Is the UN receiving ethical approval for its research with human participants?

This paper examines the institutional mechanisms supporting the ethical oversight of human participant research conducted by the United Nations (UN). The UN has served an instrumental role in shaping international standards on research ethics, which invariably require ethical oversight of all research studies with human participants. The authors' experiences of conducting research collaboratively with UN agencies, in contrast, have led to concern that the UN frequently sponsors, or participates in, studies with human participants that have not received appropriate ethical oversight.

The clinical and cost-effectiveness of a Victim Improvement Package (VIP) for the reduction of chronic symptoms of depression or anxiety in older victims of common crime (the VIP trial): study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Older people are vulnerable to sustained high levels of psychosocial distress following a crime. A cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)-informed psychological therapy, the Victim Improvement Package (VIP) may aid recovery. The VIP trial aims to test the clinical and cost-effectiveness of the VIP for alleviating depressive and anxiety symptoms in older victims of crime.

Cross-sectional study of the use of antimicrobials following common infections by rural residents in Anhui, China.

Objective: To describe help seeking behaviour from a medical doctor and antimicrobial use for common infections among rural residents of Anhui province, China.

Design: A cross-sectional retrospective household survey.

Setting: 12 administrative villages from rural Anhui, China.

Seasonality and the effects of weather on Campylobacter infections.

Background: Campylobacteriosis is a major public health concern. The weather factors that influence spatial and seasonal distributions are not fully understood.

Methods: To investigate the impacts of temperature and rainfall on Campylobacter infections in England and Wales, cases of Campylobacter were linked to local temperature and rainfall at laboratory postcodes in the 30 days before the specimen date.

A comparison of weather variables linked to infectious disease patterns using laboratory addresses and patient residence addresses.

Background: To understand the impact of weather on infectious diseases, information on weather parameters at patient locations is needed, but this is not always accessible due to confidentiality or data availability. Weather parameters at nearby locations are often used as a proxy, but the accuracy of this practice is not known.

Methods: Daily Campylobacter and Cryptosporidium cases across England and Wales were linked to local temperature and rainfall at the residence postcodes of the patients and at the corresponding postcodes of the laboratory where the patient's specimen was tested.

Knowledge and behaviors in relation to antibiotic use among rural residents in Anhui, China.

Objectives: To examine antibiotic-related knowledge and behaviors in rural Anhui, identify factors associated with knowledge, and explore the relationship between knowledge and antibiotic use.

Methods: Cross-sectional study of a random sample of 2760 residents of rural China using structured interviews.

Results: The response rate was 94.

Cost-effectiveness of a community-delivered multicomponent intervention compared with enhanced standard care of obese adolescents: cost-utility analysis alongside a randomised controlled trial (the HELP trial).

Objective: To undertake a cost-utility analysis of a motivational multicomponent lifestyle-modification intervention in a community setting (the Healthy Eating Lifestyle Programme (HELP)) compared with enhanced standard care.

Design: Cost-utility analysis alongside a randomised controlled trial.

Setting: Community settings in Greater London, England.

Burden of child and adolescent obesity on health services in England.

Objective: To assess the numbers of obese children and young people (CYP) eligible for assessment and management at each stage of the childhood obesity pathway in England.

Design: Pathway modelling study, operationalising the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance on childhood obesity management against national survey data.

Setting: Data on CYP aged 2-18 years from the Health Survey for England 2006 to 2013.

A community-based motivational personalised lifestyle intervention to reduce BMI in obese adolescents: results from the Healthy Eating and Lifestyle Programme (HELP) randomised controlled trial.

Objective: Approximately 7% of children and young people aged 5-15 years in the UK have obesity at a level likely to be associated with comorbidities. The majority of multicomponent lifestyle programmes have limited applicability and generalisability for British adolescents.The Healthy Eating and Lifestyle Programme (HELP) was a specific adolescent-focused intervention, designed for obese 12 to 18-year-olds seeking help to manage their weight.

Development of a browser application to foster research on linking climate and health datasets: Challenges and opportunities.

Background: Improved data linkages between diverse environment and health datasets have the potential to provide new insights into the health impacts of environmental exposures, including complex climate change processes. Initiatives that link and explore big data in the environment and health arenas are now being established.

Objectives: To encourage advances in this nascent field, this article documents the development of a web browser application to facilitate such future research, the challenges encountered to date, and how they were addressed.

Pathogens, prejudice, and politics: the role of the global health community in the European refugee crisis.

Involuntary migration is a crucially important global challenge from an economic, social, and public health perspective. The number of displaced people reached an unprecedented level in 2015, at a total of 60 million worldwide, with more than 1 million crossing into Europe in the past year alone. Migrants and refugees are often perceived to carry a higher load of infectious diseases, despite no systematic association.

Exploring the evidence base for national and regional policy interventions to combat resistance.

