Latest Articles
- Building Support for Adolescent Sexuality and Reproductive Health Education and Responding to Resistance in Conservative Contexts: Cases From Pakistan
While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to building community support for such programs, key strategies in Pakistan included: (1) sensitizing and engaging key stakeholders, including religious groups, schools, health and education government officials, parents, and adolescents themselves; (2) tactfully designing and framing the curricula with careful consideration of context and sensitive topics; (3) institutionalizing the programs within the school system; (4) showcasing school programs to increase transparency; and (5) engaging the media to build positive public perceptions.
- Effective Collaboration for Scaling Up Health Technologies: A Case Study of the Chlorhexidine for Umbilical Cord Care Experience
Facilitating factors for the Chlorhexidine Working Group: (1) strong, transparent leadership by a neutral broker, promoting shared ownership among all members; (2) reliable internal and external communication; (3) well-defined terms of reference building on common interest around a simple, effective health intervention; (4) clear benefits of participation, including access to evidence and technical assistance; and (5) adequate resources to support the secretariat functions.
- Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) in Zimbabwe: Outcomes and Challenges
The 5-year medical education and research strengthening initiative in Zimbabwe increased faculty retention and student enrollment, improved information technology infrastructure, provided mentoring for postgraduates and clinical training in specialty areas, instituted a competency-based curriculum reform process, and created new departments and centers to institutionalize health education and research implementation. A comprehensive review of the curriculum is still underway and uptake of technology-assisted teaching has been slower than expected.
- Palm Oil in Myanmar: A Spatiotemporal Analysis of the Effects of Industrial Farming on Biodiversity Loss
Satellite imagery analysis reveals a progressive shift from smallholder farming to industrial oil palm plantations in rural Myanmar, concomitant with biodiversity loss. Although industrial palm oil cultivation may help the local economy flourish, rural communities assume the dual burden of ecosystem instability from deforestation and potential health risks from increased palm oil consumption.
- Evolution and Resistance to Sexuality Education in Mexico
Mexico's efforts at sexuality education have progressively evolved, from a biological focus in the socialist era in the 1930s, to adding a demographically concerned family planning component in the 1970s and including a wider reproductive health perspective in the 1990s, and finally shifting to a broader sociological context in the early 21st century. Opposition to sexuality education rose steadily in the time period considered, with a growing range of more organized and well-financed actors. Despite this opposition, alliances between academic, government, civil society, and NGO champions have helped ensure sustainability.
- Family Planning in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Encouraging Momentum, Formidable Challenges
Formidable challenges: uncertain political situation, cultural norms favoring high fertility, a thin patchwork of service delivery institutions, logistical issues in a vast country with weak infrastructure, and low capacity of the population to pay for contraceptive services. Encouraging progress: increasing government and donor support, openness to progressive service delivery policies, innovative programming including robust social marketing and initiatives with nursing schools and the military, strong collaboration among stakeholders, high unmet need suggesting strong latent demand for family planning, and an increasingly balanced method mix including long-acting methods.
- Yazidi Women: Healing the Invisible Wounds
Global health cannot be improved without addressing the plight of the survivors and victims of brutal armed conflicts, especially minorities and marginalized people.
- Community-Based Management of Acute Malnutrition to Reduce Wasting in Urban Informal Settlements of Mumbai, India: A Mixed-Methods Evaluation
Under the NGO–government partnership, wasting among children under age 3 decreased by 28% in intervention areas and by only 5% in comparison areas. Success factors included persuading and engaging with communities including delivery of tailored information, close presence and supervision of field staff, and holistic management of other issues beyond acute malnutrition. This intensive approach may be challenging for the government to adapt effectively at large scale.
- Let's Stop Trying to Quantify Household Vulnerability: The Problem With Simple Scales for Targeting and Evaluating Economic Strengthening Programs
Simple scales developed to measure broad constructs of household economic vulnerability in 3 countries did not accurately measure susceptibility to negative economic outcomes or generate valid classifications of economic status to use for targeting and monitoring and evaluation. We recommend designing tailored monitoring and evaluation instruments to capture narrower definitions of economic vulnerability based on characteristics that economic strengthening programs intend to affect and using separate tools for client targeting based on presence of context-specific “red flag” indicators.