Anish Arora

McGill University | McGill

Purpose: The primary aim of this study is to validate the Blended Learning Usability Evaluation – Questionnaire (BLUE-Q) for use in the field of health professions education through a Bayesian approach. As Bayesian questionnaire validation remains elusive, a secondary aim of this article is to serve as a simplified tutorial for engaging in such val...

Digital health interventions (DHIs) are being increasingly adopted to improve care outcomes and experiences for people living with HIV (PLHIV). Here, we highlight the importance of DHIs in the context of HIV management and recommendations for their equitable integration in the HIV care cascade.

Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is the most common chronic liver disease worldwide and can progress to serious complications, including metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), cirrhosis, end-stage liver disease, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Predisposing risk factors for MASH include obesity, type 2...

Background As people living with HIV (PWH) age, they face new challenges that can have a negative impact on their quality of life (QOL) and mental health. Setting This study enrolled PWH at the end of life (EOL) who were actively engaged in cure-related research in Southern California, United States. EOL was defined as having a prognosis of six mo...

Purpose Strong primary health care (PHC) systems require well‐established PHC education systems to enhance the skills of general practitioners (GPs). However, the literature on the experiences of international collaboration in primary care education in low‐ and middle‐income countries remains limited. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the i...

Background Scholars recommend providing migrants living with HIV (MLWH) with free treatment, rapidly, once linked to care to optimize their HIV-related experiences and health outcomes. Quantitative evaluations of patient-reported measures for MLWH in such models are necessary to explore the viability of these recommendations. Methods Within a 96-w...

Background: Linguistic concordance between healthcare providers and patients is critical for ensuring quality healthcare. Professional interpretation can be expensive and challenging to access. This scoping review aimed to explore the evidence on the role and education of medical students as interpreters in caring for patients with limited language...

Objective Multidisciplinary care with free, rapid, and on‐site bictegravir/emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide (B/F/TAF) dispensation may improve health outcomes among migrants living with HIV. However, models for rapid B/F/TAF initiation are not well studied among migrants living with HIV, and an understanding of how social determinants of health...

Introduction The Last Gift study at the University of California San Diego, United States enrolls terminally ill people with HIV (PWH) in HIV cure research. Methods From 2017 – 2022, we conducted surveys with Last Gift participants and their next-of-kin/loved ones to evaluate willingness to participate in different types of HIV cure research at th...

Introduction: Although current antiretroviral therapy allows most people with HIV (PWH) to experience normal longevity with a good quality of life, an HIV cure remains elusive due to HIV reservoir formation within deep tissues. An HIV cure remains highly desirable to the community of PWH. This study reports on the perceived risks and benefits of p...

Background: Blended learning programs (BLPs) have been widely adopted across health professions education (HPE). To bolster their impact on learning outcomes, the usability of BLPs should be rigorously evaluated. However, there is a lack of reliable and validated tools to appraise this dimension of BLPs within HPE. The purpose of this investigation...

This study aimed to explore the experiences of migrant people living with HIV (MLWH) enrolled in a Montreal-based multidisciplinary HIV care clinic with rapid antiretroviral treatment (ART) initiation and cost-covered ART. Between February 2020 and March 2022, 32 interviews were conducted with 16 MLWH at three time-points (16 after 1 week of ART in...

Background: Calls for stakeholders across the global HIV landscape to widely and systematically adopt person-centered care and patient-oriented research approaches have been made by HIV scholars, clinicians, patients, and groups such as the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Such calls implicitly acknowledge that the end goal of...

Background: Qualitative health research seeks to elucidate the realities of context, reveal the complexities of behaviour, probe the intersecting and multiple determinants of health at individual, community and institutional levels, and capture the dynamics of health care provision from the perspectives of patients, providers, and systems. Traditio...

Migrants in countries affiliated with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have a higher risk of acquiring HIV, experience delayed HIV diagnosis, and have variable levels of engagement with HIV care and treatment when compared to native-born populations. A systematic mixed studies review was conducted to generate a mult...

Knowledge was mapped about how usability has been applied in the evaluation of blended learning programs within health professions education. Across 80 studies, usability was explicitly mentioned once but always indirectly evaluated. A conceptual framework was developed, providing a foundation for future instruments to evaluate usability in this co...

The COVID‐19 pandemic has brought to light tremendous gaps and issues faced by health systems globally. Commendable effort has been made to retain continuity of care for non‐COVID‐19 patients amidst the pandemic, particularly using technology‐enhanced models of care. However, these efforts are not sufficient to tackle the impending challenges that...

Canada is a leading nation for international migration, yet fails to adequately respond to the healthcare needs of migrant populations. In this editorial, we explore why this is so. We posit that the reactive approach of the systems and stakeholders responsible for assuring healthcare access during the COVID-19 pandemic has been detrimental to our...

Opal (opalmedapps.com), a patient portal in use at the Cedars Cancer Centre of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) (Montreal, Canada), gives cancer patients access to their medical records, collects information on patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), and has demonstrated patient satisfaction with care. This feasibility study aims to ev...

Introduction In 2019, the United Nations signalled a substantial rise in the number of international migrants, up to 272 million globally, about half of which move to only 10 countries, including 8 member nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Migrants in OECD countries are often at higher risk for acquiring H...

UNSTRUCTURED Background Patient engagement (PE) refers to the meaningful and active involvement of patients and other stakeholders (i.e. family members) in the conduct of research and transfer of knowledge. PE is usually an immersive experience for both stakeholders and researchers, based on direct dialogue and equitable partnerships. However, in r...

Objective: To assess explicit and implicit attitudes toward mental illness of undergraduate students and explore associated variables. Participants: Year 1-4 undergraduate students from a large Canadian university (n = 382). Methods: Participants completed demographics, the Opening Minds Scale for Healthcare Providers, and an Implicit Association...

The authors would like to correct the footnote of Table 2.

Objective The purpose of this study was to assess if having completed a psychiatric clerkship or having increased exposure to mental illness in general was associated with reduced explicit and implicit stigmatizing attitudes towards mental illness in undergraduate medical students. Methods A secondary analysis of data specific to medical students...

Objectives: To compare explicit and implicit stigmatizing attitudes towards mental illness among undergraduate students, medical school students, and psychiatrists, and to assess whether attitudes are associated with education level, exposure to, and personal experience with mental illness. Methods: Participants from McMaster University were rec...

Background: Studies have demonstrated the strong association between increased end-of-life homecare nursing use and reduced acute care utilization. However, little research has described the utilization patterns of end-of-life homecare nursing and how this differs by region and community size. Methods: A retrospective population-based cohort stu...