How do people come to opposite causal judgments about societal problems, such as whether a public health policy reduced COVID-19 cases? The current research tests an understudied cognitive mechanism in which people may agree about what "actually" happened (e.g., that a public health policy was implemented and COVID-19 cases declined),…

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced children to reckon with the causal relations underlying disease transmission. What are children's theories of how COVID-19 is transmitted? And how do they understand the relation between COVID-19 susceptibility and the need for disease-mitigating behavior? We asked these questions in the context of children's…

This paper argues that vice-charging, the practice of charging other persons with epistemic vice, can itself be epistemically vicious. It identifies some potential vices of vice-charging and identifies knowledge of other people as a type of knowledge that is obstructed by epistemically vicious attributions of epistemic vice. The hazards of…

U.S. print news coverage of COVID vaccine hesitancy represents a departure from previous depictions of vaccine skepticism as a problem of wrong belief. This article reports on a mixed methods study of 334 "New York Times" texts about COVID nonvaccination and vaccine hesitancy published between December 2020-December 2021. Texts were…

This study aims to describe Facebook users' beliefs toward physical distancing measures implemented during the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic using the key constructs of the health belief model. A combination of rule-based filtering and manual classification methods was used to classify user comments on COVID-19 Facebook posts of three…

Guided by argumentation schema theory, we conducted five psychological studies in the United States and China on arguments about vaccination. Study 1 replicated research about arguments on several topics, finding that agreement judgments are weighted toward claims, whereas quality judgments are weighted toward reasons. However, consistent with…

The purpose of this study was to describe population knowledge and beliefs about COVID-19 and current social media coverage to address a gap in what is known about risk communication during health crises. A survey with 27 questions was developed. Twenty-three percent (N = 1,136) of respondents started the survey. Less than half of the students…

A trauma-informed organization serving young children and their families experienced differentials in vaccine uptake. Organization leadership viewed this response through a trauma-informed framework that recognizes legacies of scientific racism and attendant distrust of medical information, particularly new treatments. Trauma-informed frameworks…

Coronavirus disease 2019 exacerbated health inequities in Bronx Communities. This study explored vaccine hesitancy among a random sample of faculty and students from Hebert Lehman College. Findings suggest faculty are largely vaccinated (87%), while 59% of students are unvaccinated. Significant gaps in information were found related to safety and…

Purpose: Because health misinformation pertaining to COVID-19 is a serious threat to public health, the purpose of this study is to develop a framework to guide an online intervention into some of the drivers of health misinformation online. This framework can be iterated upon through the use of design-based research to continue to develop further…

Lack of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education contributes to poor SRH outcomes for adolescents and young people in Sub-Saharan Africa. School-based comprehensive SRH education programmes in low- and middle-income countries aim to advance gender equality and human rights and reduce risky sexual behaviours in adolescents. However, the…

Purpose: Over the years, many upstream health policies have sought to reduce smoking across populations. While smoking has been substantially reduced, the effects of these policies on education-smoking gradient remain unclear. The present paper compares the education-smoking gradient among the Generation X and the millennials, who grew up with…

Little is known about how triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is discussed on the visual social media platform, Instagram. A greater understanding of the experiences of TNBC survivors that are documented on this platform may inform us of how this group of survivors cope with this rare, but aggressive form of breast cancer. This study analyzed a…

Communication is a complex phenomenon. How people interpret information to make decisions relies on an infinite amount of data that is different for every individual based on experience, education, socioeconomics, and belief systems. The complexity is compounded with subjects such as vaccinations, when patients must make decisions that impact…

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether participation in a community event developed using Health Belief Model constructs increased intention to follow the American Academy of Paediatrics Safe Sleep Guidelines for infants. Design: Observational cohort study. Setting: Safe Sleep Community Baby Showers held between Spring 2015…