JMIR Formative Research

The HIV epidemic remains a national priority in the United States, and the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative has renewed the call for expanded prevention and treatment strategies capable of reducing new HIV infections by 90% by 2030. Achieving this goal requires robust, integrated data for understanding HIV-related needs, barriers to care, and the effectiveness of interventions. However, despite the existence of numerous publicly available datasets, few integrate multiple domains such as HIV outcomes, social determinants of health, and community-level factors. The lack of unified data and difficulty linking datasets hampers efforts for meaningful cross-domain analyses to tailor HIV management and treatment strategies. The resulting fragmentation constitutes a methodological gap: implementation teams lack replicable guidance for constructing unified HIV and contextual databases from public sources. In this viewpoint, we describe our experience building a unified compilation of publicly available HIV and community data to identify factors influencing HIV outcomes and interventions. The completed database comprises 242 variables drawn from 8 public sources mapped across clinic, zip code, county, and state levels of geography. Rather than simply reporting what we built, we position four core decisions as transferable methodological advances: (1) treating source identification as a bounded phase before construction begins, (2) adopting automated data engineering tools from the outset rather than manual entry, (3) establishing a shared data dictionary before the first variable is entered, and (4) integrating quality control throughout the workflow rather than as a final phase. The build required approximately 350 total project hours and revealed an initial spot-check error rate of approximately 33%, which we attribute primarily to manual data entry. By sharing the approach used to develop this database and making the final resource publicly accessible through the Yale Center for Methods in Implementation and Prevention Science, we aim to reduce barriers to data access and encourage similar data integration efforts. The methodological framework described in this paper is intentionally designed to be replicable with modest resources, and we present it as a practical model for research teams operating without specialized infrastructure. Consolidating HIV, social determinants of health, and contextual variables into a unified data source is a critical step toward enabling deeper, more comprehensive analysis and supporting ongoing efforts to end the HIV epidemic in the US.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted mobility globally, but its mental health implications remain difficult to characterize because most studies relied on lockdown status, population-level mobility indicators, or self-reported mobility. These approaches may miss individual differences in actual movement patterns and cannot fully examine bidirectional relationships between mobility and mental health. Individual-level smartphone geolocation data may provide a more objective and temporally aligned measure of mobility during periods of societal disruption.

Electrocardiograms (ECGs) are commonly stored in PDF, particularly as vector-based files generated by ECG management systems. Previous studies have demonstrated that ECG signals can be extracted through PDF-to-Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) conversion, highlighting the potential to reconstruct waveform signals from vector graphics. These reconstructed signals further enable the derivation and prediction of clinically relevant ECG parameters.

Veterans face stigma, privacy concerns, and access barriers to HIV screening. For studies that use at-home HIV self-testing (HIVST) kits distributed through vending machines (VMs), recruitment and educational materials must communicate study purpose and participation options clearly, minimize confusion and stigma, and provide actionable next steps for participants who test outside of clinical settings.

Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) are a leading cause of hospitalizations, amputations, and health care costs among individuals with diabetes, often due to delayed detection and treatment. Early identification of skin changes is critical for preventing ulcer progression, yet daily visual foot self-inspections are often limited by impaired mobility, visual deficits, and poor compliance. Although some foot-focused remote patient monitoring technologies are in use, most of these approaches do not provide standardized, full-color visual documentation, which can affect clinicians’ ability to interpret findings using familiar visual cues.

Higher levels of human flourishing were moderately associated with helping strangers and volunteering time but showed little association with financial donations.

Snacks contribute 19% to 34% of daily energy intake, yet studying snacking behaviors faces challenges due to self-report biases. The SnackBox, an automated dietary assessment tool, enables structured measurement of snacking in seminaturalistic settings.

Web-based interventions present an opportunity for addressing reproductive health outcomes among young Francophone West Africans, but little is known about how social media use impacts such interventions.

We describe the adoption of AI software among commercially insured adults from 2018 to 2023 and find rapid growth but variable use across patients, plans, and regional characteristics, highlighting the need for research and policy to support equitable and beneficial adoption.

The global adoption of English-medium instruction (EMI) in higher education has introduced complex implementation challenges, the severity of which often depends on the resources available within specific educational contexts. Evidence remains limited in public medical schools in under-resourced, non-Anglophone countries, which serve a socioeconomically and educationally diverse student population. In such settings, the direct transfer of existing EMI integration models presents significant practical challenges.

Conversational voice AI assistants can automate postoperative follow-up calls in high-volume, low-complexity pathways such as cataract surgery but may widen health inequalities if language access and inclusive design are not built in. This patient and public involvement focus group was conducted to inform the Turkish-language adaptation of Dora ahead of a forthcoming multilingual clinical trial at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

Dietary counseling is an essential complement to the growing use of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) to achieve sustainable weight loss. Diverse patient needs, the demand for ongoing support, and limited resources underscore the potential of using digital support tools.