Girls’ Education Programmes in the ASEAN region

This non-standard research exercise identified and mapped girls’ education programmes and interventions across Asia and the Pacific. The study primarily focused on interventions that benefit girls, including those that support the transition to secondary school and school completion. The following areas of technical and thematic focus were of particular interest: Accelerated learning, Girls’ education post-Covid-19, Non-formal education, Supplementary education, Female empowerment (i.e. girls’ clubs, life skills programmes, economic empowerment), Climate change, Education Technology (EdTech), and Inclusion of the most marginalised. This mapping study follows a K4D report outlining key barriers to girls’ education in the ASEAN and Pacific region (Price, 2020). It included active programmes and those that finished between 2015 and 2020, with a particular focus on programmes in Cambodia, Laos, Viet Nam, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines, East Timor (Timor-Leste) and Papua New Guinea. Three days of researcher time was allocated to this study, so the exercise was therefore limited in identifying and mapping a large number of applicable programmes. The study relied on publicly available information, so may not have captured all relevant current and previous programming.FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

A qualitative research study to explore young people's disengagement from learning

"The ‘One Wales’ agreement includes a commitment to establish an “enquiry into disengagement from learning amongst children and young people to look at evidence of what works”. In response, a research project was commissioned to investigate young people’s experience and perspectives on their disengagement from learning. The research fills an evidence gap on personal accounts of disengagement from young people in Wales. As such it therefore represents a useful source of information to support the review of young people who are not in education employment or training (NEET)." - Welsh Assembly Government website

Processing the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission Records

In a state whose historical image is inextricably linked with racism, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission is surely one of its most sinister manifestations. In existence from 1956 to 1977, this state agency spied on civil rights activists, acted as a clearing-house for information on civil rights legislation from around the nation, funneled money to prosegregation organizations, and disseminated right-wing propaganda. Ironically, although its loudest proponents championed themselves as on a crusade against the insidious red menace, the Commission was the embodiment of Big Brother. Approximately 132,000 pages of remaining agency records document the Commission\u27s dubious quest. Included in these records are names of close to 87,000 individuals, the majority of whom were victims of Commission surveillance

Accuracy of pulse interval timing in ambulatory blood pressure measurement

Blood pressure (BP) monitors rely on pulse detection. Some blood pressure monitors use pulse timings to analyse pulse interval variability for arrhythmia screening, but this assumes that the pulse interval timings detected from BP cuffs are accurate compared with RR intervals derived from ECG. In this study we compared the accuracy of pulse intervals detected using an ambulatory blood pressure monitor (ABPM) with single lead ECG. Twenty participants wore an ABPM for three hours and a data logger which synchronously measured cuff pressure and ECG. RR intervals were compared with corresponding intervals derived from the cuff pressure tracings using three different pulse landmarks. Linear mixed effects models were used to assess differences between ECG and cuff pressure timings and to investigate the effect of potential covariates. In addition, the maximum number of successive oscillometric beats detectable in a measurement was assessed. From 243 BP measurements, the foot landmark of the oscillometric pulse was found to be associated with fewest covariates and had a random error of 9.5 ms. 99% of the cuff pressure recordings had more than 10 successive detectable oscillometric beats. RR intervals can be accurately estimated using an ABPM

Opportunistic detection of atrial fibrillation using blood pressure monitors: a systematic review

Background: Atrial Fibrillation (AF) affects around 2% of the population and early detection is beneficial, allowing patients to begin potentially life-saving anticoagulant therapies. Blood pressure (BP) monitors may offer an opportunity to screen for AF. Aim: To identify and appraise studies which report the diagnostic accuracy of automated BP monitors used for opportunistic AF detection. Methods: A systematic search was performed of the Medline, Medline-in-process and Embase literature databases. Papers were eligible if they described primary studies of the evaluation of a BP device for AF detection, were published in a peer reviewed journal and reported values for the sensitivity and specificity. Included studies were appraised using the QUADAS-2 tool to assess their risk of bias and applicability to opportunistic AF detection. Values for the sensitivity and specificity of AF detection were extracted from each paper and compared. Results and Conclusion: We identified seven papers evaluating six devices from two manufacturers. Only one study scored low risk in all of the QUADAS-2 domains. All studies reported specificity greater than 85% and six reported sensitivity greater than 90%. The studies showed that blood pressure devices with embedded algorithms for detecting arrhythmias show promise as screening tools for AF, comparing favourably with manual pulse palpation. But the studies used different methodologies and many were subject to potential bias. More studies are needed to more precisely define the sensitivity and specificity of opportunistic screening for AF during blood pressure measurement before its clinical utility in the population of interest can be assessed fully