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Support for mask use as a COVID-19 public health measure among a large sample of Canadian secondary school students

BACKGROUND: Youth voice has been largely absent from deliberations regarding public health measures intended to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission, despite being one of the populations most impacted by school-based policies. To inform public health strategies and messages, we examined the level of stud...

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Autores principales: Patte, Karen A., Wade, Terrance J., MacNeil, Adam J., Bélanger, Richard E., Duncan, Markus J., Riazi, Negin, Leatherdale, Scott T.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9395950/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35996138
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-14011-0
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author Patte, Karen A.
Wade, Terrance J.
MacNeil, Adam J.
Bélanger, Richard E.
Duncan, Markus J.
Riazi, Negin
Leatherdale, Scott T.
author_facet Patte, Karen A.
Wade, Terrance J.
MacNeil, Adam J.
Bélanger, Richard E.
Duncan, Markus J.
Riazi, Negin
Leatherdale, Scott T.
author_sort Patte, Karen A.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Youth voice has been largely absent from deliberations regarding public health measures intended to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission, despite being one of the populations most impacted by school-based policies. To inform public health strategies and messages, we examined the level of student support of mask use in public spaces and school mask requirements, as well as factors associated with students’ perspectives. METHODS: We used cross-sectional survey data from 42,767 adolescents attending 133 Canadian secondary schools that participated in the COMPASS study during the 2020/2021 school year. Multinomial regression models assessed support for i) wearing a mask in indoor public spaces and ii) schools requiring students to wear masks, in association with COVID-19 knowledge, concerns, and perceived risk. RESULTS: Wearing masks in indoor public spaces was supported by 81.9% of students; 8.7% were unsupportive and 9.4% were neutral/undecided. School mask requirements were supported by 67.8%, with 23.1% neutral and 9.1% unsupportive. More females supported mask wearing in public spaces (83.9% vs. 79.1%) and school mask requirements (70.8% vs. 63.5%) than males. Students had increased odds of supporting mask use in public spaces and school mask requirements if they reported concerns about their own or their family’s health, had discussions regarding ways to prevent infection, perceived COVID-19 to be a risk to young people, and knew that signs are not always present in COVID-19 cases and that masks prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission if someone coughs. CONCLUSIONS: During the year following the beginning of the pandemic, most students supported the required use of masks in schools and wearing masks in indoor public spaces. Improving knowledge around the effectiveness of masks appears likely to have the largest impact on mask support in adolescent populations among the factors studied.
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spelling pubmed-93959502022-08-23 Support for mask use as a COVID-19 public health measure among a large sample of Canadian secondary school students Patte, Karen A. Wade, Terrance J. MacNeil, Adam J. Bélanger, Richard E. Duncan, Markus J. Riazi, Negin Leatherdale, Scott T. BMC Public Health Research BACKGROUND: Youth voice has been largely absent from deliberations regarding public health measures intended to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission, despite being one of the populations most impacted by school-based policies. To inform public health strategies and messages, we examined the level of student support of mask use in public spaces and school mask requirements, as well as factors associated with students’ perspectives. METHODS: We used cross-sectional survey data from 42,767 adolescents attending 133 Canadian secondary schools that participated in the COMPASS study during the 2020/2021 school year. Multinomial regression models assessed support for i) wearing a mask in indoor public spaces and ii) schools requiring students to wear masks, in association with COVID-19 knowledge, concerns, and perceived risk. RESULTS: Wearing masks in indoor public spaces was supported by 81.9% of students; 8.7% were unsupportive and 9.4% were neutral/undecided. School mask requirements were supported by 67.8%, with 23.1% neutral and 9.1% unsupportive. More females supported mask wearing in public spaces (83.9% vs. 79.1%) and school mask requirements (70.8% vs. 63.5%) than males. Students had increased odds of supporting mask use in public spaces and school mask requirements if they reported concerns about their own or their family’s health, had discussions regarding ways to prevent infection, perceived COVID-19 to be a risk to young people, and knew that signs are not always present in COVID-19 cases and that masks prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission if someone coughs. CONCLUSIONS: During the year following the beginning of the pandemic, most students supported the required use of masks in schools and wearing masks in indoor public spaces. Improving knowledge around the effectiveness of masks appears likely to have the largest impact on mask support in adolescent populations among the factors studied. BioMed Central 2022-08-22 /pmc/articles/PMC9395950/ /pubmed/35996138 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-14011-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Patte, Karen A.
Wade, Terrance J.
MacNeil, Adam J.
Bélanger, Richard E.
Duncan, Markus J.
Riazi, Negin
Leatherdale, Scott T.
Support for mask use as a COVID-19 public health measure among a large sample of Canadian secondary school students
title Support for mask use as a COVID-19 public health measure among a large sample of Canadian secondary school students
title_full Support for mask use as a COVID-19 public health measure among a large sample of Canadian secondary school students
title_fullStr Support for mask use as a COVID-19 public health measure among a large sample of Canadian secondary school students
title_full_unstemmed Support for mask use as a COVID-19 public health measure among a large sample of Canadian secondary school students
title_short Support for mask use as a COVID-19 public health measure among a large sample of Canadian secondary school students
title_sort support for mask use as a covid-19 public health measure among a large sample of canadian secondary school students
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9395950/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35996138
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-14011-0
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