Research & Innovation

Background: Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID) remains one of the leading causes of infant mortality worldwide and is largely driven by Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Although SIDS has received coverage and examination of content spanning Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter across published studies, to date no study has examined SIDS related content on YouTube.

Methods: This descriptive observational study was conducted from December 2023 through January 2024. The goals of this study were to describe the sources, formats and content covered across the 100 widely viewed videos pertaining to SIDS on YouTube.

Results: Most of the videos were published by organizations (N=64) including healthcare systems, the American Academy of Pediatrics and police departments. Several of the widely viewed SIDS-related content was also disseminated by professionals (N=42). Multiple videos presented content on the symptomology pertaining to SIDS and contributing modifiable environmental risk factors. In addition, a wide range of resources were depicted as SIDS reduction measures. Notably, there was substantial emphasis on SIDS reduction postnatally across the widely viewed videos. Limited representation of content on SIDS awareness and reduction outside of the United States was depicted.

Conclusion: Clinical, public health, and organizational implications and recommendations are presented to inform future targets for intervention that can harness findings from this study on widely covered and uncovered content to address the totality of risk factors for SIDS. Future directions in health promotion across the SIDS reduction landscape are also reviewed to account for digital spaces globally, thereby contributing towards reducing infant mortality worldwide.

Abstract

I use the term “formalism” to name the tendency of compulsion to reduce experience, through repetition, to a simple shape, rhythm, and intensity. This essay shows how compulsion’s reduction of the self to just a few characteristics enables—even solicits—analogy across different contexts. Focusing on Othello, I consider several aspects of Shakespeare’s staging of compulsion: the two-way traffic between religious and secular domains; the splitting of the self, which often entails the projection of the self onto others; and the role of such splitting in the representation of racialized violence.

This essay locates in Max Weber’s body of work a theory of recognition in compulsion. With particular attention to Weber’s engagement with pre- and early modern sources, the essay argues that this theory illuminates his project of historical interpretation. For Weber, compulsion turns firsthand experience into a simple pattern or shape, inviting identification across differences in context. Ultimately, the essay shows that the “strange intoxication” of compulsive states of mind, though it might seem to transport the subject outside time and beyond the reach of material circumstance, does much more than misleadingly fuse distinct experiences; it also creates opportunities for and indeed motivates awareness of the concrete histories that connect them.

Abstract

Introduction: Sudden unexpected infant death (SUID) and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) collectively represent one of the leading causes of infant mortality worldwide. There are a range of evidence-based modifiable risk factors for both, particularly related to the infant’s sleep environment. Oftentimes, social determinants of health impact optimization of an infant’s sleep environment, thereby compromising their safety and elevating their risk for SIDS and SUID. Many kinds of community interventions that include campaigns and programs have sought to address these environmental modifiable risk factors that contribute towards heightened risk for SIDS and SUID. However given resource limitations, reach and access considerations, and scarcity of a streamlined harmonized process to draw on the strengths of a community in SUID and SIDS reduction, there is mixed success with these interventions

Abstract

Introduction: Cribs for Kids is a national organization with a mission to reduce sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and sudden unexpected infant death (SUID) nationwide through adaptation of best practices in infant safe sleep, community engagement, and increased access to resources in assuring infant safety during time of sleep. One integral partnership that enables Cribs for Kids to cast a wider net in yielding the potential to reach many more infants and their families across the country involves attainment of hospitalwide certification by Cribs for Kids across both academic and community healthcare systems that provide care to infants for up to one year of age.

Background: Tobacco use and exposure are leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. In the past decade, educational efforts to reduce tobacco use and exposure have extended to social media, including video-sharing platforms. YouTube is one of the most publicly accessed video-sharing platforms.

Purpose: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted to identify and describe sources, formats, and content of widely viewed YouTube videos on smoking cessation.

Methods: In August to September 2023, the keywords “stop quit smoking” were used to search in YouTube and identify 100 videos with the highest view count.

Results: Collectively, these videos were viewed over 220 million times. The majority (n = 35) were posted by nongovernmental/ organization sources, with a smaller number posted by consumers (n = 25), and only eleven were posted by governmental agencies. The format used in the highest number of videos was the testimonial (n = 32 videos, over 77 million views). Other popular formats included animation (n = 23 videos, over 90 million views) and talk by professional (n = 20 videos, almost 43 million views). Video content included evidence-based and non-evidence-based practices. Evidence-based strategies aligned with U.S. Public Health Service Tobacco Treatment Guidelines (e.g. health systems approach in tobacco treatment, medication management). Non-evidence-based strategies included mindfulness and hypnotherapy. One key finding was that environmental tobacco exposure received scant coverage across the videos.

