Role of food choice motives in the socio-economic disparities in diet diversity and obesity outcomes in Kenya.

Background: The increased prevalence of overweight and obesity, along with high diet diversity, is observed among higher socio-economic groups in Sub-Saharan Africa. One contributing factor to these observed variations is food choice motives. However, the role of these motives in explaining the observed differences has not been thoroughly explored in this context.

Strategies to decrease inequalities in cancer therapeutics, care and prevention: Proceedings on a conference organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the European Academy of Cancer Sciences, Vatican City, February 23-24, 2023.

Analyses of inequalities related to prevention and cancer therapeutics/care show disparities between countries with different economic standing, and within countries with high Gross Domestic Product. The development of basic technological and biological research provides clinical and prevention opportunities that make their implementation into healthcare systems more complex, mainly due to the growth of Personalized/Precision Cancer Medicine (PCM). Initiatives like the USA-Cancer Moonshot and the EU-Mission on Cancer and Europe's Beating Cancer Plan are initiated to boost cancer prevention and therapeutics/care innovation and to mitigate present inequalities.

Modeling impact and cost-effectiveness of driving-Y gene drives for malaria elimination in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Malaria elimination will be challenging in countries that currently continue to bear high malaria burden. Sex-ratio-distorting gene drives, such as driving-Y, could play a role in an integrated elimination strategy if they can effectively suppress vector populations. Using a spatially explicit, agent-based model of malaria transmission in eight provinces spanning the range of transmission intensities across the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we predict the impact and cost-effectiveness of integrating driving-Y gene drive mosquitoes in malaria elimination strategies that include existing interventions such as insecticide-treated nets and case management of symptomatic malaria.

Impact of community-based health insurance on utilisation of preventive health services in rural Uganda: a propensity score matching approach.

The effect of voluntary health insurance on preventive health has received limited research attention in developing countries, even when they suffer immensely from easily preventable illnesses. This paper surveys households in rural south-western Uganda, which are geographically serviced by a voluntary Community-based health insurance scheme, and applied propensity score matching to assess the effect of enrolment on using mosquito nets and deworming under-five children. We find that enrolment in the scheme increased the probability of using a mosquito net by 26% and deworming by 18%.

Impact of voluntary community-based health insurance on child stunting: Evidence from rural Uganda.

While community-based health insurance increasingly becomes part of the health financing landscape in developing countries, there is still limited research about its impacts on health outcomes. Using cross-sectional data from rural south-western Uganda, we apply a two-stage residual inclusion instrumental variables method to study the impact of insurance participation on child stunting in under-five children. We find that one year of a household's participation in community-based health insurance was associated with a 4.

Determinants of Enrolment and Renewing of Community-Based Health Insurance in Households With Under-5 Children in Rural South-Western Uganda.

Background: The desire for universal health coverage in developing countries has brought attention to communitybased health insurance (CBHI) schemes in developing countries. The government of Uganda is currently debating policy for the national health insurance programme, targeting the integration of existing CBHI schemes into a larger national risk pool. However, while enrolment has been largely studied in other countries, it remains a generally under-covered issue from a Ugandan perspective.

Economic and Political Innovation for Nutritional Improvement.

Large shares of the world population are still affected by nutrition deficiencies and undernutrition. However, the current global agriculture and food system and its international governance shows signs of serious malfunctioning, and is not equipped to cope with the current and future challenges it is facing. In view of the complex and multi-dimensional nature of nutrition problems, a framework is put forward here to improve the understanding of underlying causalities, and to identify priorities for action.

Identifying technology innovations for marginalized smallholders-A conceptual approach.

This paper adds a contribution in the existing literature in terms of theoretical and conceptual background for the identification of idle potentials of marginal rural areas and people by means of technological and institutional innovations. The approach follows ex-ante assessment for identifying suitable technology and institutional innovations for marginalized smallholders in marginal areas-divided into three main parts (mapping, surveying and evaluating) and several steps. Finally, it contributes to the inclusion of marginalized smallholders by an improved way of understanding the interactions between technology needs, farming systems, ecological resources and poverty characteristics in the different segments of the poor, and to link these insights with productivity enhancing technologies.

Under regional characteristics of rural China: a clearer view on the performance of the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme.

The New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) was implemented in 2003 in response to the poor state of health care in rural China. Considering the substantial differences in regional socioeconomics, preferences for health care needs, and concurrent implementation of other health-related policies, the extent to which the impact of the NCMS differs in rural communities across China is unclear. The objective of this paper, therefore, was to explore the variation in the determinants of household enrolment and the impact of enrolment on health care utilization and medical expenditures in three large geographic regions in China.