JMIR Formative Research

If a patient with cancer is identified as having a pathogenic variant, at-risk relatives are eligible for genetic testing, known as cascade testing. However, in the United States, the patient is responsible for informing their family members, and only about 30% of these family members are ultimately informed and complete testing. There is a need to train patients with cancer to communicate risk information and motivate their family members to obtain genetic testing.

HIV testing is the gateway to the HIV prevention continuum and offers an important opportunity to provide HIV prevention services. TakeMeHome.org is an online program that enables state and local health departments to offer free in-home HIV and sexually transmitted infection self-testing. As few TakeMeHome users have used pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), there is an opportunity to link TakeMeHome users to PrEP information and services.

Text generation approaches in health care communication have evolved along 2 major paths. The first path involves generative adversarial networks, progressing from basic architectures to specialized variants like Text-to-Text Generative Adversarial Network (TT-GAN) and Time and Frequency Domain-Based Generative Adversarial Network (TF-GAN), which address challenges in discrete text generation through techniques such as Gumbel-Softmax and reinforcement learning. The second path emerges from transformer-based architectures, particularly Generative Pretrained Transformer-2 (GPT-2), which uses extensive pretraining and self-attention mechanisms to generate contextually appropriate text. GPT-2’s transformer architecture enhances persuasive health communication by generating personalized messages using various strategies like task support, dialogue support, and social support for effective health interventions.

Quality of life (QoL) is an important surgical outcome, commonly assessed through self-reports, and has the potential to be enhanced by objective information from personal technologies such as smartphone apps and wearables. Understanding patients’ perspectives on this application of personal technologies is scarce.

Elder mistreatment (EM) is a significant public health problem that is frequently underdetected and underreported. Insufficient public recognition and engagement have been hypothesized as one contributor to this underreporting; however, few data sources exist to quantify public awareness or engagement with EM at the population level.

Effective communication about the relative risks of cigarettes and e-cigarettes can help increase switching away from cigarettes while minimizing unintended use.

Access to mental health care is critical for the effective management of serious mental illness (SMI), but consumers with low socioeconomic status (SES) have lower rates of service usage and worse retention in care. Digital technologies are often lauded as a way to bridge access gaps; however, little is known about how technology-mediated care may influence care access among low-SES consumers and how consumers use technology in care access.

Campus shootings, though infrequent, result in significant loss of life, psychological trauma, and disruption to university communities. Traditional preparedness programs developed for K-12 settings do not translate well to university environments. Virtual reality (VR) offers an immersive and engaging method to enhance situational awareness and decision-making during high-stress events.

Youth experiencing early psychosis in West Africa often face delays in accessing evidence-based treatment. Digital mental health interventions may offer an acceptable and scalable approach to improve access to early psychosis care in West Africa; however, few data exist on the experiences and perspectives of patients with early psychosis and their caregivers to inform digital intervention development.

Postoperative follow-up after brain tumor surgery is typically limited to intermittent clinic visits, leaving subtle neurological or general deterioration between visits underrecognized. Digital self-monitoring platforms may help fill this gap, but evidence in neuro-oncology is scarce, particularly regarding how patient-reported symptom trajectories can feed into future data-driven early warning systems.

Stress, sleep deprivation, and burnout are significant safety risks for acute care surgeons, negatively impacting performance, well-being, and clinical outcomes.

Effective collaboration throughout the full cycle of care is essential for value-based health care. In the Netherlands, occupational health care and curative health care traditionally operate as 2 separate sectors. As a consequence, effective communication and robust collaboration between professionals working in these sectors are lacking. Digital collaborative care platforms (ie, digital systems that facilitate communication and collaboration between health care professionals) are recognized as a promising solution to address the fragmentation of work-focused health care (health care that supports people on long-term sick leave in staying at or returning to work). A human-centered design (HCD) approach can help ensure that such platforms align with professionals’ needs by involving them throughout the design process.