This paper investigates the factors that contributed to the proliferation of online COVID skepticism on Twitter across Italian municipalities. We demonstrate that socio-demographic factors are likely to mitigate the emergence of skepticism, while populist political leanings were more likely to...

Scholars have long recognized the difficulties of communicating risk to the public. The rise of mobile gaming presents unprecedented opportunities for risk communicators to reach millions of potential users in engaging and potentially effective ways. Gamifying risk communication may help users...

Am 24. März 2021 hat der "Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der Entwicklung im Gesundheitswesen" sein Gutachten "Digitalisierung für Gesundheit - Ziele und Rahmenbedingungen eines dynamisch lernenden Gesundheitssystems" der Bundesregierung überreicht. Wesentliche Aspekte des Gutachtens...

Significant opportunities for global health intelligence arise from the combined and optimized usage of secondary data indicating health status. Meant for purposes other than those intended by reuse, these data are gathered from novel sources such as mobile apps, wearable devices, the world wide...

The COVID-19 crisis has been accompanied by an extensive use of indicators, such as those related to COVID infections and deaths but also a good number of COVID policy indicators. This paper discusses these indicators from the perspective of a legal scholar with an interest (and some expertise)...

Estimating the effect of macro variables like democracy on aggregate outcomes like child mortality remains a formidable challenge. When new data are limited, theories imprecise, and experimentation impossible, findings are mostly driven by modeling assumptions and inadvertent errors. Here I...

The purpose of this report is to examine the evidence available on the degree to which demand-side programs intended to stimulate broadband adoption have been demonstrated to fulfill their purpose. Our focus is on quantitative evaluations that seek to measure the causal impact of a program or...

OBJECTIVE: This paper addresses the question of the circumstances which lead clinicians to use legal coercion in the management of patients with severe anorexia nervosa, and explores similarities and differences between such formal coercion and other forms of 'strong persuasion' in patient...

For two decades, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has regularly estimated the deaths, years of life lost, medical expenditures, and productivity losses from cigarette smoking. But how accurate is the underlying CDC estimate of smoking-related deaths? The specifics of the...

The timing of sexual partnerships constrains the potential flow of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). It is crucial to determine the quality of reported data on sexual partnership timing for both scientific and practical purposes. Temporal data on partnerships are used in contact tracing...