Pre-pregnancy and pregnancy cohorts: a scoping review protocol

Introduction: Recent research in life course epidemiology has demonstrated the importance of evaluating how pre-pregnancy and pregnancy exposures affect later life developmental outcomes. While the fields of nutrition, non-communicable disease, and social epidemiology have examined a diversity of birth- and longer-term outcomes related to different exposures during pregnancy, little information exists on other types of exposures, including infectious, medication, and vaccine-related exposures. In this review, we describe completed or ongoing pregnancy and pre-pregnancy cohorts to assess gaps in the exposures and outcomes measured in these initiatives to inform future research investments. Methods and analysis: We will apply the Arskey and O’Malley scoping review methodology and use the National Institutes of Health quality assessment tool for cohort studies. The systematic search strategy was developed and tailored for Ovid Medline and Embase, LILACs, and Web of Science with the assistance of an information scientist. We selected a scoping review rather than a systematic review methodology because this review is meant to provide a comprehensive overview of pregnancy and pre-pregnancy cohorts, rather than to focus on the findings from related research. The title-abstract and full text screening and data charting will be conducted independently by two reviewers. Discrepancies will be resolved by a third reviewer and results will be summarised in narrative form. Ethics and dissemination: This scoping review summarizes findings from existing publications in peer reviewed journals and does not require ethics review. Findings will be disseminated through an open access publication.</ns3:p

The Ontological (In)security of Similarity: Wahhabism versus Islamism in Saudi Foreign Policy

It has long been argued that identity matters in international relations. Yet, how identity impacts enmity and conflict among states remains the subject of debate. The existing literature asserts that differences in identity can be a source of conflict, whereas convergence and similarity lead to cooperation. Nevertheless, empirical evidence from the Middle East has long defied this hypothesis. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which prides itself on being an Islamic model and claims Islamic leadership, has opposed the rise to power of Islamist movements in the Middle East. To address this paradox, this article builds on the growing literature on ontological security to propose a theoretical framework explaining how similarity can generate anxiety and identity risks. This framework, I argue, moves beyond traditional regime‐security approaches to reveal that security is not only physical but also ontological. I then illustrate the argument through a comparison of Saudi identity risks in the wake of the Iranian revolution (1979) and the ascendance of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt (2012). Ultimately, these cases provide intriguing insights into foreign policy behaviour during critical situations