International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Volume 21, Issue 3

Background: PrEP, a biomedical HIV prevention option, continues to be underutilized among transgender women who could benefit from sustained use, especially women of color and those who identify as Latina and/or reside in the southeastern US. Objecti...

Addressing health challenges that impact human well-being requires a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach that would be at the crossroad of population-based prevention and individual-level clinical care, which is in line with a Global Health per...

Home health care companies provide health care services to patients in their homes. Due to increasing demand, the provision of home health care services requires effective management of operational costs while satisfying both patients and caregivers....

Research into digital interventions for mental well-being promotion has grown in recent years, fuelled by the need to improve mental health prevention strategies and respond to challenges arising from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This bibliom...

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated health and social inequities among migrant groups more than others. Higher rates of poverty, unemployment, living in crowded households, and language barriers have placed resettled refugees at a higher risk of fa...

Prior work has suggested that discrimination and immigration-related stress may impede mental health care seeking and utilization among Latinx populations. These effects may be more nuanced as both discrimination and immigration-related stress may in...

As the world grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers (HCWs) continued to provide uninterrupted health care service delivery; therefore, this disproportionately affected their wellbeing. Our study explored the wellbeing of HCWs during...

This study compared physiological responses to two work/rest cycles of a 2:1 work-to-rest ratio in a hot environment. In a randomized crossover design, fourteen participants completed 120 min of walking and rest in the heat (36.3 ± 0.6 °C,...

Interest in catering for public sector schools is increasing due to its potential role in addressing the prevailing problems of malnutrition, food insecurity and non-sustainable food habits. Based on the case of secondary schools in Berlin, this stud...

Considerable empirical evidence suggests early recognition of autism and access to support result in long-term positive outcomes for children and youth on the spectrum and their families. However, children of racialized families are often diagnosed a...

The Black populations, often treated as ethnically homogenous, face a constant challenge in accessing and utilizing healthcare services. This study examines the intra-group differences in health-seeking behavior among diverse ethnic subgroups within...

It is well known that parental depression is correlated to adverse child mental health outcomes; but what is the effect of treating parental depression on the child? This narrative review aims to explore this question, and how certain specific interv...

(1) Background: Environmental risks such as air pollutants pose a threat to human health and must be communicated to the affected population to create awareness, such as via health literacy (HL); (2) Methods: We analyzed HL in the context of environm...

The longevity and healthy ageing observed in Blue Zones offer valuable insights for contemporary urban neighbourhood planning and design. This paper reviews the age-friendly features of the built environment in Blue Zones, aiming to translate these i...

The present research aimed to examine bullying among diverse Arab nationalities residing in Qatar across two separate studies. Study 1 examined how Arabic-speaking adolescents and adults describe and perceive bullying, participants (N = 36) from diff...

The prevalence of dementia increases with nearly 10 million new cases each year, with Alzheimer’s disease contributing to 60–70% of cases. Environmental factors such as drinking water have been evaluated to determine if a relationship exi...

Electronic Heath Records (EHRs) play vital roles in facilitating streamlined service provision and governance across the Australian health system. Given the recent challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an ageing population, health workforce silos,...

Violence against paramedics is increasingly recognized as an important occupational health problem, but pervasive and institutionalized underreporting hinders efforts at risk mitigation. Earlier research has shown that the organizational culture with...

Assuring home care (HC) workers’ safety is challenging because the work environment is a private home. This paper presents the process evaluation for a proof-of-concept safety intervention study to assess whether nurse-led safety coaching, usin...

Background: Bangladesh has achieved remarkable progress in reducing maternal mortality, yet postpartum deaths remain a significant issue. Emphasis on quality postnatal care (qPNC) is crucial, as increased coverage alone has not sufficiently reduced m...

Residents in nursing homes are fragile and at high risk of serious illness or death from healthcare-associated infections. The COVID-19 pandemic posed a significant risk of suffering and mortality for residents of nursing homes. Surveillance of infec...

Grief after suicide or patient-perpetrated homicide can be complex for those involved in the patient’s care. Mental health practitioners with patients who die unexpectedly may be called to assist in the formal investigation processes that follo...

Food and/or housing instability (FHI) has been minimally examined in post-9/11 US veterans. A randomly selected nationally representative sample of men and women veterans (n = 38,633) from the post-9/11 US veteran population were mailed invitation le...

This study investigates the impact of experienced contact on prejudiced attitudes towards individuals with intellectual disabilities (IDs), examining beliefs in a just world (BJW) and social dominance orientation (SDO) as potential serial mediators....

