People want to work: providing tailored support, rather than extra responsibilities, is key

Qualitative research into the impact of welfare reforms have found that they led to an erosion of resilience and increased sense of powerlessness, often making people less able to get into work. Demanding more and more from people whose access to support has been drastically cut won’t help the government’s welfare reforms to succeed in their objectives, argues Liam Crosby

The gender dimensions of mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic: A path analysis

BACKGROUND: The Covid-19 pandemic has had a substantial population mental health impact, with evidence indicating that mental health has deteriorated in particular for women. This gender difference could be explained by the distinct experiences of women during the pandemic, including the burden of unpaid domestic labour, changes in economic activity, and experiences of loneliness. This study investigates potential mediators in the relationship between gender and mental health during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK. METHODS: We used data from 9,351 participants of Understanding Society, a longitudinal household survey from the UK. We conducted a mediation analysis using structural equation modelling to estimate the role of four mediators, measured during the first lockdown in April 2020, in the relationship between gender and mental health in May and July 2020. Mental health was measured with the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). Standardized coefficients for each path were obtained, as well as indirect effects for the role of employment disruption, hours spent on housework, hours spent on childcare, and loneliness. RESULTS: In a model controlling for age, household income and pre-pandemic mental health, we found that gender was associated with all four mediators, but only loneliness was associated with mental health at both time points. The indirect effects showed strong evidence of partial mediation through loneliness for the relationship between gender and mental health problems; loneliness accounted for 83.9% of the total effect in May, and 76.1% in July. No evidence of mediation was found for housework, childcare, or employment disruption. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that the worse mental health found among women during the initial period of the Covid-19 pandemic is partly explained by women reporting more experiences of loneliness. Understanding this mechanism is important for prioritising interventions to address gender-based inequities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic

ActEarly: a City Collaboratory approach to early promotion of good health and wellbeing.

Economic, physical, built, cultural, learning, social and service environments have a profound effect on lifelong health. However, policy thinking about health research is dominated by the 'biomedical model' which promotes medicalisation and an emphasis on diagnosis and treatment at the expense of prevention. Prevention research has tended to focus on 'downstream' interventions that rely on individual behaviour change, frequently increasing inequalities. Preventive strategies often focus on isolated leverage points and are scattered across different settings. This paper describes a major new prevention research programme that aims to create City Collaboratory testbeds to support the identification, implementation and evaluation of upstream interventions within a whole system city setting. Prevention of physical and mental ill-health will come from the cumulative effect of multiple system-wide interventions. Rather than scatter these interventions across many settings and evaluate single outcomes, we will test their collective impact across multiple outcomes with the goal of achieving a tipping point for better health. Our focus is on early life (ActEarly) in recognition of childhood and adolescence being such critical periods for influencing lifelong health and wellbeing

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

The Prime Minister has the opportunity to lead on international development

While the coming year confronts the Prime Minister with many challenges, it also offers many opportunities to have a major impact on the international stage. Liam Crosby sets the challenge to the Prime Minister to take the agenda forward on international development and explains the concerns underlying a new campaign which aims to make him do just that

The gender dimensions of mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic: A path analysis.

BackgroundThe Covid-19 pandemic has had a substantial population mental health impact, with evidence indicating that mental health has deteriorated in particular for women. This gender difference could be explained by the distinct experiences of women during the pandemic, including the burden of unpaid domestic labour, changes in economic activity, and experiences of loneliness. This study investigates potential mediators in the relationship between gender and mental health during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK.MethodsWe used data from 9,351 participants of Understanding Society, a longitudinal household survey from the UK. We conducted a mediation analysis using structural equation modelling to estimate the role of four mediators, measured during the first lockdown in April 2020, in the relationship between gender and mental health in May and July 2020. Mental health was measured with the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). Standardized coefficients for each path were obtained, as well as indirect effects for the role of employment disruption, hours spent on housework, hours spent on childcare, and loneliness.ResultsIn a model controlling for age, household income and pre-pandemic mental health, we found that gender was associated with all four mediators, but only loneliness was associated with mental health at both time points. The indirect effects showed strong evidence of partial mediation through loneliness for the relationship between gender and mental health problems; loneliness accounted for 83.9% of the total effect in May, and 76.1% in July. No evidence of mediation was found for housework, childcare, or employment disruption.ConclusionThe results suggest that the worse mental health found among women during the initial period of the Covid-19 pandemic is partly explained by women reporting more experiences of loneliness. Understanding this mechanism is important for prioritising interventions to address gender-based inequities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic