Educators who design and manage study abroad programs face a series of ethical responsibilities. Meeting these responsibilities is critical in the field of global health, where study abroad programs are often designed to provide healthcare services in under-resourced communities. Leaders in global health have thus formed working groups to study the ethical implications of overseas programming and have led the way in establishing socially responsible best practices for study abroad. Their recommendations include development of bidirectional programming that is designed for mutual and equitable benefits, focused on locally identified needs and priorities, attentive to local community costs, and structured to build local capacity to ensure sustainability. Implementation remains a key challenge, however. Sustainable, bidirectional programming is difficult and costly. In the present study, authors questioned how technology could be used to connect students of global health in distant countries to make socially responsible global health programming more accessible. Drawing on empirical research in the learning sciences and leveraging best practices in technology design, the authors developed a Virtual Exchange in Global Health to connect university students in the U.S. with counterparts in Lebanon, who worked in teams to address humanitarian problems in Syrian refugee camps. Early results demonstrate the value of this approach. At dramatically lower cost than traditional study abroad—and with essentially no carbon footprint—students recognized complementary strengths in each other through bidirectional programming, learned about local needs and priorities through Virtual Reality, and built sustaining relationships while addressing a difficult real-world problem. The authors learned that technology could effectively facilitate socially responsible global health programming and do so at low cost. The program has important implications for teaching and learning during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.

Pesticides, despite their known toxicity, are widely used in developing countries to increase their crops. Evaluating the pattern of the pesticides is recommended for the appropriateness of adequate intervention. A pilot community-based educational intervention tackling the safe use of pesticides by promoting farmers’ knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) was conducted to assess the effectiveness of such interventions in developing the knowledge and positive attitudes of farmers to towards safe use of pesticides. The pilot intervention is a quasi-experimental quantitative study, based on pre and post approach. A pre-post questionnaire tested for its internal reliability (α = 0.78), carried out at the baseline and immediately after the training sessions. Thirty-seven farmers from two regions (Cazas) in Mount Lebanon district have participated. Descriptive analysis and a paired t-test were conducted. The results show statistically significant improvements after the intervention. The mean score of the farmers’ knowledge significantly increased (M = 0.8, SD= 0.2) compared to (M = 0.6, SD = 0.1) at the baseline (p < 0.05). As for practice, significant increase was observed (M = 1.466, SD = 0.590) compared to (M = 0.663, SD= 0.295) at the baseline (p < 0.05). Also for positive attitude, a significant increase was observed (M = 0.97, SD = 0.20) compared to (M = 0.9, SD= 0.17) at the baseline (p < 0.05). This one-time educational intervention successfully increased the farmers’ KAP regarding safe pesticide use. Continuous pesticide education is recommended to induce the responsible and protective behaviors among farmers in Lebanon.

Although Life Skills programs showed to improve the psychological and physical wellbeing of individuals, little attention has been paid, worldwide and in the Arab countries in specific to implementing life skills intervention for university students. In this study, we tested the effectiveness of a life skills based health promotion intervention KHOTWA (STEP) in enhancing the wellbeing of university students in Lebanon, a country that faces economic and political instability. This is a quasi-experimental study, with pre and post-test, intervention-control design. Each group was formed of 78 participants studying in a private university in Lebanon. Mixed design was used to address the process and outcomes objectives of the intervention. The program was carried online due to COVID-19 pandemic. Significant differences were observed between the intervention and the control groups for life skills, dietary habits and mental health scores at the 3-month follow-up. For the intervention group, a significant increase was observed in the mean score of each of the following Life Skills subscales: self-care (p = 0.001), work and study (p = 0.013), career and education planning (p = 0.011) and looking forward/goal settings (p < 0.001). Students also achieved a healthier eating habit compared to those in the control group by decreasing their consumption of processed food. There was no significant effect in terms of body mass index (p = 0.827). Also, there was a significant change in the mental health status (p = 0.012) only in the intervention group as its mean score decreased after 3 months of the intervention implementation. This intervention enhances the mental health and promotes healthy habits leading consequently to a better quality of life and more productivity amongst university students. Therefore, such interventions should be replicated in other similar context to improve university students’ well-being.

In the light of recent emergencies in Europe and around the globe—including COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine—the spotlight has shifted towards the scarcity of Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) research applied to health emergencies. RCCE nurtures the sense of empowerment among communities since it ensures that individuals and communities are part of the solution creation, thus they take informed decisions to protect their health and in turn, contribute to emergency control. Therefore, RCCE can play an important role as core public health intervention across health emergency preparedness and response. However, its tremendous impact, is still underestimated and not widely common. This viewpoint showcases the RCCE measures applied to the Ukrainian emergency to ensure that Ukrainian refugees access health services in host countries, based on their needs and concerns.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is an additional burden on Lebanon’s fragmented health care system and adds to its ongoing political, economic, and refugee crises. Vaccination is an important means of reducing the impact of the pandemic. Objective: Our study’s aims were to (1) assess the prevalences of intention to vaccinate and vaccine hesitancy in Lebanon; (2) determine how vaccine hesitancy in Lebanon varies by sociodemographic, economic, and geographic characteristics; and (3) understand individuals’ motivations for vaccinating as well as concerns and obstacles to vaccination. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study from January 29, 2021, to March 11, 2021, using an online questionnaire of open- and closed-ended questions in Arabic via convenience “snowball” sampling to assess the perceptions of adults residing in Lebanon. Results: Of the 1185 adults who participated in the survey, 46.1% (95% CI: 43.2%-49.0%) intended to receive the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine when available to them, 19.0% (95% CI 16.8%-21.4%) indicated they would not, and 34.0% (95% CI 31.3%-36.8%) were unsure (with an additional 0.9% skipping this question). The most common reasons for hesitancy were concerns about safety, limited testing, side effects, and efficacy. Top motivations for vaccinating were to protect oneself, protect one’s family and the public, and end the pandemic. Despite financial hardships in Lebanon, barriers to vaccine access were not frequently described as concerns. Established health care facilities, rather than new temporary vaccination centers, were most frequently selected as preferred vaccination sites. Conclusions: Vaccine hesitancy appears to be high in Lebanon. Disseminating clear, consistent, evidence-based safety and efficacy information on vaccines may help reduce vaccine hesitancy, especially among the large proportion of adults who appear to be unsure about (rather than opposed to) vaccination.

Despite the increasing recognition of positive life skills interventions to enhance the psychological and physical well=being of individuals, there is an absence of a valid and reliable Arabic measure of Life Skills (LS) amongst youth. This study aims at validating an Arabic Life Skills Scale (A-LSS) to assess the effectiveness of life skills interventions. A randomly selected sample of 1200 university students in Lebanon participated in this study. The exploratory-to-confirmatory factor analyses strategy was followed to examine the factor structure of the LSS. For that purpose, the sample was divided into two subsamples. The exploratory factor analysis results showed a nine-factor solution, with a strong reliability for the total scale (McDonald’s omega ω = 0.95) and all subscales (ω ranging from .68 to .91). The confirmatory analysis results showed excellent fit indices (CFI = .98, TLI = .97, GFI = .95; RMSEA = .031 [90% CI .028–.034] and SRMR = .061), after correlating residuals of items 53 and 54. Measurement invariance across genders was verified at the configural, scalar and metric levels. The A-LSS showed high reliability and validity of LS among Lebanese university students. This scale can be used as a valid tool to measure effectiveness of life skills health promotion interventions.