JMIR Research Protocols

Due to advances in cancer diagnostics and treatments, life expectancy after cancer and the number of cancer survivors are increasing. Symptoms and late effects frequently occur in cancer survivors, with a negative impact on functioning and participation in society. Digital health tools might be helpful to systematically assess symptom burden of late effects and rehabilitation needs.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder associated with significant impairments in academic, social, and daily functioning. Despite the availability of clinical practice guidelines in Malaysia, evidence on real-world treatment patterns and outcomes remains limited. The lack of multicenter data on treatment use and clinical outcomes hinders the evaluation of current ADHD care and opportunities for service improvement.

Poststroke dysphagia (difficulty swallowing) is a common disabling complication of stroke and is associated with malnutrition, aspiration pneumonia, impaired quality of life, and mortality. Conventional swallowing rehabilitation and instrumental assessment are useful but may be limited by equipment dependence and inconsistent accessibility. Interactive acupuncture is a dynamic acupuncture procedure in which short needling stimulation at selected nape acupoints is synchronized with active swallowing tasks.

Renal fibrosis is the final common pathway of chronic kidney disease progression and a critical histological predictor of renal function decline and allograft failure. Routine clinical monitoring with estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and albuminuria is insensitive to fibrosis development. Renal biopsy is invasive and subject to sampling bias, which limits repeated assessment, thus necessitating noninvasive imaging biomarkers. Multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) characterizes renal structure and function noninvasively. Individual MRI measures have been associated with fibrosis and with declining renal function. However, longitudinal validation against histology and measured glomerular filtration rate (mGFR) remains limited.

Sedentary behavior (SB) is highly prevalent among adolescent and early young adult (eAYA) patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) during treatment and contributes to cardiometabolic complications and morbidity among long-term survivors. SB is distinct from physical inactivity and independently associated with adverse health outcomes, yet few interventions in pediatric oncology have directly targeted reducing SB.

Dysphagia is a common complication following stroke. While current management strategies for poststroke dysphagia (PSD) range from nutritional support to neurostimulation techniques, an optimal treatment regimen remains elusive. As a promising noninvasive neuromodulation approach, transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) requires further validation in rigorously designed trials to establish robust evidence of its efficacy and mechanisms of action.

The COVID-19 pandemic placed unprecedented demands on nurses and midwives worldwide, exacerbating existing workforce shortages and contributing to high rates of mental health issues and altered labor market dynamics. Nurses and midwives in low- and middle-income countries remain underrepresented in the literature.

Resveratrol is a naturally occurring polyphenol found primarily in grapes, berries, peanuts, and red wine. Experimental evidence suggests that resveratrol modulates multiple biological pathways involved in oxidative stress, inflammation, insulin signaling, endothelial function, and metabolic homeostasis. However, findings from randomized controlled trials remain inconsistent, and previous evidence syntheses have reported substantial clinical and methodological heterogeneity.

Alzheimer disease and related dementias can impact emotional distress and individual and relational health among persons living with dementia and their romantic partners. There are limited skill-based interventions that can help couples build resilience while navigating dementia-related challenges.

Target trial emulation (TTE) studies are increasingly important for regulatory decision‑making and health technology assessments (HTAs), but current risk-of-bias (RoB) tools are not specifically tailored to assess biases central to TTE studies—such as immortal time bias, misaligned eligibility criteria, and prevalent user bias. RoB assessment for TTE studies thus remains difficult, and it is unclear which tools and adaptations researchers currently use or how well they work.

Self-efficacy significantly influences medical students’ academic performance. Rooted in Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory, self-efficacy is defined as an individual’s subjective judgment of their capability to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances. Unlike general self-esteem, self-efficacy is task- and context-specific. In undergraduate medical education, self-efficacy operates across three interdependent subdomains: (1) academic self-efficacy, encompassing cognitive confidence to master biomedical curricula; (2) clinical skills self-efficacy, reflecting perceived competence in procedural tasks and clinical reasoning; and (3) interpersonal and communication self-efficacy, denoting confidence in empathetic history taking and interprofessional collaboration. These subdomains are presented as a provisional analytical heuristic informed by Bandura’s social cognitive theory and prior reviews of self-efficacy in medical education.

Older Chinese American adults with limited English proficiency frequently rely on culturally and linguistically tailored online media platforms for dementia education and health literacy. Existing digital health evaluation frameworks primarily assess the internal quality and accuracy of educational materials while overlooking the recommendation environments through which users encounter health information. Commercial recommendation systems may expose users to medically unverified or commercially motivated health content adjacent to evidence-based dementia education resources.