Table of Contents
EDITORIALS
- Will the Higher-Income Country Blueprint for COVID-19 Work in Low- and Lower Middle-Income Countries?
Strategies to radically suppress incidence of COVID-19, as used in higher-income countries, may be unrealistic and counterproductive in most low- and lower middle-income countries. Instead, strategies should be tailored to the setting, balancing expected benefits, potential harms, and feasibility.
- Institutionalization of Projects Into Districts in Low- and Middle-Income Countries Needs Stewardship, Autonomy, and Resources
Important attributes for project institutionalization include strong stewardship and champions, affordability, demand for the intervention and perceived benefit, minimal complexity, and optimal intervention design and period of support.
- Learning from Community Health Worker Programs, Big and Small
Small, well-implemented, well-evaluated community health worker programs can provide useful insights and inspiration. Testing, learning, and adapting at progressively larger scale can ultimately lead to national-scale programs that achieve sustainable impact.
VIEWPOINTS
- Coping With COVID-19: Learning From Past Pandemics to Avoid Pitfalls and Panic
It is imperative to concur on the main transmission routes of COVID-19 to explain risk and determine the most effective means to reduce illness and mortality. We must avoid generating irrational fear and maintain a broader perspective in the pandemic response, including assessing the possibility for substantial unintended consequences.
- Contraception in the Era of COVID-19
As global health systems and communities prepare to meet an unprecedented threat causing increased demands for the care of people with COVID-19, health care providers should strive to ensure continuity of reproductive health care to women and girls in the face of facility service disruption.
- Doing Things Differently: What It Would Take to Ensure Continued Access to Contraception During COVID-19
COVID-19 may fundamentally change women’s contraceptive use, meaning that the future we have been planning and procuring for, may not match these changes. In these unprecedented times, we must rethink how we link product and program in the short-term to ensure women’s changing needs are met.
- Multimonth Dispensing of Antiretroviral Therapy Protects the Most Vulnerable From 2 Pandemics at Once
We encourage governments in countries that have a high prevalence of people living with HIV to implement multimonth dispensing of antiretroviral therapy to safeguard both patients with HIV and health care workers from coronavirus disease COVID-19.
- Ebola: A Hyperinflated Emergency
As with the Ebola outbreak, global under-5 mortality and morbidity should be considered a public health emergency of international concern.
- Breaking Specialty Silos: Improving Global Child Health Through Essential Surgical Care
Children’s health care providers and children’s surgery providers can partner to improve children’s health by developing the surgical workforce, focusing on “best buy” surgeries, integrating children’s surgery into national plans, streamlining data collection and research, and leveraging financing.
ORIGINAL ARTICLES
- District Health Teams’ Readiness to Institutionalize Integrated Community Case Management in the Uganda Local Health Systems: A Repeated Qualitative Study
District health teams failed to transition from partner-supported integrated community case management (iCCM) programs to locally-run and fully-institutionalized programs. Successful iCCM institutionalization requires local ownership with increased coordination among governmental and nongovernmental actors at the national and district levels.
- Scaling Up Access to Implants: A Summative Evaluation of the Implants Access Program
The Implants Access Program increased access to implants by addressing price, supply chain, service delivery, and knowledge and awareness barriers. Sustaining progress requires institutionalized mechanisms to continue global efforts and long-term assurances that implants’ low price will be maintained.
- What Goes In Must Come Out: A Mixed-Method Study of Access to Contraceptive Implant Removal Services in Ghana
Many Ghanaian women seeking implant removal are able to obtain services, but knowledge and access gaps exist.
- Costing Analysis of a Pilot Community Health Worker Program in Rural Nepal
Data from a retrospective costing analysis offers insights and practical considerations for policy makers and locally elected officials for designing and implementing a new community health work cadre as a mechanism to achieve SDG targets in Nepal.
- Implementing the Clean Clinic Approach Improves Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Quality in Health Facilities in the Western Highlands of Guatemala
A water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) intervention implemented in a short period in health care facilities with limited resources achieved improvements in health care facility infection prevention readiness.
- Evaluating the Implementation of an Intervention to Improve Postpartum Contraception in Tanzania: A Qualitative Study of Provider and Client Perspectives
Training and supervision to improve interpersonal aspects of care, including an emphasis on patient-centered counseling, informed choice, and respectful and nondiscriminatory service delivery, should be integrated into future postpartum family planning initiatives.
FIELD ACTION REPORTS
- Recall Efforts Successfully Increase Follow-Up for Cervical Cancer Screening Among Women With Human Papillomavirus in Honduras
A reminder phone call had a substantial impact on high rates of women returning for rescreening among those at high risk of developing cervical precancer. Scaling up routine cervical screening coverage must be accompanied by efforts to retain women throughout the screening cascade and continuum of care.
COMMENTARIES
Lack of a professional body to address patients’ complaints regarding quality of health care and absence of clear medicolegal guidance hamper maternal death reviews in Ethiopia.