Psychedelic Science, Contemplative Practices, and Indigenous and Other Traditional Knowledge Systems: Towards Integrative Community-Based Approaches in Global Health.

As individuals and communities around the world confront mounting physical, psychological, and social threats, three complimentary mind-body-spirit pathways toward health, wellbeing, and human flourishing remain underappreciated within conventional practice among the biomedical, public health, and policy communities. This paper reviews literature on psychedelic science, contemplative practices, and Indigenous and other traditional knowledge systems to make the case that combining them in integrative models of care delivered through community-based approaches backed by strong and accountable health systems could prove transformative for global health. Both contemplative practices and certain psychedelic substances reliably induce self-transcendent experiences that can generate positive effects on health, well-being, and prosocial behavior, and combining them appears to have synergistic effects.

Addressing violence against children: A systematic review on interventions to accelerate the achievement of the UN sustainable development goal in Europe and Africa.

Background: Violence against children (VAC) is a global public health issue. In the context of limited resources, the United Nations Development Programme has coined the concept of a Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) accelerator for preventing and responding to VAC. An 'accelerator' is a provision that simultaneously leads to progress across multiple SDGs targets and goals.

The Violence Against Children Surveys (VACS): Using VACS data to drive programmes and policies.

The Violence Against Children Surveys (VACS) are nationally representative surveys of males and females aged 13-24 years, designed to measure the burden of sexual, physical, and emotional violence experienced in childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. As of 2020, 22 countries implemented or are implementing a VACS. Since the first article using VACS data was published in 2009, several peer-reviewed articles have been published on the VACS.

The global politics of the age-gender divide in violence against women and children.

Decades of collective and cumulative work by practitioners, activists and researchers have made violence prevention an important part of international development agendas. However, violence prevention and response work addressing women and children has historically been siloed. Those working at the intersection of violence against women (VaW) and violence against children (VaC) have wrestled with the age-gender divide.

Disclosure, reporting and help seeking among child survivors of violence: a cross-country analysis.

Background: Violence against children is a pervasive public health issue, with limited data available across multiple contexts. This study explores the rarely studied prevalence and dynamics around disclosure, reporting and help-seeking behaviours of children who ever experienced physical and/or sexual violence.

Methods: Using nationally-representative Violence Against Children Surveys in six countries: Cambodia, Haiti, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Tanzania, we present descriptive statistics for prevalence of four outcomes among children aged 13-17 years: informal disclosure, knowledge of where to seek formal help, formal disclosure/help seeking and receipt of formal help.

Author Correction: Addressing violence against children online and offline.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Risk factors for childhood violence and polyvictimization: A cross-country analysis from three regions.

Understanding risk factors is important to ending childhood violence and meeting Sustainable Development Goal 16.2. To date, no study has examined patterns of risk factors across countries comprehensively for different types of childhood violence, and there is a dearth of evidence of polyvictimization in lower- and middle-income settings.

Emotional abuse of girls in Swaziland: prevalence, perpetrators, risk and protective factors and health outcomes.

Background: Research on emotional child abuse in sub-Saharan Africa is scarce. Few studies thus far have examined prevalence, risk and protective factors for emotional child abuse or the associations between emotional abuse and girls' health.

Methods: A nationally representative two-stage, cluster-sampled, household survey of females aged 13-24 years (n = 1244) on childhood abuse victimisation was conducted.

Perceptions of misoprostol among providers and women seeking post-abortion care in Zimbabwe.

In Zimbabwe, abortions are legally restricted and complications from unsafe abortions are a major public health concern. This study in 2012 explored women's and providers' perspectives in Zimbabwe on the acceptability of the use of misoprostol as a form of treatment for complications of abortion in post-abortion care. In-depth interviews were conducted with 115 participants at seven post-abortion care facilities.

Is Routine Screening for Intimate Partner Violence Feasible in Public Health Care Settings in Kenya?

More than a third of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) or non-partner sexual violence. The short- and long-term health effects of violence can be disabling if left undetected. A recent World Health Organization (WHO) report indicates that Africa is one of the regions with the highest prevalence of physical and/or sexual IPV among ever-partnered women.

Gender, masculinity and migration: Mexican men and reproductive health in the Californian context.

An appreciation of the social, cultural and economic dimensions of gender and sexuality is important in increasing reproductive health service utilisation. This analysis of recent Mexican male immigrants in Southern California focuses on changing views of gender roles, masculinity and relationship dynamics in the context of migration in order to explain low levels of reproductive healthcare utilisation. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 23 men who had migrated from Mexico.

Barriers and promoters of home-based pasteurization of breastmilk among HIV-infected mothers in greater Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Background: For the past decade, heat-treating breastmilk has been an infant feeding option recommended by the World Health Organization as a strategy to reduce vertical transmission. However, little is known about field experiences with it. Our primary objective was to explore the barriers and promoters of the implementation of breastmilk pasteurization, "flash-heating" (FH), in the real-world setting of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Findings from SHAZ!: a feasibility study of a microcredit and life-skills HIV prevention intervention to reduce risk among adolescent female orphans in Zimbabwe.

This study tested the feasibility of a combined microcredit and life-skills HIV prevention intervention among 50 adolescent female orphans in urban/peri-urban Zimbabwe. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected on intervention delivery, HIV knowledge and behavior, and economic indicators. The study also tested for HIV, HSV-2, and pregnancy.

Gender, culture and reproductive decision-making among recent Mexican migrants in California.

This study of the experiences of recent Mexican immigrants living in California explores the changing perceptions of sexual and societal norms, including gender roles and resulting reproductive decision-making, that appear to accompany the migration process. These norms are compared to those held by migrants' families of origin in Mexico. We analysed 44 semi-structured interviews conducted with a client-based population in order to identify reproductive perceptions and practices that appear to be influenced by recent migration.

[Use of family planning services and its relationship with women's decision-making and support from their partner].

Objective: To identify the influence of reproductive characteristics and women empowerment with the use of family planning services.

Material And Methods: Cases and non-cases design with neighborhood controls (147 users and 146 non-users of family planning services during 2003), in Guanajuato State, Mexico. Various indexes were constructed to evaluate women's empowerment and its relationship with family planning use.

Acceptability of heat treating breast milk to prevent mother-to-child transmission of human immunodeficiency virus in Zimbabwe: a qualitative study.

Although heat treatment of human milk is an official infant-feeding recommendation for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive mothers in Zimbabwe, its implementation has not been adequately addressed, because knowledge about the safety of this method is rudimentary and its acceptability is poorly understood. To address this knowledge gap, the authors conducted focus group discussions among mothers, grandmothers, midwives, and husbands in various regions of Zimbabwe. Although the practice of heat treating expressed human milk was initially met with skepticism because of potential obstacles, including time constraints and social and cultural stigma, a pattern of opinion reversal emerged in all groups.

Meeting the reproductive health care needs of adolescents: California's Family Planning Access, Care, and Treatment Program.

Purpose: To examine the effect of the California Office of Family Planning's Family Access, Care, and Treatment Program (Family PACT), which was established in 1997 to provide comprehensive, reproductive health services for low-income adolescents and adults. Program evaluation was used to measure access to services, develop a profile of users, identify service utilization patterns, and assess the sensitivity of the health care system to the needs of adolescents.

Methods: Data sources include baseline data on California's previously established family planning services, enrollment, and claims data for the first 4 years of Family PACT, client exit interviews, and on-site observations.