Rising polarization hampers trust building, yet public trust is essential in health systems. Canada has a competency profile for public health practitioners that includes advocacy and communication competencies, but graduate-level public health training curricula often lack competencies in public trust and depolarizing public health communications, which the World Health Organization identifies as key components. We developed a novel education intervention to teach these competencies within a Masters of Public Health program. A 12-week course was developed to employ dialectical inquiry to teach depolarization and trust-building skills. A metacognition approach was used to layer skills in public communication and journalism into the instructional design. Frequent individual, small group, and large group reflections occurred. We evaluated education outcomes by purposefully recruiting graduates to participate in recorded semi-structured interviews. Using constant comparative method, transcripts were coded by two reviewers to derive themes and domains. Results adhere to the COREQ checklist for qualitative studies. Five of 24 invitees agreed to be interviewed, revealing ten themes in four domains. Participants valued the experience and developed new competence and expertise in dynamics of public trust, trust building, depolarization, and engagement strategies. Participants valued being encouraged to undertake perspective taking, which they report broadened their own perspectives. Participants were eager to apply new competencies to their work yet expressed fear of making missteps and of external factors limiting their ability to build trust through community engagement. The novel curriculum developed competence and attitudinal shifts in public health graduate students with respect to engagement, depolarization, and trust building.
The rapid increase in the use of e-cigarettes may facilitate the cessation of tobacco use, but may also introduce a new pathway to becoming addicted to nicotine. Our objective was to examine how e-cigarette users and young nonusers respond to product characteristics. We conducted a discrete choice experiment that included choices over three products (vape pods, heated tobacco sticks, cigarettes) with four attributes: on-product health warnings, plain packaging for vape pods, nicotine concentration allowable in vape pods, and price, among residents of Alberta, Ontario, and Québec. Conditional logit regressions were used to estimate the relative effects that differing attribute levels had on respondents choosing a product they would most likely buy (or try if nonusers) and the product they believed would pose the least risk to their health. Relative to the weakest policies (i.e., no on-product warnings, branding on vape pod packaging, no restrictions on nicotine concentration, and lower prices), respondents preferred options without on-product warnings, lower prices, and lower nicotine concentration in vapes. On-product warnings were particularly salient and appeared to work synergistically. Among nonusers and users, a warning on all three products increased the predicted probability (Pr) of choosing ‘none’ from Pr 0.50 (95
Substance use in adolescence may have correlates that can inform prevention measures. We aimed to describe patterns of substance use among Canadian adolescents and explore related demographic and psychosocial factors. Data came from the Canadian Student Tobacco, Alcohol and Drug Survey 2021–2022. We examined past 30-day use of alcohol, cigarettes, e-cigarettes, and cannabis and age of first use by grade level, province, rurality, ethnicity, gender identity, self-reported mental health, and having been bullied using weighted logistic and linear regression. The analytic sample included 59,230 students. Alcohol was the most commonly used in the past 30 days (26.2
The Families First Home-Visiting (FFHV) program, implemented by the Manitoba (Canada) government in 1999, supports families with children 0–3 years old at risk for adverse development. The paraprofessional-delivered program focuses on parenting, attachment, health/wellness, child development, and family strengthening. Program evaluations demonstrate decreases in child welfare involvement and maltreatment-related injuries for program-involved children, and null findings for educational outcomes at school entry. What is the effectiveness of the FFHV program versus risk-matched controls on mental disorder, education, and service use outcomes in childhood and adolescence? Administrative-linked data from a retrospective, population-based cohort was analyzed from the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy repository in Canada. All families with a child born between 2003 and 2009 and eligible for the FFHV program (N = 9761) were included. Families were exposed to the FFHV program or not (risk-matched controls) when children were 0–3 years old. Outcomes included mental disorders, education, and service use from 5 to 15 years old. Moderation analyses included child, parent psychosocial, and socioeconomic risk factors. FFHV-involved children/adolescents were more likely to receive a mental disorder diagnosis and engage with health services compared to controls. No significant differences in education outcomes were found. Outcomes (identified in parentheses) were moderated by the presence of child (service use), parent psychosocial (mental disorder and Early Development Instrument [EDI]), and socioeconomic (service use, provincial education assessments, and EDI) risk factors identified at birth. This study is the first to evaluate outcomes into adolescence for families who previously received the FFHV program. Findings have important implications for tailoring home-visiting programs to optimize child outcomes.