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the most common endocrine disorder affecting women of reproductive age. It increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, endometrial cancer, infertility, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and pre...

Background: Community health workers (CHWs) cover extensive areas observing the environmental conditions in which community members live. However, current CHW training modules do not have modules focusing specifically on environmental health. CHWs ap...

Violence has immediate and long-term repercussions for the health of individuals and communities. Recent increases in the understanding of public health approaches to violence prevention have focused on the policies and practices of government, healt...

Effective communication by governmental organizations is essential to keep the public informed during a public health emergency. Examining the content of these communications can provide insight into their alignment with best practices for risk commu...

Since a single forest walk (Shinrin-yoku or forest bathing) session is reported to improve sleep temporarily, occasional forest walks may have a positive effect on daily sleep. Therefore, this study aimed to examine whether more frequent forest walki...

The Work Ability Index (WAI) is the most widely used questionnaire for the self-assessment of working ability. Because of its different applications, shorter versions, and widespread use in healthcare activities, assessing its characteristics is wort...

A policy of aging in place should be accompanied by physical and social environments that support healthy aging. This article describes how a property development company in Hong Kong sought to elicit the views of older people and their caregivers to...

The current study’s aim was to better understand people’s feelings towards different types of natural and built green space environments in the highly urbanized “garden city” of Singapore. We examined which types of green spac...

Over the last century, there has been a growing interest in researching pathological gambling, particularly in industrialized nations. Historically, gambling was widely perceived as morally questionable, condemned by religious groups. However, contem...

Background: There is increasing recognition of the importance of the preconception period for addressing reproductive and intergenerational health inequities and supporting improved maternal and child health outcomes. This study aimed to understand t...

This paper addresses the marginalisation of tāngata kāpō Māori (blind and low-vision Indigenous New Zealanders) in health- and vision-related research, despite New Zealand’s commitments to international conventions. Utilisin...

Older adults are at a greater risk for food insecurity compared to the general population. This study aimed to describe changes in diet quality and food insecurity following a free meal program at low-income, older adult housing complexes. Study part...

Despite the known health benefits of sport, recent studies showed that parenthood is related to decreased sport participation. Changes in sport behaviour after becoming a parent have been explained by gender or with the rational resource perspective...

The endeavor to maintain and enhance the indoor air quality (IAQ) in historical buildings transcends the traditional boundaries of cultural heritage preservation, emerging as a pivotal public health concern [...]

Since 2006, the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework (HPF) reports have provided information about Indigenous Australians’ health outcomes. The HPF was designed, in consultation with Indigenous stakehold...

Background: Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are a rising global burden. Preventative strategies such as cardiac rehabilitation (CR) have shown a marked reduction in disease burden. Despite this, CR is underutilized worldwide. This study aims to identi...

Introduction and Objectives: The aims of this study were to assess fatigue in port workers; analyze the association between fatigue and levels of trust in organizations, as well as the association between authorities and risk perception; and examine...

Lead is known to impair neurocognitive development in children. Drinking water is routinely monitored for lead content in municipal systems, but private well owners are not required to test for lead. The lack of testing poses a risk of lead exposure...

Writing this Editorial for our second collection of papers on “International Perspectives on Mental Health Social Work”, we reflected upon the content of our First Edition [...]

Despite peloids’ acknowledged therapeutic and cosmetic potential, there remains a limited understanding of their microbial diversity and dynamics, especially concerning beneficial and non-beneficial microorganisms under different heating condit...

The work environment for building workers in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT) is characterised by concerningly high rates of distress and suicide at both a jurisdictional and an industry level. Work-related psychosocial hazards are known ant...

The availability of an effective vaccine against COVID-19 virus marked a crucial moment in the fight against its pandemic spread. Although distribution of the vaccine began in December 2020, high acceptance rates and repeated administrations are need...

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between health expenditure, institutional quality, and under-five mortality rates in sub-Saharan African countries. Specifically, the study seeks to explore the mediating role of institutional qual...

There is an association between emotional eating and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors; however, little is known about this association in the police force. This study explores the associations between emotional eating and CVD risk factors in...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused critical mental health issues and lifestyle disruptions. The aim of this study was to explore, during the lockdown of second-wave contagions in Italy, how stress was affected by dispositional (personality factors and into...

Interacting with nature may promote mental and physical health. There are multiple ways to interact with nature: indirectly, incidentally, and intentionally. How these types of interactions with nature may be associated with mental and physical healt...