Are outpatient costs for hypertension and diabetes care affordable? Evidence from Western Kenya.

Background: Diabetes and hypertension pose a significant socio-economic burden in developing countries such as Kenya, where financial risk-protection mechanisms remain inadequate. This proves to be a great barrier towards achieving universal health care in such settings unless mechanisms are put in place to ensure greater access and affordability to non-communicable disease (NCD) management services.

Aim: This article aims to examine outpatient management services costs for patients with diabetes and hypertension attending public primary healthcare facilities.

Bridging the gap between prostate radiology and pathology through machine learning.

Background: Prostate cancer remains the second deadliest cancer for American men despite clinical advancements. Currently, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is considered the most sensitive non-invasive imaging modality that enables visualization, detection, and localization of prostate cancer, and is increasingly used to guide targeted biopsies for prostate cancer diagnosis. However, its utility remains limited due to high rates of false positives and false negatives as well as low inter-reader agreements.

A Protocol on Using the RE-AIM Framework in the Process Evaluation of the Primary Health Integrated Care Project for Four Chronic Conditions in Kenya.

There has been a rapid increase in morbidity and mortality arising from non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) program has established a chronic disease management program in collaboration with the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Kenya at over 150 health facilities in western Kenya. The primary health integrated care for chronic (PIC4C) disease project seeks to deliver preventive, promotive, and curative care for diabetes, hypertension, cervical and breast cancers at the primary health care level.

Maintaining care delivery for non-communicable diseases in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic in western Kenya.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has disrupted health systems worldwide, gravely threatening continuity of care for non-communicable diseases (NCDs), particularly in low-resource settings. We describe our efforts to maintain the continuity of care for patients with NCDs in rural western Kenya during the COVID-19 pandemic, using a five-component approach: 1) Protect: protect staff and patients; 2) Preserve: ensure medication availability and clinical services; 3) Promote: conduct health education and screenings for NCDs and COVID-19; 4) Process: collect process indicators and implement iterative quality improvement; and 5) Plan: plan for the future and ensure financial risk protection in the face of a potentially overwhelming health and economic catastrophe. As the pandemic continues to evolve, we must continue to pursue new avenues for improvement and expansion.

The stanford prostate cancer calculator: Development and external validation of online nomograms incorporating PIRADS scores to predict clinically significant prostate cancer.

Background: While multiparametric MRI (mpMRI) has high sensitivity for detection of clinically significant prostate cancer (CSC), false positives and negatives remain common. Calculators that combine mpMRI with clinical variables can improve cancer risk assessment, while providing more accurate predictions for individual patients. We sought to create and externally validate nomograms incorporating Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System (PIRADS) scores and clinical data to predict the presence of CSC in men of all biopsy backgrounds.