Latest Articles
- Toward a Systematic Approach to Generating Demand for Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision: Insights and Results From Field Studies
Using an analytical framework to design and implement voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) programs can lead to more effective interventions, especially when insights are incorporated from disciplines such as behavioral science and commercial market research. Promising VMMC behavior change practices: (1) address individual, interpersonal, and environmental barriers and facilitators; (2) tailor messages to men’s behavior change stage and focus on other benefits besides HIV prevention, such as hygiene and sexual pleasure; (3) include women as a key target audience; (4) engage traditional and religious leaders; (5) use media to promote positive social norms; and (6) deploy community mobilizers to address individual concerns.
- Social Franchising: A Blockbuster to Address Unmet Need for Family Planning and to Advance Toward the FP2020 Goal
Social franchising has scaled-up provision of voluntary family planning, especially long-acting reversible contraceptives, across Africa and Asia at a rapid and remarkable pace. The approach should be pursued vigorously, especially in countries with a significant private-sector presence, to advance the FP2020 goal of providing access to modern contraception to 120 million additional clients by 2020.
- Action-Oriented Population Nutrition Research: High Demand but Limited Supply
Action-oriented research in nutrition, vital to guiding effective policies and programs at scale, is greatly underrepresented in public health journals and, even more so, in nutrition journals.
- Patient Flow Analysis in Resource-Limited Settings: A Practical Tutorial and Case Study
Patient flow analysis (PFA), a simple quality improvement tool to identify patient flow patterns, can be used in resource-limited settings to inform service delivery improvements. A PFA at a Ghanaian hospital found that personnel constraints and a mismatch between staffing and patient arrival surges led to long wait and total attendance times. The median time from arrival to first-provider contact was 4.6 hours.
- Response to “A False Dichotomy: RCTs and Their Contributions to Evidence-Based Public Health”
While randomized controlled trials (RCTs) can and do make valuable contributions, they also have severe limitations, including in answering the basic question of “Does it work?” and, even more so, in steering how to proceed with complex public health programming at scale. They deserve no exalted position in the pantheon of methodologies for evidence-based public health.
- Engaging Communities With a Simple Tool to Help Increase Immunization Coverage
Use of a simple, publicly placed tool that monitors vaccination coverage in a community has potential to broaden program coverage by keeping both the community and the health system informed about every infant's vaccination status.
- Biometric Fingerprint System to Enable Rapid and Accurate Identification of Beneficiaries
Inability to uniquely identify clients impedes access to services and contributes to inefficiencies. Using a pocket-sized fingerprint scanner that wirelessly syncs with a health worker's smartphone, the SimPrints biometric system can link individuals' fingerprints to their health records. A pilot in Bangladesh will assess its potential.
- A False Dichotomy: RCTs and Their Contributions to Evidence-Based Public Health
Global public health should rely on those research methods that best answer the pressing questions at hand. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and other rigorous impact evaluation methods have a critical role to play in public health.
- Barriers to Health Care in Rural Mozambique: A Rapid Ethnographic Assessment of Planned Mobile Health Clinics for ART
Mobile health clinics can markedly decrease clients' transportation time and cost to access antiretroviral therapy (ART) and other health services in rural areas, potentially improving use. Close coordination with community leaders and regularly scheduled visits by the mobile clinics are critical.