This study aimed to see how social media influences parents’ decisions to have their child(ren) vaccinated against the yearly influenza season. The literature review outlined the risks of influenza for children, the use of social media, and influenza vaccination rates. A survey was conducted to assess parents’ frequency of social media use, the information they saw about influenza and its vaccine on social media, their concerns about the influenza vaccine, and how social media influenced their decision-making to vaccinate their child(ren) against this virus. Overall, the sample population did not believe that social media platforms influenced their decision to vaccinate their children for the seasonal influenza. However, the data was insufficient to provide meaningful conclusions on whether there was a significant association between social media use and its influence on parental decisions about the influenza vaccine. Furthermore, data about the poor reliability of health information on social media platforms and the importance of the influenza vaccine was found in this study. Limitations of the study included responses from individuals with advanced educational levels and a background in the health sciences. This may have resulted in a pro-vaccine bias that would affect the results. Lastly, due to the small sample size, we only report preliminary findings for this topic. Future research should be conducted using a large and diverse sample to study the association between the use of specific social media platforms and its influence on parental decisions for influenza vaccine uptake.

Background: Recent studies have shown a decline in birth rates in large metropolitan areas (after accounting for population), which can be possibly explained by barriers to reproduction associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns. Objective: This study’s objective was to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns on the fertility rates of women in reproductive ages living in Greater Phoenix. Methods: The total number of inpatient births and people in both Maricopa and Pinal Counties during pre-COVID-19 years (2017-2019) were compared with those during the COVID-19 years (2021) among women in reproductive ages (15-49 years). To make age-specific comparisons, women in reproductive years were divided into eight distinct age group categories (15-17, 18-20, and then five year age group categories to age 49) from which age-specific, general, and total fertility rates were calculated. Results: Using a two-sample z-test for difference in proportions, findings revealed that the general fertility rate in Greater Phoenix had significantly declined from 48 to 46 per 1,000 population from the pre-COVID-19 period to COVID-19 period (P<0.001). Two sample z-tests were also used to compare age-specific fertility rates, which revealed a significant decline in the fertility rate in women ages 15-17 (from 8.0/1000 to 5.0/1000) (P<0.001), 18-20 (from 43.0/1000 to 35.0/1000) (P<0.001), and 21-24 (from 79.0/1000 to 68.0/1000) (P<0.001) from the pre-COVID-19 period to COVID-19 period, while no significant change was observed in the fertility rate in women ages 25-49. Conclusions: The observed general fertility decline in Greater Phoenix as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic poses significant implications for further research on barriers to reproduction brought upon by the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdown measures. Another direction for further research involves possibly continuing this study to include years 2022 and 2023 in the COVID-19 period, as well as calculating age-specific fertility rates by race.

Introduction: As of 2016, medical errors were the third leading cause of death in the U.S1, costing over 250,000 deaths and 17 billion dollars annually.

1. Poor communication between patients and their providers leads to increased adverse effects that are primarily drug-drug interactions. Medical miscommunication leads to decreased treatment adherence, dissatisfaction, and inefficient use of resources.

13. Solutions to reduce the errors that arise from miscommunication in the healthcare field are medical transcription apps. HealthKeep by HealthKeep LLC is a medical transcription app that audio records and categorizes visit information and makes it readily accessible to patients, providers, caregivers, and immediate family members.

5. The aim of this study is to conduct a literature review of mHealth applications to identify the common reasons that influence consumers to discontinue use, or more importantly, continue using these applications. The final aim is to identify the market demand and needs of the consumers to ensure better acceptability of our HealthKeep app. Methodology. This literature review was conducted using the ASU library database. The ASU Library database pulls articles from various databases such as PubMed, ScienceDirect, and ProQuest. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 14 articles were found to be relevant.

Results: Overall, 14 pertinent articles were found through keyword searches. (Healthcare apps) AND (Marketing) - 3, Healthcare transcription apps - 2, Mobile Health Apps - 2, (Security Issues) AND (Healthcare apps) - 1, (gamification) AND (mobile apps) - 2, long term use of mobile health apps “Long term use” AND “ mobile health app” - 1, Medical Miscommunication - 3

Discussion: Top five user concerns were found to be: low awareness, lack of app literacy, cost, non user friendly, lack of security and privacy. Top five ways to foster continued use: social competition, rewards, gamification, convenience/transparency, increased functionality.

Conclusion: The keep strategies for increasing uptake and stickiness: cost friendly, increased app awareness, proper security measures, convenience and low effort, aesthetically pleasing. Healthkeeps future improvements: capture and manage accurate medication lists to reduce medical errors , integrate transcriptions into the EHR, incorporate rewards (tangible and intangible)

This project explorers the potential reasons for the discrepancies between state responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on the possibility of a correlation between political ideology and a state’s nonpharmacological intervention policy timing. In addition to outlining the current literature on the preferences of conservative and liberal ideology, examples of both past and present scientific based pandemic responses are described as well. Given the current understanding of the social and economic dimension of conservative and liberal political ideology, it was hypothesized that there may be a positive correlation between conservative ideology and premature action by a state. Data was collected on the current ideological landscape and the daily COVID-19 cases numbers of each state in addition to tracking each state’s policy changes. Two correlation tests were performed to find that there was no significant positive or negative correlation between the two variables.