higher risk for severe COVID-19 outcomes compared to non-pregnant women. Yet the impact on women’s psychosocial wellbeing may be just as problematic, given new mothers’ increased risk for depression postpartum coupled with the loss of multiple forms of support so critical during the postpartum period and new stressors created by the pandemic. A universal testing strategy at a Labor & Delivery Unit at a hospital in the Southwestern U.S early in the pandemic identified that Communities of Color – particularly resettled refugee women - experienced COVID-19 infection at higher rates compared to White women. Therefore, this study investigates stressors and coping strategies specific to the pregnancy, birth, and postpartum periods in a linguistically diverse sample of 140 women (Swahili n=18 , Kinyarwanda n=18 , Burmese n=13, Arabic=11, Spanish n=35, English n=45) who gave birth between May and December 2020. Across groups, the most severe health stressor was fear of self or infant contracting COVID-19, leading to strict adherence to prevention measures among women, and feelings of social isolation. This was followed by anxiety for lack of social support at birth, and, in some women, management of other health concerns related to increased risk for adverse pregnancy or severe COVID-19 outcomes. Coping strategies included looking to religion or spirituality for comfort, as well as spending more time with family. This analysis of how the pandemic affected women’s psychosocial wellbeing from pregnancy to postpartum informs adaptation of care for linguistically and ethnically minoritized groups and their infants.