The effectiveness of existing policies to control antimicrobial resistance is not yet fully understood. A strengthened evidence base is needed to inform effective policy interventions across countries with different income levels and the human health and animal sectors. We examine three policy domains-responsible use, surveillance, and infection prevention and control-and consider which will be the most effective at national and regional levels.

Adiposity and carotid-intima media thickness in children and adolescents: a systematic review.

Background: Adiposity in childhood is associated with later cardiovascular disease (CVD), but it is unclear whether this relationship is independent of other risk factors experienced in later life, such as smoking and hypertension. Carotid-intima media thickness (cIMT) is a measure of subclinical atherosclerosis that may be used to assess CVD risk in young people. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between adiposity and cIMT in children and adolescents.

Development and evaluation of an online tool for management of overweight children in primary care: a pilot study.

Objective: To explore the acceptability of implementing an online tool for the assessment and management of childhood obesity (Computer-Assisted Treatment of CHildren, CATCH) in primary care.

Design And Setting: An uncontrolled pilot study with integral process evaluation conducted at three general practices in northwest London, UK (November 2012-April 2013).

Participants: Families with concerns about excess weight in a child aged 5-18 years (n=14 children).

Child obesity cut-offs as derived from parental perceptions: cross-sectional questionnaire.

Background: Overweight children are at an increased risk of premature mortality and disease in adulthood. Parental perceptions and clinical definitions of child obesity differ, which may lessen the effectiveness of interventions to address obesity in the home setting. The extent to which parental and objective weight status cut-offs diverge has not been documented.

Helping Aged Victims of Crime (the HAVoC Study): Common Crime, Older People and Mental Illness.

Backgound: Limited data suggest that crime may have a devastating impact on older people. Although identification and treatment may be beneficial, no well-designed studies have investigated the prevalence of mental disorder and the potential benefits of individual manualized CBT in older victims of crime.

Aims: To identify mental health problems in older victims of common crime, provide preliminary data on its prevalence, and conduct a feasibility randomized controlled trial (RCT) using mixed methods.

A North/South collaboration between two national public health institutes--a model for global health protection.

Rapid international spread of emerging infections has increased interest in strategic collaborations, as they may be the best way to protect populations. Strategic collaborations can build capacity in less-resourced settings. As specialised institutions that provide a stable locus of expertise, continuity of experience, scientific knowledge, and appropriate human, technical, and financial resources, national public health institutes (NPHIs) are well-prepared to tackle public health challenges.

The benefits and harms of providing parents with weight feedback as part of the national child measurement programme: a prospective cohort study.

Background: Small-scale evaluations suggest that the provision of feedback to parents about their child's weight status may improve recognition of overweight, but the effects on lifestyle behaviour are unclear and there are concerns that informing parents that their child is overweight may have harmful effects. The aims of this study were to describe the benefits and harms of providing weight feedback to parents as part of a national school-based weight-screening programme in England.

Methods: We conducted a pre-post survey of 1,844 parents of children aged 4-5 and 10-11 years who received weight feedback as part of the 2010-2011 National Child Measurement Programme.

Predictors of health-related behaviour change in parents of overweight children in England.

Objective: Providing parents with information about their child's overweight status (feedback) could prompt them to make lifestyle changes for their children. We assessed whether parents of overweight children intend to or change behaviours following feedback, and examined predictors of these transitions.

Methods: We analysed data from a cohort of parents of children aged 4-5 and 10-11 years participating in the National Child Measurement Programme in five areas of England, 2010-2011.

Data mashups: potential contribution to decision support on climate change and health.

Linking environmental, socioeconomic and health datasets provides new insights into the potential associations between climate change and human health and wellbeing, and underpins the development of decision support tools that will promote resilience to climate change, and thus enable more effective adaptation. This paper outlines the challenges and opportunities presented by advances in data collection, storage, analysis, and access, particularly focusing on "data mashups". These data mashups are integrations of different types and sources of data, frequently using open application programming interfaces and data sources, to produce enriched results that were not necessarily the original reason for assembling the raw source data.

Can the relationship between ethnicity and obesity-related behaviours among school-aged children be explained by deprivation? A cross-sectional study.

Objectives: It is unclear whether cultural differences or material disadvantage explain the ethnic patterning of obesogenic behaviours. The aim of this study was to examine ethnicity as a predictor of obesity-related behaviours among children in England, and to assess whether the effects of ethnicity could be explained by deprivation.

Setting: Five primary care trusts in England, 2010-2011.

'Once the stuff's left my body, it's not me': service users' views on unlinked anonymous testing of blood for HIV.

This paper reports on the qualitative component of a mixed-methods study on unlinked anonymous testing for HIV in genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinics in two English cities. Unlinked anonymous testing is a system of monitoring population prevalence by testing residual blood samples taken for diagnostic purposes after they have been unlinked and anonymised from their source. Little is known about how individuals feel about their blood being tested in this way without their explicit consent, nor is it clear whether the process of unlinking blood affects how people feel about the use of their bodily material for public health surveillance purposes.