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This paper aims to examine the global pattern of growth and development of eHealth research based on publication headcount, and analysis of the characteristics, of the keywords used by authors and indexers to represent their research content during 1945–2019.

This study adopted a bibliometric research design and a quantitative approach. The source of the data was Elsevier’s Scopus database. The search query involved multiple search terms because researchers’ choice of keywords varies very significantly. The search for eHealth research publications was limited to conference papers and research articles published before 2020.

eHealth originated in the late 1990s, but it has become an envelope term for describing much older terms such as telemedicine, and its variants that originated much earlier. The keywords were spread through the 27 Scopus Subject Areas, with medicine (44.04%), engineering (12.84%) and computer science (11.47%) leading, while by Scopus All Science Journal Classification Health Sciences accounted for 55.83% of the keywords. Physical sciences followed with 30.62%. The classifications social sciences and life sciences made only single-digit contributions. eHealth is about meeting health needs, but the work of engineers and computer scientists is very outstanding in achieving this goal.

This study demonstrates that eHealth is an unexplored aspect of health literature and highlights the nature of the accumulated literature in the area. It further demonstrates that eHealth is a multidisciplinary area that is attractive to researchers from all disciplines because of its sensitive focus on health, and therefore requires pooling and integration of human resources and expertise, methods and approaches.

This literature review aims to assess the current research on healthcare job availability and skilled professionals. The objective of this research is to identify challenges caused by the imbalance between healthcare service demand and qualified professionals and propose potential solutions and future research directions.

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method was employed as the guiding framework for conducting this review. A qualitative research design analyzed 38 peer-reviewed, evidence-based research works from 50 journal publications. Inclusion criteria focused on empirical studies, observational research and comprehensive reviews published within the last ten years. Thematic and discourse analysis categorized themes and factors explored in selected publications.

The findings highlight significant challenges in the healthcare sector regarding job availability and skilled professionals. Developed countries face understaffed healthcare facilities, resulting in increased workloads and compromised care. Developing countries experience high rates of unemployment among healthcare graduates due to limited resources and mentorship.

Improving educational infrastructure, expanding training opportunities and increasing healthcare investments are crucial for nurturing a skilled workforce. Implementing effective retention policies, fostering international collaborations and addressing socioeconomic determinants can create a sustainable job market.

The healthcare sector faces critical challenges in balancing job availability and skilled professionals. Strategic solutions are proposed to create a sustainable and equitable healthcare workforce. By implementing recommendations and conducting further research, access to quality healthcare and global public health outcomes can be improved.

This study aims to observe and discuss an emerging disintermediation in transportation, finance and health care, and explain how these three key areas depend on intermediary institutions that are the fruit of modern corporate governance conditions that find their roots in classical sociological theory.

The authors review and incorporate a diversity of research literature to explain the likelihood for the development and continuation of disintermediation.

The authors map two sociological perspectives (Emile Durkheim’s theory of interdependence and Herbert Spencer’s theory of contracts) to two modern corporate governance theories (resource dependence theory and agency theory). The authors then discuss the challenging social situation resulting from modern corporate governance and show how these conditions create the potential for a continuum of disintermediation across the specific and crucial economic sectors of transportation, finance and health care.

The implications of this theoretical integration can help organizational leaders navigate complex social and strategic issues and prepare for the consequences that may result from the emerging disintermediation.

The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been well documented, but there is still limited insight into the complex interaction of factors that determine its longer-term effects on the most vulnerable sectors of society. The current study therefore develops an integrated conceptual framework to investigate how consumers' fear of mortality and the perceived risk of severe illness associated with COVID-19 act as critical determinants of consumer food choices and perceived well-being.

An online survey was utilized to collect data from a sample of 407 adult, low-income consumers across Trinidad and Tobago. The PROCESS macro was used to empirically test the hypothesized relationships in a moderated mediation model.

The results confirm that an increase in the perceived risk of severe illness has a significant negative effect on the consumption of healthy foods and perceived well-being. Moreover, consumers' choice of healthy foods mediates the negative relationship between consumers' perceived risk of severe COVID-19 illness and subjective well-being. Finally, the negative relationship between perceived risk of illness and healthy food choice weakens as an individual's fear of pandemic-related mortality increases.