Conclusions: Social media such as YouTube promises to reach large audiences at low cost without requiring high reading literacy. Additional attention is needed to create videos with up-todate, accurate information that can engage consumers.

Peter Mallios created and co-taught the course “ENGL388B, Mass Incarceration and Prison Education: Academic Writing in Prison.” Taking years to develop the course and to build on his experience working with the Goucher Prison Education Partnership, he collaborated with four co-teachers, community partners and our undergraduate students to study mass incarceration and develop a pedagogy for teaching people who are incarcerated. 

ABSTRACT

Background: Tobacco use and dependence alongside environmental tobacco exposure collectively form a leading cause of morbidity and mortality for the global population. Several clinical and public health interventions have sought to address this growing epidemic on both micro and macro levels. One national campaign, Tips From Former Smokers was prominent across the tobacco cessation landscape. Implemented by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this campaign garnered coverage and engagement across the national population and also on virtual spaces via social media platforms in our digital era.

Purpose: This study is the first of its kind to critically examine sources and formats as well as assess the nature of content covered across the widely viewed videos pertaining to this campaign on YouTube. Prior studies have analyzed this campaign’s content on Facebook and Twitter.

Method: This study was cross-sectional, descriptive, and observational in design and involved conducting a content analysis of the most popular videos covered on the campaign across YouTube.

Results: Videos pertaining to health and aesthetic effects stemming from the sequelae of smoking, environmental tobacco exposure, and comorbidities with smoking attracted the most views. The majority of the widely viewed videos on the campaign were in the form of testimonials. There was scant coverage on tips and strategies for cessation across the videos.

Discussion: We present several clinical, campaign and systemic implications from these findings. We also propose recommendations for further considerations in future campaign development and implementation that build off the limitations and draw on the strengths of the Tips From Former Smokers campaign in addressing tobacco use and dependence as well as environmental tobacco exposure as targets for future cessation interventions.

Translation to Health Education Practice: In addition, we further delineate recommendations that account for health equity, diversity, and inclusivity considerations in coverage of content that could heighten engagement, relatability, connectivity, and acceptability of content by viewers worldwide.

Abstract:

The concept of emotional labour pervades recent popular discourse. However, this discourse tends to emphasize the unpaid work performed in personal and familial relationships. This erases Arlie Russell Hochschild’s distinction between emotion work and emotional labour, the latter of which is a waged ‘management of feeling’ that ‘create[s] a publicly observable facial and bodily display’. This focus on unwaged emotion work identifies a real site of exploitation, but tends to obscure the recent historical tendency of care work to be subsumed increasingly into new forms of low-waged labour. I examine this tendency by turning to Catherine Lacey’s speculative novel The Answers (2017), which follows an indebted young woman, Mary, who takes a contract job in an experiment run by a celebrity seeking love. Alongside ‘girlfriends’ with other intimate roles, Mary is paid to be an ‘Emotional Girlfriend.’ I argue that the novel’s thought experiment of splitting the various roles of a romantic partner into separate, waged jobs not only commodifies affective labour, but also replicates the process of industrial deskilling in its depiction of the real subsumption of affective work into the service sectors. Next, I discuss the role of the experiment’s Research Division, which not only monitors experimental subjects via cameras, sensors, and interviews, but also directly influences their behaviour using ‘internal directives’, or chemical instructions that biologically optimize emotion. I argue that these directives intensify the management of feeling to make working subjects’ emotions more productive for capital. The argument concludes that The Answers updates Hochschild’s theory to account for work that is now often less secure, but fails to address the political questions it raises.

Abstract:

Autism continues to be a leading neurodevelopmental disorder across adult and pediatric populations that transcends racial, ethnic, age, and socioeconomic groups worldwide. Autism care and treatment also exerts immense costs on the healthcare system and lost productivity which are partly attributed to the existing resource limitations globally. Organizations, campaigns, and policies exist worldwide in increasing equity and accessibility of resources and services to individuals with autism. In the context of our digital era, a wealth of information is also more readily available on autism through electronic communication including social media platforms. As YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are ever-growing and among the leading social media platforms in contemporary times, examination of content covered on autism across these communication mediums is timely and warranted. This review consolidates findings from 32 sources on the sources, formats, and nature of content covered on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook pertaining to a wealth of dimensions surrounding autism. Strengths and limitations of the studies and endeavors are presented. Implications for future campaign development, health equity, health policy, neurodiversity, and patient care are also delineated. Lastly, recommendations for future research and practice are discussed which present directions for tapping into the potential of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook as health communication mediums across the ever-changing autism landscape.