Cost-effectiveness and benefits of perinatal health interventions in high-income settings: A protocol for a systematic review of economic evaluations.

Background: Despite ongoing efforts, perinatal morbidity and mortality persist across all settings, imposing a dual burden of clinical and economic strain. Besides, the fragmented nature of economic evidence on perinatal health interventions hinders the formulation of effective health policies. Our review aims to comprehensively and critically assess the economic evidence for such interventions in high-income countries, where the balance of health outcomes and fiscal prudence is paramount.

Missing the vulnerable-Inequalities in social protection in 13 sub-Saharan African countries: Analysis of population-based surveys.

We assessed socioeconomic inequalities in social protection coverage among the public, men and women living with the human immunodeficiency virus (MLHIV, WLHIV), and adolescent girls and young women (AGYW). We used population-based data from Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. We constructed concentration curves (CC) and computed concentration indices (CIX) for each country and population group.

Interventions to prevent post-tuberculosis sequelae: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) remains a global public health challenge, causing substantial mortality and morbidity. While TB treatment has made significant progress, it often leaves survivors with post-TB sequelae, resulting in long-term health issues. Current healthcare systems and guidelines lack comprehensive strategies to address post-TB sequelae, primarily due to insufficient evidence.

Identifying potential catalysts to accelerate the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) among adolescents living in Nigeria.

Investing in adolescents in Africa holds great promise for the development of the continent. The steps involved in identifying factors linked to interventions that may accelerate the attainment of multiple SDGs for adolescents in Nigeria are described. Data from a survey to investigate the well-being of 1800 adolescents aged 10-19 years in Southwest Nigeria was analysed.

Mortality burden attributable to exceptional PM air pollution events in Australian cities: A health impact assessment.

Background: People living in Australian cities face increased mortality risks from exposure to extreme air pollution events due to bushfires and dust storms. However, the burden of mortality attributable to exceptional PM levels has not been well characterised. We assessed the burden of mortality due to PM pollution events in Australian capital cities between 2001 and 2020.

Associations of social media and health content use with sexual risk behaviours among adolescents in South Africa.

Increasing rates of mobile phone access present potential new opportunities and risks for adolescents' sexual and reproductive health in resource-poor settings. We investigated associations between mobile phone access/use and sexual risks in a cohort of 10-24-year-olds in South Africa. 1563 adolescents (69% living with HIV) were interviewed in three waves between 2014 and 2018.

Effects of plant diversity on species-specific herbivory: patterns and mechanisms.

Invertebrate herbivory can shape plant communities when impacting growth and fitness of some plant species more than other species. Previous studies showed that herbivory varies among plant species and that species-specific herbivory is affected by the diversity of the surrounding plant community. However, mechanisms underlying this variation are still poorly understood.

Reconciling concepts of black queen and tragedy of the commons in simulated bulk soil and rhizosphere prokaryote communities.

The Black Queen hypothesis describes the evolutionary strategy to lose costly functions in favour of improving growth efficiency. This results in mutants (cheaters) becoming obligately dependent upon a provider (black queen) to produce a necessary resource. Previous analyses demonstrate black queens and cheaters reach a state of equilibrium in pair-wise systems.

Intergenerational education and violence effects on adolescent education, early employment and adolescent parenting.

Adolescence is a crucial phase in life, when foundations are established for future health . Therefore, supporting adolescents is necessary to meet the sustainable development goals by 2030. Evidence on the intergenerational transmission of poverty, education and violence suggests that to improve adolescents' well-being, the broader context in which they grow up needs to be understood when developing programmes and approaches to improve their lives.

Accelerating progress towards the sustainable development goals for adolescents in Ghana: a cross-sectional study.

Since the adoption of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) by the United Nations (UN), the search has been on to identify interventions that have effects on multiple SDG-targets simultaneously. Like other developing countries, Ghana has a youthful population and would require creative, urgent, youth-focused interventions to be able to attain the SDGs by 2030. This paper describes the application of the accelerator model on data from a sample of Ghanaian adolescents to identify potential accelerators towards selected SDG targets involving youth.

Accelerating ontological security for South African adolescents living in high HIV-prevalence areas: a longitudinal study.

Ontological security is the personal need to build fundamental certainty about the continuity of life events. It is central to long-term human development, particularly among adolescents in highly vulnerable communities in South Africa. We examined the cumulative effects of eight hypothesised provisions (development accelerators) in reducing the risks of ontological insecurity outcomes aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets.