This research integrates multiple related theoretical constructs to provide a more nuanced understanding of the lingering impact that risk perceptions and fear have on consumer food choices and associated well-being among a vulnerable Caribbean population. The changes identified have important implications for researchers interested in consumer food preferences as well as policymakers seeking to promote a healthy lifestyle among individuals coping with psychologically stressful circumstances.

Mainland Tanzania has seen two decades of significant social policy reforms and transformations in its social and economic structures, whilst the country continues to grapple with persisting gender inequalities. This article examines Tanzania's social policy developments from a gender perspective. The authors analyse the level, reach and quality of social policy delivery to working-age women across the areas of health policy, social protection and employment policy during 2000–2021.

The article draws on qualitative research deploying the scoping review method. The data consist of diverse secondary materials, including academic publications, government policy documents, relevant statistics and other types of “grey” literature.

Tanzania has made significant advancements in the legal frameworks around welfare provision and has instituted increasingly gender-responsive government policy plans. The health and social protection sectors, in particular, have witnessed the introduction of large-scale measures expanding social policy implementation. However, social policy delivery remains two-tiered, with differences in provisions for women in the formal and informal sectors.

Social policy delivery and implementation have increased and diversified in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) during the new millennium, with a growing integration of gender-specific policy objectives. However, limited social policy scholarship has focused on the gendered effects of broader social policy models in SSA. The article remedies the concomitant knowledge gaps by examining various social policies and their impacts on working-age women in Mainland Tanzania. The authors also engage with the theoretical welfare regime literature and present an analytical framework for gender-sensitive assessment of emerging social policy models in the Global South.

In light of the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theoretical paradigm, this paper explores how information relevance and media richness affect social network exhaustion and, moreover, how social network exhaustion ultimately leads to health anxiety and COVID-19-related stress.

The conceptual model is explicitly analyzed and estimated by using data from 309 individuals of different ages in mainland China. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) were utilized to validate the proposed hypotheses through the use of online data.

The findings suggest that information relevance is negatively associated with social network exhaustion. In addition, social network exhaustion is a significant predictor of health anxiety and stress. Furthermore, information relevance and media richness can indirectly influence health anxiety and stress through the mediating effect of social network exhaustion.

Theoretically, this paper verifies the causes and consequences of social network exhaustion during COVID-19, thus making a significant contribution to the theoretical construction and refinement of this emerging research area. Practically, the conceptual research model in this paper may provide inspiration for more investigators and scholars who are inclined to further explore the different dimensions of social network exhaustion by utilizing other variables.

Although social network exhaustion and its adverse consequences have become prevalent, relatively few empirical studies have addressed the deleterious effects of social network exhaustion on mobile social media users’ psychosocial well-being and mental health during the prolonged COVID-19. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications for the rational development and construction of mobile social technologies to cultivate proper health awareness and mindset during the ongoing worldwide COVID-19 epidemic.

Family planning (FP) services through the lens of human rights are not well known in Nepal. This study aims to assess Family Planning 2020: Rights and Empowerment Principles for Family Planning and identify factors affecting contraceptive use among HIV-infected women living in rural Far Western Nepal.

This study conducted a cross-sectional survey using self-designed proforma. To assess the association between contraceptive use and independent variables, this study calculated adjusted odd ratio (AOR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) V.20.

Only 37.8% of participants had access to full range of contraceptive methods, and only 57.5% of participants received proper counseling. Agency/autonomy, transparency/accountability and voice/participation were practiced by 43.7%, 23.4% and 19.7% of participants, respectively. Husband’s support (AOR = 4.263; 95% CI: 1.640–11.086), availability of FP services in their locality (AOR = 2.497; 95% CI: 1.311–4.754), employment (AOR = 3.499; 95% CI: 1.186–10.328) and postpartum period (AOR = 0.103; 95% CI: 0.023–0.475) were significantly associated with contraceptive use.

Health-care providers’ and program managers’ perspectives were not examined.

Findings of this study will be useful for making strategic plan on human rights-based approach to FP.

Expanding access to contraceptive information and services and strengthening autonomy, accountability and participation are key to human rights-based approach to FP.

This study identified that inadequate counselling, nonavailability of full range of contraceptive methods, low level of autonomy, accountability and participation were key bottlenecks in fulfilling human rights-based approach to FP.