News by Subject Social & Behavior

After 20 years of rapid increases in life expectancy at birth, the rate of growth in Australia is now falling behind most other high-income nations, meaning better control of health risk factors such as obesity will be needed if further life expectancy increases are to be achieved, research shows.

Boston Medical Center (BMC) has implemented a social determinants of health screener for primary care patients in order to better identify and address patients' unmet social needs. Clinician researchers developed the electronic health record-based (EHR) model, THRIVE, which facilitates an automatic print out of referral information for resources based at the hospital and in the community when the patient asks for help with a need they have identified in the screener.

The National Academy of Medicine has called for physicians to document social isolation in the electronic health record (EHR), because it can affect health outcomes. However, social isolation cannot be entered as coded data in current EHRs but only mentioned in clinical notes, which have historically been unintelligible to computers. Medical University of South Carolina investigators have trained natural language processing software to search clinical notes and identify socially isolated patients with 90% accuracy.

In a new study, researchers found that many Democrats may have over reported mental stress after the 2016 election. By comparing personal online searches made by Democrats, Republicans and Spanish-Speaking Latinos with public surveys, their study claims those not directly targeted by Trump's campaign claimed more stress than experienced.

When foreign powers try to interfere with the politics of another country by spreading strategic disinformation, research suggests there is no real effect on policies or the balance of power in the targeted country.

A research team, including a Purdue University work-life balance expert, studied work schedules in nursing home facilities and found a patching approach could benefit patients and staff.

Older adults who regularly take part in word and number puzzles have sharper brains, according to the largest online study to date.

Workplace inequality is visible when it involves gender and race, but less so with sexual identity and gender expression.

The Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, involving almost 30,000 adults aged 45 and over, has concluded that chronic insomnia disorder has a direct negative impact on cognitive functions, independent of other health issues.