Questions for future evidence-informed policy initiatives: insights from the evolution and aspirations of National Immunization Technical Advisory Groups.

Background: Attention to evidence-informed policy has grown; however, efforts to strengthen the quality and use of evidence are not starting from a blank slate. Changes in health architectures and financing pose different considerations for investments in evidence-informed policy than in the past. We identify major trends that have shifted the environment in which health policies are made, and use the evolution and future aspirations of National Immunization Technical Advisory Groups (NITAGs) in low- and middle-income countries to identify questions the sector must confront when determining how best to structure and strengthen evidence-informed health policy.

What Prompts Policy Change? Comparative Analyses of Efforts to Create Age-Friendly Cities in 14 Cities in Indonesia.

Four years after an age-friendly city (AFC) assessment across Indonesia, this article presents a comparative analysis of policy changes that have taken place across different AFC dimensions and factors associated with more and less change. Nine of fourteen cities initiated changes, ranging from public declarations, regulations, and creation or expansion of services. Our findings suggest that the AFC assessment can offer a means to engage policy makers, which in turn may facilitate city-level change, particularly for larger cities with more substantive budgets and more consolidated rather than dispersed leadership; however, no single factor represented a sufficient or necessary condition for change.

Sector-wide or disease-specific? Implications of trends in development assistance for health for the SDG era.

The record of the Millennium Development Goals broadly reflects the trade-offs of disease-specific financing: substantial progress in particular areas, facilitated by time-bound targets that are easy to measure and communicate, which shifted attention and resources away from other areas, masked inequalities and exacerbated fragmentation. In many ways, the Sustainable Development Goals reflect a profound shift towards a more holistic, system-wide approach. To inform responses to this shift, this article builds upon existing work on aggregate trends in donor financing, bringing together what have largely been disparate analyses of sector-wide and disease-specific financing approaches.

From polarisation to practice: puzzles and insights on integrated approaches from public health professionals.

Much of the debate in the global health literature about vertical and horizontal programmatic approaches, between narrowly targeted interventions and those providing broader system-wide support, has taken place at the global level. Based on a comparative case study of international donors in the health sector in Peru that varied in their vertical-horizontal orientation, this article examines the extent to which health care practitioners and national policy-makers perceive and attempt to reconcile the tension between these approaches. Informants readily identified advantages and disadvantages of both approaches, but did not perceive a marked vertical-horizontal division, suggesting that tensions appear to be less pronounced in practice than academic debates suggest.

Reaching the unreachable: providing STI control services to female sex workers via mobile team outreach.

Background: As part of a community-randomized trial of a multicomponent intervention to prevent sexually transmitted infections, we created Mobile Teams (MTs) in ten intervention cities across Peru to improve outreach to female sex workers (FSW) for strengthened STI prevention services.

Methods: Throughout 20 two-month cycles, MTs provided counseling; condoms; screening and specific treatment for Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG), Chlamydia trachomatis (CT), and vaginal Trichomonas vaginalis (TV) infections; and periodic presumptive metronidazole treatment for vaginal infections.

Results: MTs had 48,207 separate encounters with 24,814 FSW; numbers of sex work venues and of FSW reached increased steadily over several cycles.

Toward greater inclusion: lessons from Peru in confronting challenges of multi-sector collaboration.

Despite widespread enthusiasm for broader participation in health policy and programming, little is known about the ways in which multi-sector groups address the challenges that arise in pursuing this goal. Based on the experience of Peru's National Multi-sector Health Coordinating Body (CONAMUSA), this article characterizes these challenges and identifies organizational strategies the group has adopted to overcome them. Comprising nine government ministries, nongovernmental organizations, academia, religious institutions, and international cooperation agencies, CONAMUSA has faced three principal challenges: 1) selecting representatives, 2) balancing membership and leadership across sectors, and 3) negotiating role transition and conflict.

HTLV-1 and -2 infections among 10 indigenous groups in the Peruvian Amazon.

Infections with HTLV-1 and -2 were detected in 12 (1.9%) and 6 (0.9%) indigenous individuals living in 27 Amazonian villages in Peru.

Research training needs in Peruvian national TB/HIV programs.

Background: There are few published reports of research training needs assessments and research training programs. In an effort to expand this nascent field of study and to bridge the gap between research and practice, we sought to systematically assess the research training needs of health care professionals working at Peruvian governmental institutions leading HIV and tuberculosis (TB) control and among senior stakeholders in the field.

Methods: Six institutional workshops were conducted with the participation of 161 mid-level health professionals from agencies involved in national HIV and TB control.

Moving upstream: ecosocial and psychosocial correlates of sexually transmitted infections among young adults in the United States.

Objectives: We determined the associations of ecosocial factors and psychosocial factors with having a prevalent sexually transmitted infection (STI), recent STI diagnoses, and sexual risk behaviors.

Methods: Young adults aged 18 to 27 years in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n=14322) provided ecosocial, psychosocial, behavioral, and STI-history data. Urine was tested for Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae by ligase chain reaction and for Trichomonas vaginalis, human papillomavirus, and Mycoplasma genitalium by polymerase chain reaction.

Sentinel surveillance of sexually transmitted infections/HIV and risk behaviors in vulnerable populations in 5 Central American countries.

In El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama, we recruited 2466 female sex workers (FSWs) by probabilistic or comprehensive sampling and 1418 men who have sex with men (MSM) by convenience sampling to measure sociobehavioral risk and sexually transmitted infections. For MSM, HIV seroprevalence ranged from 7.6% in Nicaragua to 15.