More articles from Commentaries
- Community Health Workers in Pandemics: Evidence and Investment Implications
Community health workers have long played a critical role in preventing, detecting, and responding to pandemics across the globe. To expand, improve, and institutionalize these services, changes in the approach to bi/multilateral aid and private philanthropic investments in low- and middle-income countries are required.
- Funders' Perspectives on Supporting Implementation Research in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
We identify and discuss 7 approaches for funders to contemplate when considering support for implementation research in low- and middle-income countries.
- End Malaria Faster: Taking Lifesaving Tools Beyond “Access” to “Reach” All People in Need
To “reach the unreached” with preventive and curative malaria services, we must know which individuals and communities remain unreached and then bring tailored services from the clinic to the community and home.
- Leveraging Experience From Active TB Drug-Safety Monitoring and Management for Monitoring Active Antiretroviral Toxicity
Systems established for active drug safety monitoring and management of drug-resistant TB should be leveraged to ensure comprehensive surveillance for active toxicity monitoring during scale-up of newer antiretroviral regimens.
- 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.
- Combating trafficking in persons: a call to action for global health professionals
Health care professionals can help identify victims of human trafficking, who commonly come into contact with providers during captivity. Providers can also help restore the physical and mental health of trafficking survivors. Training should focus on recognizing trafficking signs, interviewing techniques, and recommended responses when a victim is identified.
- Maximizing the benefits of improved cookstoves: moving from acquisition to correct and consistent use
The adoption of clean cooking technologies goes beyond mere product acquisition and requires attention to issues of cooking traditions, user engagement, gender dynamics, culture, and religion to effect correct and consistent use.
- Getting family planning and population back on track
After a generation of partial neglect, renewed attention is being paid to population and voluntary family planning. Realistic access to family planning is a prerequisite for women's autonomy. For the individual, family, society, and our fragile planet, family planning has great power.
- The imperative for health promotion in universal health coverage
Health promotion and disease prevention have huge impact on health, yet given low priority, risk being overlooked in universal health coverage efforts. To effectively prioritize promotion and prevention, strong cadres of personnel are needed with expertise in legislation and health policy, social and behavior change communication, prevention and community health, health journalism, environmental health, and multisectoral health promotion.
- It's about time: WHO and partners release programming strategies for postpartum family planning
The postpartum period is a critical time to address high unmet family planning need and to reduce the risks of closely spaced pregnancies. Practical tools are included in the new resource for integrating postpartum family planning at points when women have frequent health system contact, including during antenatal care, labor and delivery, postnatal care, immunization, and child health care.