More articles from COMMENTARY
- Institutionalizing Community Health Services in Kenya: A Policy and Practice Journey
The process of institutionalizing community health services in Kenya required strong leadership by the Ministry of Health, effective coordination and support of stakeholders, and alignment of community health with the political priorities at the national and decentralized government levels to facilitate adequate prioritization and financing of the community health strategy.
- Mind the Global Community Health Funding Gap
Community health workers play a critical role in providing both essential health services and pandemic response. Community health demonstrates a strong return on investment, but funding for this sector is limited and fragmented. Understanding the underlying costs of a community health system is crucial for both planning and policy; the data demonstrate a strong investment case.
- Liberia's Community Health Assistant Program: Scale, Quality, and Resilience
Liberia's community health program went from concept to nationwide scale in 4 years due to the Liberian Government's vision and its partnership with implementing organizations and donors. The next community health policy will tackle the unfinished agenda related to quality, resilience, and sustainability. Liberia's experience offers valuable lessons for innovating, and institutionalizing a compensated, effective cadre of community health assistants.
- Go Where the Virus Is: An HIV Micro-epidemic Control Approach to Stop HIV Transmission
Essentially all HIV transmission is from people living with HIV who are not virally suppressed. An HIV micro-epidemic control approach that differentiates treatment support and prevention services for people living with HIV and their network members according to viral burden could optimize the impact of epidemic control efforts.
- Capturing Acquired Wisdom, Enabling Healthful Aging, and Building Multinational Partnerships Through Senior Global Health Mentorship
The undeniable benefit of mentorship by experience senior mentors can meaningfully increase the breadth of their experience and contributions to society as well as address the dire inequality in global health. This model captures wisdom lost to retirement, enables opportunities for purposeful lifespan, underpins sustainable health care systems, and has the potential for building multinational partnerships.
- Opportunities and Challenges of Delivering Postabortion Care and Postpartum Family Planning During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Devoting scarce health resources to meet the family planning needs of pregnant, postabortion, and postpartum women during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is an investment against higher health systems burdens during subsequent waves of the pandemic and a means to save lives and improve livelihoods.
- Beyond No Blame: Practical Challenges of Conducting Maternal and Perinatal Death Reviews in Eastern Ethiopia
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.
- The Burden of Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection in Adults and Reproductive-Aged Women
Currently available data on respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) disease burden in adults and reproductive-aged women are limited. These data are critically needed to assist in the advancement of strategies related to maternal RSV vaccination for the passive protection of their newborn children.
- Using Digital Technology for Sexual and Reproductive Health: Are Programs Adequately Considering Risk?
Digital technologies provide opportunities for advancing sexual and reproductive health and services but also present potential risks. We propose 4 steps to reducing potential harms: (1) consider potential harms during intervention design, (2) mitigate or minimize potential harms during the design phase, (3) measure adverse outcomes during implementation, and (4) plan how to support those reporting adverse outcomes.
- Using the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Delivery Decision Tool to Consider Transporting Medical Supplies via Drone
We developed an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) Delivery Decision Tool to help health system decision makers identify their transport challenges and explore the potential utility and impact of UAVs on the broader health system.