Latest Articles
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Unmet Need for Family Planning and Experience of Unintended Pregnancy Among Female Sex Workers in Urban Cameroon: Results From a National Cross-Sectional Study
Female sex workers (FSWs) in Cameroon have unmet need for effective contraception, and experience of unintended pregnancy and pregnancy termination is common. Reducing barriers to accessing high-quality, voluntary family planning services in FSW-focused community services is a key strategy to promote client-centered care, promote informed choice, reduce unintended pregnancies, and improve quality of life for FSWs.
- Designing and Evaluating Scalable Child Marriage Prevention Programs in Burkina Faso and Tanzania: A Quasi-Experiment and Costing Study
Minimal, low-cost approaches can be effective in delaying child marriage and increasing school attendance. Program managers should consider the cost, quality, and coverage of interventions, especially because child marriage persists in the most hard-to-reach, rural areas of many countries.
- Diagnostic Utility and Impact on Clinical Decision Making of Focused Assessment With Sonography for HIV-Associated Tuberculosis in Malawi: A Prospective Cohort Study
Among patients with HIV and with probable/confirmed TB, using the focused assessment with sonography for HIV-associated TB (FASH) protocol led to a 5-fold increase in the clinician's decision to initiate TB treatment on that day. FASH is a supplementary tool that can help clinicians diagnose patients with HIV-associated TB at the point-of-care and reduce delays in their treatment, particularly when access to other diagnostics is limited or unavailable.
- Coaching Intensity, Adherence to Essential Birth Practices, and Health Outcomes in the BetterBirth Trial in Uttar Pradesh, India
Frequent coaching was associated with increased adherence to evidence-based essential birth practices among birth attendants but not with improved maternal and perinatal health outcomes in the BetterBirth Trial, which assessed the impact of a complex intervention to implement the World Health Organization's Safe Childbirth Checklist. To promote sustainable behavior change, future coaching-based interventions may need to explore cost-effective, feasible mechanisms for providing more frequent coaching delivered with high coverage among health care workers for longer durations.