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This systematic review will identify and synthesize the emerging evidence on older adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) utilizing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to maintain, restore, or augment social networks. The systematic review will consider the evidence on contextual and personal factors of older adults with MCI and their ICT use for social connectedness. The evidence searches will be implemented in PsycINFO, Academic Search Complete, Medline, PubMed, and manual searches. We shall review articles that were published between January 2010 and October 2023 in English and on Information and Communication Technology utility in social networking among older adults with MCI. The process of article selection will be conducted through title screening, abstract screening; and full article screening, following the Population, Intervention, Control, Outcomes (PICO) criteria. Given that all the studies included in this review are publicly accessible and have already obtained ethical approval from their respective institutions, there is no obligation for us to seek additional ethical clearance for our systematic review. We plan to share the outcomes of the systematic review through online presentations and dissemination within the research community. The findings from this review will identify the extent of empirical evidence on older adults with MCI utilizing ICTs to maintain, restore or augment their social networks. This review will provide evidence for contextual and personal factors in older adults with MCI for the social networks with ICT use. This review will propose practical implications for the effective utilization of ICT by older adults with MCI.

Religious communities influence health-related behaviors of adherents in important ways for public health promotion. Questions remain about the processes involved and resultant health promotion actions of the religious adherents. This study applied a structural theory analysis to understand the ways by which religious adherents adopt and enact health norms. Structural theory proposes systemic influences on behavioral predispositions at the latent, interpretive, and elective levels. Latent influences on health norms occur through a process of social mediation, predisposing the religious adherents to impute faith-aligned meanings to their health norms. Religious adherents also might adopt interpretation to guide their health norms in those grey areas in which faith-based guidelines are not apparent or open to contestation. Moreover, religious adherents may elect to construct health norms combining faith-aligned and prevailing secular community standards. Public health promotion with religious adherents should address their faith-aligned health beliefs while also addressing their evolving personal health norms.

This study utilized participatory action research approaches to construct a follower-centric framework for measuring influences on sexual decision making by youth members of a church organization. Participants were Batswana Pentecostal church members self-reporting on their engagement in pre-marital sex (n = 68, females = 62%; age range 15–23 years; median age = 20.3 years) from eight of 26 randomly selected congregations. They completed a multi-stage concept mapping process that included free listing of statements of potential influences on their sexual decisions. They then sorted the statements into groupings similar in meaning to them, and rated the same statements for relative importance to their sexual decisions. Multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis of the data yielded a five cluster solution in which church teachings emerged as most salient to the teenagers’ sexual decision making followed by future orientation, community norms, knowledge about HIV/AIDS and prevention education. While the youth believed to be influenced by religion teachings on primary sexual abstinence, they self-reported with pre-marital sex. This suggests a need for secondary abstinence education with them to reduce their risk for STIs/HIV and unwanted pregnancies. Concept mapping is serviceable to construct frameworks and to identify content of follower-centric influences on sexual decision making by church youth members.

Objectives: Migrants and refugee youth (MRY) in Western nations are less likely to participate in sexual reproductive health (SRH) services. Consequently, MRY are more likely to encounter adverse SRH experiences due to limited access to and knowledge of SRH services. A scoping review was conducted to examine MRY’s understanding of and the implications for inclusive sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) programs and policies. Methods: A systematic search of literature across seven academic databases was conducted. Data were extracted following Partners for Dignity and Rights’ Human Rights Assessment framework and analysed using the thematic-synthesis method. Results: 38 literature (peer-reviewed, 24 and grey, 14) were considered eligible for inclusion. The findings highlighted significant barriers and the under-implementation of SRHR support and services by MRY. Key policy implications include a need for programs to support MRY’s SRHR education, diversity, equity and inclusiveness and privacy protections. Conclusion: The review shows that the emerging evidence on MRY SRHR suggests gaps in practices for resourcing policies and programs that promote sustainable SRH for vulnerable populations. Policies for MRY’s SRHR should prioritise programs that focus on diversity, equity and inclusion with targeted education and community resourcing strategies for sustainability.

Objective This study explores socioecological factors facilitating the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) experiences of migrant and refugee youth (MRY) in Greater Western Sydney, Australia. MRY may be at higher risk for poorer SRH outcomes due to cultural, linguistic, and systemic barriers. Methods Using participatory action research, 17 focus groups were conducted with 87 MRY aged 15–29 from diverse cultural backgrounds. Data were analysed thematically, using socioecological framework. Results Key facilitators of MRY's SRHR were identified at the microsystem and exosystem levels, including (1) Peer dynamics and support, with friends serving as trusted confidants and sources of advice; (2) Safety and contraceptive choices, highlighting the importance of access to contraception and STI prevention; and (3) Digital platforms for SRHR information access, with online resources filling knowledge gaps. Conclusion Findings suggest the need for SRHR interventions to leverage peer support networks, expand access to contraceptive options, and develop culturally appropriate digital resources for MRY. Further research is needed to identify and enhance facilitators across all socioecological levels to comprehensively support MRY's SRHR needs. Plain language summary Migrants and refugee youth often struggle to access sexual and reproductive health information and services in their new countries. This study is an attempt to understand what helps young migrants and refugee maintain their sexual and reproductive health and rights in Greater Western Sydney, Australia. Our aim was to identify the positive factors in their environment that make it easier for them to access and use sexual health resources. We talked to 87 migrants and refugee youth aged 15–29 from various cultural backgrounds, conducting 17 group discussions about their experiences with sexual health. Our main results show three important factors that help these young people. The results were, that (1) Many young people trust their friends for advice and information about sexual health, (2) Having choices about contraception and ways to prevent sexually transmitted infections was important, and (3) The internet, especially social media and search engines, is a major source of sexual health information for young people. Understanding these helpful factors can guide better support for young migrants and refugees. It shows sexual health programs need to use peer support in sexual health programs, make sure young people can easily access contraception and protection and create trustworthy online resources about sexual health that are culturally appropriate. Our findings show more research is needed to find other ways to support young migrants and refugees with their sexual and reproductive health. This will help create better health services and education programs for these young people.

