Reporting of health estimates prior to GATHER: a scoping review

Background: Generating estimates of health indicators at the global, regional, and country levels is increasingly in demand in order to meet reporting requirements for global and country targets, such as the sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, such estimates are sensitive to availability of input data, underlying analytic assumptions, variability in statistical techniques, and often have important limitations. From a user perspective, there is often a lack of transparency and replicability. In order to define best practices in reporting data and methods used to calculate health estimates, the Guidelines for Accurate and Transparent Health Estimates Reporting (GATHER) working group developed a minimum checklist of 18 items that must be reported within each study publishing health estimates, so that users may make an assessment of the quality of the estimate. Objective: We conducted a scoping review to assess the state of reporting amongst a cross-sectional sample of studies published prior to the publication of GATHER. Methods: We generated a sample of UN reports and journal articles through a combination of a Medline search and hand-searching published health estimates. From these studies we extracted the percentage of studies correctly reporting each item on the checklist, the proportion of items reported per study (the GATHER performance score), and how this score varied depending on study type. Results: The average proportion of items reported per study was 0.47, and the poorest-performing items related to documentation and availability of input data, availability of the statistical code used and the subsequent output data, and a complete detailed description of all the steps of the data analysis. Conclusions: Methods for health estimates are not currently fully reported, and the implementation of the GATHER guidelines will improve the availability of information required to make an assessment of study quality

Exploring social and health care representations about home birth: an integrative literature review

Aims: exploring social and health care representations of home birth by conducting an integrative review of the literature. Design: Integrative Literature Review. Data sources: the search was based on the following keywords: 'birth, home,' 'home birth,' 'childbirth, home.' And the terms: 'planned home birth,' and 'empowerment women homebirth' (in English). 'partos en casa,' and 'partos domiciliarios' (in Spanish) in the following databases: Biomedical Central, Cochrane Library, Dialnet, DOAJ, Lilacs, PubMed, Scopus, Scielo, and Web of Science. Review methods: a total of 156 publications dated between 2004 and 2017 were initially obtained and a total of 41 articles were finally selected according to the criteria of inclusion, methodological rigor, and researchers' triangulation. Results: four dimensions of the issue emerged out of the 41 articles analyzed: (a) the Dimension of 'Empowerment in Childbirth;' (b) the Dimension of 'Comparative Socio-Medical Childbirth Studies;' (c) the 'Institutional Dimension of Childbirth;' (d) the 'Cultural Dimension of Childbirth.' Conclusion: from the health management perspective, home birth is not widely accepted today as a valid and safe alternative. However, women's social representations indicate an interest in returning to birth at home as a response to the excessive medicalization and institutionalization of childbirth, and value highly its autonomy and comfort

Status of HIV and hepatitis C virus infections among prisoners in the Middle East and North Africa: review and synthesis.

INTRODUCTION: The status of HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections among incarcerated populations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the links between prisons and the HIV epidemic are poorly understood. This review synthesized available HIV and HCV data in prisons in MENA and highlighted opportunities for action. METHODS: The review was based on data generated through the systematic searches of the MENA HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Synthesis Project (2003 to December 15, 2015) and the MENA HCV Epidemiology Synthesis Project (2011 to December 15, 2015). Sources of data included peer-reviewed publications and country-level reports and databases. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: We estimated a population of 496,000 prisoners in MENA, with drug-related offences being a major cause for incarceration. Twenty countries had data on HIV among incarcerated populations with a median prevalence of 0.6% in Afghanistan, 6.1% in Djibouti, 0.01% in Egypt, 2.5% in Iran, 0% in Iraq, 0.1% in Jordan, 0.05% in Kuwait, 0.7% in Lebanon, 18.0% in Libya, 0.7% in Morocco, 0.3% in Oman, 1.1% in Pakistan, 0% in Palestine, 1.2% in Saudi Arabia, 0% in Somalia, 5.3% in Sudan and South Sudan, 0.04% in Syria, 0.05% in Tunisia, and 3.5% in Yemen. Seven countries had data on HCV, with a median prevalence of 1.7% in Afghanistan, 23.6% in Egypt, 28.1% in Lebanon, 15.6% in Pakistan, and 37.8% in Iran. Syria and Libya had only one HCV prevalence measure each at 1.5% and 23.7%, respectively. There was strong evidence for injecting drug use and the use of non-sterile injecting-equipment in prisons. Incarceration and injecting drugs, use of non-sterile injecting-equipment, and tattooing in prisons were found to be independent risk factors for HIV or HCV infections. High levels of sexual risk behaviour, tattooing and use of non-sterile razors among prisoners were documented. CONCLUSIONS: Prisons play an important role in HIV and HCV dynamics in MENA and have facilitated the emergence of large HIV epidemics in at least two countries, Iran and Pakistan. There is evidence for substantial but variable HIV and HCV prevalence, as well as risk behaviour including injecting drug use and unprotected sex among prisoners across countries. These findings highlight the need for comprehensive harm-reduction strategies in prisons

The Convention on the Rights of the Child

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:OP-UN/1795 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Towards national, regional and local strategies for breastfeeding

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:f99/2117 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Citizenship schools A practical guide to education for citizenship and personal development

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:m01/14488 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Malnutrition The news; a special report by UNICEF UK in association with Western Union

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:m02/20738 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Healing the crisis A prescription for public health action in South Eastern Europe : information review

Includes bibliographical referencesAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:m03/38962 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo