Al-Quds University

About: Al-Quds University is a education organization based out in East Jerusalem, Palestinian Territory. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Microemulsion. The organization has 956 authors who have published 1491 publications receiving 34293 citations.

Palestinian children's narratives about living with spina bifida: Stigma, vulnerability, and social exclusion.

Abstract: Background Living with spina bifida in Palestine is a critical issue that might influence various aspects of the individual's life. It is a challenge for children, their families, and health care providers because it requires lifelong treatment and follow-up of care provision. However, little focus has been placed on these children's perceptions about their daily life experiences with spina bifida. Purpose To illuminate the lived experience of children with spina bifida in the West Bank, Palestine. Methods A qualitative study was conducted using the phenomenological hermeneutical method to interpret the meaning of being a child with spina bifida in Palestine. Ten children with spina bifida, aged 7-18 years, were interviewed. The two local authors independently analyzed the Arabic transcriptions, whereas the two Swedish authors analyzed the transcriptions after translation to English. Finally, the four authors discussed their analysis and reached agreement about the themes. Results Studying the children's experience with spina bifida helped us highlight their feelings, needs, and challenges. The findings were formulated into one main theme, Vulnerability and suffering due to social exclusion and stigma, which was grounded in three themes: Experiencing negative self-concept, Experiencing vulnerability, and Obtaining a sense of security. These three themes were in turn derived from subthemes. Conclusion The Palestinian children in this study faced physical, emotional, and psychosocial challenges, which negatively influenced their health and development. They were vulnerable and stigmatized, and they lived with a negative self-concept. The findings could help health professionals, families, and caregivers to achieve a deeper understanding of what being a child with disabilities entails, and the findings may also serve as a platform for interventions that seek to promote these children's development and to enable them to experience childhood as a meaningful and positive process.

Psychosocial support for adolescent girls in post-conflict settings: beyond a health systems approach.

Abstract: Adaptive and adequately resourced health systems are necessary to achieve good health outcomes in post-conflict settings, however domains beyond the health system are also critical to ensure broader wellbeing. This paper focuses on the importance of psychosocial support services for adolescent girls in fragile contexts. Its starting point is that adolescence is a pivotal time in the life course but given the physical, cognitive and emotional changes triggered by the onset of puberty, it can also be a period of heightened sensitivity and vulnerability to trauma, social isolation, bullying by peers, a lack of supportive adults and gender-based and sexual violence. Our findings highlight why humanitarian and biomedical approaches in their current form are inadequate to address these complexities. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork (consisting of in-depth and key informant interviews as well as group discussions in Gaza, Liberia and Sri Lanka involving a total of 386 respondents across the three countries), we argue that going beyond biomedical approaches and considering the social determinants of health, including approaches to tackle discriminatory gendered norms and barriers to service access, are critical for achieving broader health and wellbeing. While all three case study countries are classified as post-conflict, the political economy dynamics vary with associated implications for experiences of psychosocial vulnerabilities and the service environment. The study concludes by reflecting on actions to address psychosocial vulnerabilities facing adolescent girls. These include: tailoring services to ensure gender and age-sensitivity; investing in capacity building of service providers to promote service uptake; and enhancing strategies to regulate and coordinate actors providing mental health and psychosocial support services.

Exploring QSARs for inhibitory activity of non-peptide HIV-1 protease inhibitors by GA-PLS and GA-SVM.

Abstract: The support vector machine (SVM) and partial least square (PLS) methods were used to develop quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) models to predict the inhibitory activity of non-peptide HIV-1 protease inhibitors. Genetic algorithm (GA) was employed to select variables that lead to the best-fitted models. A comparison between the obtained results using SVM with those of PLS revealed that the SVM model is much better than that of PLS. The root mean square errors of the training set and the test set for SVM model were calculated to be 0.2027, 0.2751, and the coefficients of determination (R(2)) are 0.9800, 0.9355 respectively. Furthermore, the obtained statistical parameter of leave-one-out cross-validation test (Q(2)) on SVM model was 0.9672, which proves the reliability of this model. The results suggest that TE2, Ui, GATS5e, Mor13e, ATS7m, Ss, Mor27e, and RDF035e are the main independent factors contributing to the inhibitory activities of the studied compounds.