BACKGROUND The Amish are a growing population who live a traditional, rural way of life, which makes them less accepting of modernism. Most Amish live in poverty and are detached from modern health care. In addition, the recent change of their lifestyle has been reported, such as consuming a nontraditional diet and the usage of electronic devices. As a result, their lifestyle change may have im...

Background & aim: The prevalence of high-risk sexual behaviors among different social groups has been considered as a serious health-related threat in recent years. Given the importance of raising awareness and health among the youth and preventing high-risk behaviors, the present study was conducted to investigate the effect of a high-risk sexual behavior prevention program via mobile applicat...

This paper presents a conceptual approach for discussing health information seeking among poor households in Africa and Asia. This approach is part of a larger research endeavor aimed at understanding how health systems are adapting; with possibilities and constraints emerging. These health systems can be found in a context of the changing relationships between states, markets and civil society...

From the late 1970s on, mobile software and hardware became a topic in computer science, introducing a set of features to traditional and distributed computer systems comprising issues like restricted resources, access rights, and varying connectivity. These features also apply to information systems—some with particular severity, like the resource poverty mismatching the large amount of data w...

This article focuses on the development of public health in Brazil, with the aim of analyzing the present process of decentralization of health care. The authors argue that the neoliberal or conservative position is unable to offer a reasonable solution to problems in the health care system. On the other hand, the reformist position concentrates its attention on the health system and its admini...

Mobile phones can be transformative for community health workers (CHWs) in enhancing their influence and status and helping to solve practical problems. While formal intervention research can help advance mHealth application, most progress will come through a "diffusion of innovation" process.

Network management is often considered as one of the application areas with greatest potential for Mobile Agent (MA) technology. However, legacy applications and architectures impose considerable inertia to the deployment of new solutions for network management. For this reason, successful MA infrastructures will need flexible and effortless integration with legacy management frameworks, like t...