More articles from COMMENTARIES
- National Surgical, Obstetric, and Anesthesia Plans Supporting the Vision of Universal Health Coverage
Developing a national surgical, obstetric, and anesthesia plan is an important first step for countries to strengthen their surgical systems and improve surgical care. Barriers to successful implementation of these plans include data collection, scalability, and financing, yet surgical system strengthening efforts are gaining momentum in achieving universal access to emergency and essential surgical care.
- Insights Into Provider Bias in Family Planning from a Novel Shared Decision Making Based Counseling Initiative in Rural, Indigenous Guatemala
Race, ethnicity, and indigenous status should be considered as potential drivers of provider bias in family planning services globally. Efforts to confront provider bias in family planning counseling should include concrete strategies that promote provider recognition of biases and longitudinal curriculums that allow for sustained feedback and self-reflection.
- The Open Birth Interval: A Resource for Reproductive Health Programs and Women's Empowerment
The open birth interval is the time since a woman's last birth. It reflects not only desire for contraception and child health services but also freedom for outside activities, employment, and personal autonomy. It merits attention from policy makers, program managers, and service providers.
- Health Volunteers Overseas: A Model for Ethical and Effective Short-Term Global Health Training in Low-Resource Countries
Three core attributes enable short-term volunteers to make incremental contributions to long-term outcomes at host institutions: (1) focusing on teaching rather than service delivery, (2) engaging in mutually beneficial and equitable partnerships with host institutions, and (3) operating within a structured management system.
- Supervision of Task-Shared Mental Health Care in Low-Resource Settings: A Commentary on Programmatic Experience
Task-shared mental health care programs in low-resource settings often incorporate supervisory structures that would be difficult to implement at scale, and many rely on foreign specialist experts as supervisors. Future programs could leverage peer supervision, technology, competency assessments/fidelity checklists, and other tools. Mental health care specialists will require training, support, and incentives to supervise generalist care providers.
- A Vaccine Against Cervical Cancer: Context for the Global Public Health Practitioner
Many low- and middle-income countries are moving to introduce HPV vaccine into their national immunization programs. To improve coverage, equity, and sustainability, public health officials and practitioners can use planning and implementation lessons learned, including successful school-based delivery strategies, innovative approaches to reach out-of-school girls, best practices for communication and social mobilization, and integration of services to reduce delivery cost. Policy makers, donors, and global partners should continue to consider ways to drive down costs of vaccine procurement.
- A Global Learning Agenda for the Levonorgestrel Intrauterine System (LNG IUS): Addressing Challenges and Opportunities to Increase Access
The LNG IUS is one of the most effective forms of reversible contraception and has important noncontraceptive benefits but is currently not used at scale in any Family Planning 2020 focus country. A global working group developed a shared learning agenda to answer critical questions, harmonize approaches, avoid duplication, and facilitate introduction of the method within the context of informed choice.
- Beyond the Safe Motherhood Initiative: Accelerated Action Urgently Needed to End Preventable Maternal Mortality
Many countries will need to double, or more than double, their current annual rate of reduction of maternal mortality to ensure sufficient progress toward national targets and the global Sustainable Development Goals. Dedication to the principles and actions of quality, equity, dignity, social justice, and human rights are key.
- Doing What We Do, Better: Improving Our Work Through Systematic Program Reporting
WHO has recently published program reporting standards to guide the type of information that reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and related health programs should document to promote cross-program learning. We strongly encourage our partners and key stakeholders to make use of the new standards as part of their routine program reporting.
- A New World Health Era
Unprecedented economic progress and demands for social protection have engendered an economic transition in health in many low- and middle-income countries, characterized by major increases in domestic health spending and growing national autonomy. At the global level, development assistance is refocusing on fragile states, the poorest communities, and cooperation on global public goods like health security, technical norms, and innovation. Intergovernmental organizations like WHO need the wherewithal and support to provide leadership and to properly advance this new world health era.