JMIR Research Protocols

Psychosocial risk factors increase the risk of long-term illnesses and prolonged return-to-work processes, with serious consequences for individuals as well as society. In general practice, psychosocial risk factors are captured comprehensively because general practitioners usually care for patients for years and know the patients’ entire social environment. Numerous studies have been conducted on aspects of psychosocial risk factors. However, a comprehensive, unrestricted summary of psychosocial risk factors is currently lacking.

Cancer is a significant public health challenge in India, contributing to 8.3% of deaths and 5.0% of disability-adjusted life years in 2016—nearly twice its contribution in 1990. Fragmented service delivery, limited specialist availability, late presentation, and significant financial hardship continue to hinder access to timely and effective cancer care, particularly in rural and underserved regions. A comprehensive, system-level assessment is essential to inform evidence-based planning and strengthen cancer services nationwide.

The rising prevalence of obesity among preschool children has become a critical public health concern in Suzhou, China. Nevertheless, evidence-based, personalized, and multicomponent intervention strategies tailored to children with overweight or obesity remain inadequately established in current practice.

AI has quickly become integrated into higher education, transforming how students access information, complete academic tasks, and engage with learning. Universities of technology, with their focus on applied learning, technological skills, and graduate employability, face both challenges and opportunities in incorporating AI in ways that improve learning without sacrificing conceptual understanding, critical thinking, or academic integrity. While current research highlights widespread student use of AI tools, there remains limited empirical evidence on how undergraduate students in applied and health-related fields interact with AI, perceive its educational impact, and manage risks associated with overreliance.

Psychological distress disproportionately affects women in South Africa and is shaped by complex structural, socioeconomic, and psychosocial determinants, particularly within the context of HIV. Despite policy commitments to integrate mental health services into existing health systems, current interventions are limited in their capacity to address these intersecting determinants and are frequently insufficiently targeted, contextually responsive, or inclusive. Data-driven strategies that identify subgroup-specific vulnerabilities may improve the design of contextually relevant and culturally grounded psychosocial interventions.

Tobacco use remains a leading preventable cause of disease, yet adolescent-focused tobacco prevention is underexploited. We developed a real-time adaptive intervention that combines school-family collaboration with online-offline delivery (via WeChat mini-programs, games, and curricula) to address adolescents’ overlooked role as health catalysts and persistent household secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure.

Accurate real-time classification of colorectal polyps during colonoscopy is essential for risk stratification, therapeutic decision-making, and surveillance planning, with important implications for colorectal cancer prevention, health care costs, and patient burden. Despite advances in optical diagnosis techniques, including virtual chromoendoscopy and magnification, widespread adoption remains limited because of high operator dependency and variable diagnostic accuracy. Existing computer-assisted diagnosis (CADx) systems predominantly provide binary classification of colorectal lesions, thereby constraining their clinical utility for nuanced endoscopic decision-making.

Surgical management of diseases compromising the integrity of the human urethra remains a major clinical challenge, and congenital conditions, such as hypospadias and epispadias, and acquired diseases, such as trauma, tumors, and strictures, are difficult to treat, highlighting the need for novel regenerative approaches capable of restoring urethral architecture and function. Recent advances in tissue engineering have allowed the generation of bioartificial tissues, including several models of artificial urethra generated with different types of cells and biomaterials. Although potentially useful, these models cannot reproduce the multilayered native human urethra structure. One biomaterial showing excellent biocompatibility for use in tissue engineering is fibrin-agarose hydrogel, which has been used with promising results in patients with severe alterations of the cornea, skin, and oral mucosa, suggesting its potential use for multilayered urethral substitutes.

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) refers to a group of conditions including high blood pressure, excess weight, high blood glucose, and abnormal cholesterol and triglyceride levels that together substantially increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes. Poor sleep hygiene is associated with a higher likelihood of type 2 diabetes, while sleep duration can affect the development of various MetS components. Approximately 25% of adults worldwide currently have MetS, and this prevalence is projected to increase to 50% by 2035. However, there is a distinct lack of evidence about the specific impact of sleep hygiene on cardiometabolic health within the rural Indian population. This study will focus on addressing this literature gap by evaluating these risk factor associations by using validated tools to help develop targeted community interventions.

Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) is one of the most common pelvic floor disorders in women and is frequently treated surgically using midurethral sling procedures. Despite the high success rates of these procedures, postoperative voiding dysfunction remains a clinically relevant complication that may negatively affect patient satisfaction and quality of life. The underlying mechanisms are multifactorial and not completely understood. In particular, the interaction among sling position, urethral mobility, and pelvic floor dynamics during increases in intra-abdominal pressure may influence postoperative urinary function. Dynamic transperineal ultrasound has emerged as a valuable imaging modality for evaluating sling position and urethral mobility; however, the relationship between dynamic sonographic sling parameters and postoperative urinary symptoms has not yet been sufficiently clarified.

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is associated with a substantial individual and societal burden. Cue exposure approaches can support treatment by targeting conditioned cue reactivity and high-risk contextual associations. However, routine implementation is limited by therapist time, scalability constraints, and the difficulty of reproducing ecologically valid drinking situations in standard care settings. Virtual reality (VR) and AI have been proposed as promising tools to support scalable and contextually rich interventions in mental health care.

Rapid urbanization in India is straining the government’s capacity to provide basic amenities such as housing, sanitation, electricity, and water. One group of people who are deeply affected are adolescent girls who menstruate. In urban slums, referred to as bastis in Telugu and Hindi, this reality is worsened by spatial congestion and limited water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) resources. This study is situated in the populous slum colonies of Film Nagar, Hyderabad, where residents navigate precarious living conditions and a scarcity of basic amenities.