Multiple Impacts of Ethiopia's Health Extension Program on Adolescent Health and Well-Being: A Quasi-Experimental Study 2002-2013.

Purpose: Ethiopia has registered remarkable achievements in reaching global development goals, including reducing child marriage. Policymakers are keen to understand which investments have contributed to this. We evaluated the association between Ethiopia's Health Extension Program (HEP) and 12 adolescent health and wellbeing outcomes.

Associations of Sustainable Development Goals Accelerators With Adolescents' Well-Being According to Head-of-Household's Disability Status-A Cross-Sectional Study From Zambia.

We examined associations between accelerators (interventions impacting ≥2 SDG targets) and SDG-aligned well-being indicators among adolescents 16-24 years old in Zambia. We surveyed adults from 1,800 randomly sampled households receiving social cash transfers. We examined associations between accelerators (social cash transfers, life-long learning, mobile phone access) and seven well-being indicators among adolescents using multivariate logistic regressions.

Diet diversity and environment determine the intestinal microbiome and bacterial pathogen load of fire salamanders.

Diverse communities of symbiotic microbes inhabit the digestive systems of vertebrates and play a crucial role in animal health, and host diet plays a major role in shaping the composition and diversity of these communities. Here, we characterized diet and gut microbiome of fire salamander populations from three Belgian forests. We carried out DNA metabarcoding on fecal samples, targeting eukaryotic 18S rRNA of potential dietary prey items, and bacterial 16S rRNA of the concomitant gut microbiome.

Body size and tree species composition determine variation in prey consumption in a forest-inhabiting generalist predator.

Trophic interactions may strongly depend on body size and environmental variation, but this prediction has been seldom tested in nature. Many spiders are generalist predators that use webs to intercept flying prey. The size and mesh of orb webs increases with spider size, allowing a more efficient predation on larger prey.

Managed Care Pharmacy Research on Inappropriate Opioid Use Interventions.

No funding contributed to the writing of this commentary. The authors have nothing to disclose.

Biodiversity increases multitrophic energy use efficiency, flow and storage in grasslands.

The continuing loss of global biodiversity has raised questions about the risk that species extinctions pose for the functioning of natural ecosystems and the services that they provide for human wellbeing. There is consensus that, on single trophic levels, biodiversity sustains functions; however, to understand the full range of biodiversity effects, a holistic and multitrophic perspective is needed. Here, we apply methods from ecosystem ecology that quantify the structure and dynamics of the trophic network using ecosystem energetics to data from a large grassland biodiversity experiment.

Plant functional trait response to environmental drivers across European temperate forest understorey communities.

Functional traits respond to environmental drivers, hence evaluating trait-environment relationships across spatial environmental gradients can help to understand how multiple drivers influence plant communities. Global-change drivers such as changes in atmospheric nitrogen deposition occur worldwide, but affect community trait distributions at the local scale, where resources (e.g.

The functional role of temperate forest understorey vegetation in a changing world.

Temperate forests cover 16% of the global forest area. Within these forests, the understorey is an important biodiversity reservoir that can influence ecosystem processes and functions in multiple ways. However, we still lack a thorough understanding of the relative importance of the understorey for temperate forest functioning.

Multiple plant diversity components drive consumer communities across ecosystems.

Humans modify ecosystems and biodiversity worldwide, with negative consequences for ecosystem functioning. Promoting plant diversity is increasingly suggested as a mitigation strategy. However, our mechanistic understanding of how plant diversity affects the diversity of heterotrophic consumer communities remains limited.

Forest fragmentation modulates effects of tree species richness and composition on ecosystem multifunctionality.

Forest fragments in highly disturbed landscapes provide important ecosystem services ranging from acting as biodiversity reservoir to providing timber or regulating hydrology. Managing the tree species richness and composition of these fragments to optimize their functioning and the deliverance of multiple ecosystem services is of great practical relevance. However, both the strength and direction of tree species richness and tree species composition effects on forest ecosystem multifunctionality may depend on the landscape context in which these forest remnants are embedded.

Distinct growth responses to drought for oak and beech in temperate mixed forests.

Purpose: Droughts are expected to become more intense and frequent. Mixed forests can be more resilient to extreme events, but are the individual trees in mixed forests also more resilient to drought?

Methods: We sampled 275 trees in 53 temperate forest stands in northern Belgium: monocultures, two-species mixtures, and the three-species mixture of Fagus sylvatica, Quercus robur, and Q. rubra.