Background The ways church youth make sexual decisions are incompletely understood and yet important for public health interventions. This study aimed to examine personal religiosity influences on the sexual decisions by church youth from the country of Botswana, taking into account their sense of personal agency. Method Participants were 235 Botswana Pentecostal faith church youth (females = 67.2%, male = 32.8%; age range 12–23 years). They completed measures of personal religiosity, personal agency, sexual abstinence, and contraception use predisposition. We analysed the data applying Structural Equation Modelling to test five paths - personal religiosity to personal agency, personal agency to abstinence, personal religiosity to abstinence, personal agency to contraceptive use, and personal religiosity to contraceptive use. Results Results suggest that personal religiosity influences the youth in their sexual abstinence and contraception decisions through personal agency. High personal agency, but not personal religiosity, was associated with pro-sexual abstinence, and contraception use was associated with religiosity. Personal agency augmented the likelihood of both abstinence and contraception use decisions among the older church youth and with church youth with higher levels of formal education. Conclusion Church youth likely adopt discretionary sexual behaviours over the developmental period from early to older adolescents, which would make them more receptive to public sexual health messages. Personal agency appears to be an important resource for public health interventions aimed at influencing church youth’s sexual decisions.

Older adults are at high risk for mental health distress due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. This scoping review aimed to map emerging evidence on the types of leisure and recreation activities (LRA) adults, 60 years and older, are engaged in for their mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. We identified 10 studies on LRA for mental health by older adults with COVID-19 mitigation from a search of the following databases: Medline/PubMed, Excerpta Medica database (EMBASE), Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, JBI Evidence Synthesis, and Epistemonicos. A narrative synthesis of the data revealed age cohorts of young-old (60–69 years) and middle-old (70–79 years) engaging mainly in online LRA for mental health compared to the older-old adults (80 years and older). The middle-old (70–79 years) and older-old adults (80–89 years) engaged in more physical LRA for mental health compared to the younger-old adults. Across age cohorts, the older adults engaged in social connectedness LRA for mental health wellbeing. COVID-19–safe LRA mental health support interventions for older adults should be tailored to their age cohort predispositions for optimal benefit.

While family and friendship relationship qualities are associated with life satisfaction, evidence on how these types of relationships interact to contribute to older adults’ life satisfaction is sparse. This study examined how family and friendship relationship qualities may be supportive of (compensatory) or conflict with (competing) older adults’ life satisfaction. We adopted a cross-sectional design to analyze data from the Health and Retirement Study (n = 1178, females = 54.8%, mean age = 67.9 years, SD = 9.3 years) to examine compensatory (as in social support) and competing (as in social strain) qualities of family and friendship social relationships and their association with life satisfaction in older adults. For greater explanatory power, we also controlled for life satisfaction by sociodemographic variables of age, gender, education, self-reported general health, physical health and activity, depression, and personality traits. Our findings indicate that the spouse/partner support relationship contributes to older adults’ life satisfaction overall and is associated with greater social support and less social strain. Friendship support is associated with improved life satisfaction for older adults reporting spouse/partner strain. Relationship support for the life satisfaction of older adults should consider their need for social support from their social network while minimizing the risk of social strain from adversarial relationships in life situations.

Chinese women are known to have both a high prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) and vitamin D deficiency (serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD) <50 nmol/l). Associations between sleep duration and circulating 25OHD have recently been reported but, to our knowledge, these associations have not been studied in older Chinese populations. We thus investigated whether sleep duration was associated with vitamin D status in a population from Macao, China, and whether sleep duration modified the association between MetS and vitamin D deficiency. In 207 older (>55 years) Macanese, anthropometry, blood samples and validated questionnaires, including sleep duration and cardiovascular risk factors, were simultaneously collected. On multivariable categorical analyses, those women, not men, who had short sleep duration (≤6 hours (h)) were at a 2-fold risk for vitamin D deficiency (both <50 nmol/L and <37 nmol/L; OR = 1.94, 95%CI 1.29-2.92; OR = 2.05, 95%CI 1.06-3.98, respectively) and those who had longer sleep duration (>8 h) were 3-fold more likely to have vitamin D deficiency (OR = 3.07, 95%CI 1.47-6.39; OR = 2.75, 95%CI 1.08-7.00, respectively) compared to those with normal sleep duration (6-8 h). Both women and men with MetS were 2-fold more likely to have vitamin D deficiency (women: OR = 2.04, 95%CI 1.31-3.17; OR = 2.15, 95%CI 1.11-4.17, respectively; men: OR = 2.01, 95%CI 1.23-3.28; OR = 2.04, 95%CI 1.00-4.29, respectively). Moreover, women with both short sleep duration and MetS had an increased risk of vitamin D deficiency (OR = 3.26, 95%CI 1.10-9.64). These associations were not found in those with longer sleep. Men with longer sleep and MetS had a 5-fold risk of vitamin D deficiency (OR = 5.22; 95%CI 2.70-10.12). This association was non-significant for men with shorter sleep. We conclude that both short and long sleep duration were associated with vitamin D deficiency in older Chinese women. Further research is needed in larger cohorts or with intervention studies to further examine the associations between reduced sleep, metabolic syndrome and vitamin D deficiency.