Table of Contents
EDITORIALS
- COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy
Improving access to accurate information on vaccines and vaccination, increasing trust in reliable information sources, and counteracting misinformation can go a long way toward improving vaccination decision making.
ORIGINAL ARTICLES
- Examining Masculinities to Inform Gender-Transformative Violence Prevention Programs: Qualitative Findings From Rakai, Uganda
While the majority of men in rural Uganda upheld 2 conflicting masculine norms that are conceptualized as reputation (“cool man”) and respectability (“responsible man”), men in younger age groups who participated in a gender-transformative program expressed gender-equitable beliefs and attitudes.
- Global Research Priorities for Understanding and Improving Respectful Care for Newborns: A Modified Delphi Study
To inform the developing research field of respectful care, we identified global research questions that are specific to respectful newborn care. The top descriptive, implementation, and measurement questions focused primarily on defining, promoting, measuring, and advocating for respectful care.
- Introducing Long-Acting Contraceptive Removal Indicators in a Pilot Study in Mozambique: Dynamics of Discontinuation and Implications for Quality of Care
Tracking information about long-acting reversible contraceptive removals in the national health management information system is feasible and useful for improving the quality of family planning services in Mozambique.
- Extending Delivery of Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention to Children Aged 5–10 Years in Chad: A Mixed-Methods Study
We sought to understand perceptions of the feasibility and acceptability of extending seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) to children aged 5–10 years and explore reasons why SMC is administered to children aged 5–10 years in the current program.
- Design and Implementation of the Amenah Early Marriage Pilot Intervention Among Syrian Refugees in Lebanon
We document the design, implementation, and evaluation of an early marriage intervention among Syrian refugee adolescents in Lebanon and describe the adaptations made to address a range of factors related to the vulnerability and mobility of the refugee population.
- Role of Information Sources in Vaccination Uptake: Insights From a Cross-Sectional Household Survey in Sierra Leone, 2019
Our findings suggest that health workers and faith leaders are important sources of information to deliver vaccination messages, given their strong association with vaccination confidence and uptake. In this context, vaccination promotion efforts that integrate faith leaders and health workers may help increase vaccination uptake.
- Findings and Implications From an Evaluation of the Gold Star Campaign in Post-Ebola Guinea: The Role of Gender and Education
During public health crises, such as an Ebola epidemic, people may lose trust in local health facilities. Short-duration mass media campaigns can improve attitudes about the quality of health facilities for men and women and can play an important role in encouraging future health service utilization.
- The Salience of Trust to the Client-Provider Relationship in Post-Ebola Guinea: Findings From a Qualitative Study
This qualitative study in post-Ebola Guinea showed that trust was a salient construct for clients making health care-seeking decisions in a postemergency setting. This analysis argues for global health programs to build trust between clients and the health system by addressing underlying domains of trust as defined by the clients themselves.
- Implementation of HIV Retesting During Pregnancy and Postpartum in Kenya: A Cross-Sectional Study
Strategies are needed to prevent missed opportunities to detect women with incident HIV infection during pregnancy or postpartum and maximize prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission efforts.
- A New Contraceptive Diaphragm in Niamey, Niger: A Mixed Methods Study on Acceptability, Use, and Programmatic Considerations
Through a pilot introduction in Niamey, Niger, we found that expanding method options to include the Caya diaphragm, a new self-care contraceptive product without side effects for most users, may address some of the challenges that contribute to very low contraceptive use.
- What Distinguishes Women Who Choose to Self-Inject? A Prospective Cohort Study of Subcutaneous Depot Medroxyprogesterone Acetate Users in Ghana
Family planning projects and programs seeking to introduce, scale up, or market subcutaneous depot medroxyprogesterone acetate self-injection should first focus efforts on new family planning users, those never married, and those with at least a high school education level.
- Lessons Learned From the Use of the Most Significant Change Technique for Adaptive Management of Complex Health Interventions
The Most Significant Change technique used in monitoring and evaluation has facilitated learning about the project scale-up and adaptive management of evidence-based family planning interventions across diverse project stakeholders in 11 countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
FIELD ACTION REPORTS
- Uptake and Short-Term Retention in HIV Treatment Among Men in South Africa: The Coach Mpilo Pilot Project
In this pilot project, providing peer support to men living with HIV retained a high proportion of men living with HIV in the early stages of HIV treatment and successfully supported men in returning to care after a treatment interruption.
- Key Factors Influencing Use of Immunization Cost Evidence in Country Planning and Budgeting Processes: Experiences From Indonesia, Tanzania, and Vietnam
The evidence to policy and practice facilitated process represents a journey that countries and their development partners can embark on to increase the likelihood that health policy makers will use cost evidence for policy making and planning.
- Mother-Baby Friendly Philippines: Using Citizen Reporting to Improve Compliance to the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes
Citizen reporting has the potential to improve compliance with the International Code of Marketing Breastmilk Substitutes. However, any investments made on improving citizen and reporting platforms must be matched with similar investments in streamlining government processes, transparency, and confidence-building across all stakeholders.
- Discovery of a Hidden Schistosomiasis Endemic in the Salamat Region of Chad, Africa
A mobile medical team used numerous time- and cost-saving techniques to provide therapeutic and preventive chemotherapy to nearly 12,000 patients while uncovering a hidden urogenital schistosomiasis endemic in the Salamat Region of Chad, Africa.
- COVID-19 Testing Crisis Management Through a Public-Private Partnership in Sindh, Pakistan
Building upon an existing public-private partnership enabled the rapid and effective implementation of province-wide COVID-19 testing in the Sindh province of Pakistan.
REVIEWS
- Implementation Approaches for Introducing and Overcoming Barriers to Hepatitis B Birth-Dose Vaccine in sub-Saharan Africa
We discuss determinants of hepatitis B birth-dose vaccine uptake in sub-Saharan Africa countries at the policy, facility, and community levels and propose solutions to known barriers of hepatitis B vaccine introduction in low- and middle-income countries.
- A Narrative Review of Kenya’s Surgical Capacity Using the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery’s Indicator Framework
Limited progress has been made on the expansion of access to surgical care in Kenya as assessed with the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery’s indicator framework, underscoring the need for a national surgery, obstetrics, and anesthesia plan.
METHODOLOGIES
- Transitioning to Digital Systems: The Role of World Health Organization’s Digital Adaptation Kits in Operationalizing Recommendations and Interoperability Standards
The World Health Organization (WHO) digital adaptation kits distill WHO guidance into a standardized format that can be more easily incorporated into digital systems and facilitate communication between the health workforce and technologists to enable a shared understanding of the underlying content.
COMMENTARIES
We examine current “need”-based family planning measures that are based on women’s fertility desires and contraceptive use, identify challenges with language and use of need-based measures, and recommend ways to improve language and measurement.
This commentary offers a response to the call to improve family planning language that describes “need” and “demand” and proposes a set of recommendations to add precision, improve measurement, and foster shared understanding in family planning.
Despite the negative impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on polio eradication efforts, ensuring the high coverage of polio immunization and high performance of surveillance are essential to maintaining Indonesia’s polio-free status and the reaching the 2023 global polio eradication target.
We share recommendations on 3 important pivots away from longstanding approaches to continued professional development and in-service training programs that have demonstrated a measurable benefit across a diversity of health-related applications and projects.