Gendered socio-economic and mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic among adults living in selected informal settlements in Kenya: an intersectional analysis.

Background: COVID-19 pandemic had devastating socio-economic and health effects, including mental health. This study examines the intersectionality between gender and mental health outcomes among Kenyan adults in informal settlements of Nairobi, Kisumu, and Kilifi Counties during the COVID-19 crisis. This is necessary to inform mental health response in case of another pandemic.

Mentorship in health research institutions in Africa: A systematic review of approaches, benefits, successes, gaps and challenges.

Background: In Africa, where the burden of diseases is disproportionately high, significant challenges arise from a shortage of skilled researchers, lack of research funding, and limited mentorship opportunities. The continent faces a substantial gap in research output largely attributed to the dearth of mentorship opportunities for early career researchers.

Objective: To explore existing mentorship approaches, identify challenges, gaps, successes, and benefits, and provide insights for strengthening mentorship programs in African health research institutions.

Correction: Making Metadata Machine-Readable as the First Step to Providing Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable Population Health Data: Framework Development and Implementation Study.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.2196/56237.].

Making Metadata Machine-Readable as the First Step to Providing Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable Population Health Data: Framework Development and Implementation Study.

Background: Metadata describe and provide context for other data, playing a pivotal role in enabling findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability (FAIR) data principles. By providing comprehensive and machine-readable descriptions of digital resources, metadata empower both machines and human users to seamlessly discover, access, integrate, and reuse data or content across diverse platforms and applications. However, the limited accessibility and machine-interpretability of existing metadata for population health data hinder effective data discovery and reuse.

"Our program manager is a woman for the first time": perceptions of health managers on what workplace policies and practices exist to advance women's career progression in the health sector in Kenya.

Background: Existing evidence suggests that organisation-level policies are important in enabling gender equality and equity in the workplace. However, there is little research exploring the knowledge of health sector employees on whether policies and practices to advance women's career progression exist in their organisations. In this qualitative study, we explored the knowledge and perspectives of health managers on which of their organisations' workplace policies and practices contribute to the career advancement of women and their knowledge of how such policies and practices are implemented and monitored.

Strengthening systems of accountability for women's leadership in the health sector.

Accountability can improve equal opportunities for women’s career progression and it must be strengthened in the health sector, argue

Legislation for advancing women's leadership in the health sector in India and Kenya: a 'law cube' approach to identify ways to strengthen legal environments for gender equality.

Objectives: This paper examines the availability of legal provisions, or the lack thereof, that support women to progress equitably into leadership positions within the health workforce in India and Kenya.

Methods: We adapted the World Bank's framework of legal domains relevant to gender equality in the workplace and applied a 'law cube' to analyse the comprehensiveness, accountability and equity and human rights considerations of 27 relevant statutes in India and 11 in Kenya that apply to people in formal employment within the health sector. We assessed those laws against 30 research-validated good practice measures across five legal domains: (1) pay; (2) workplace protections; (3) pensions; (4) care, family life and work-life balance; and (5) reproductive rights.

Pathways to leadership: what accounts for women's (in)equitable career paths in the health sectors in India and Kenya? A scoping review.

Objectives: We aimed to capture evidence on enablers and barriers to improving equal opportunity and effective organisational interventions that can advance women's leadership in India and Kenya's health sectors.

Methods: We systematically searched JSTOR, PubMed, SCOPUS and Web of Science databases, reference lists of selected articles and Google Scholar using string searches. We included studies that were published in English from 2000 to 2022 in peer-reviewed journals or grey literature, focused on paid, formal health professionals in India or Kenya, described factors relating to women's representation/leadership.

INSPIRE datahub: a pan-African integrated suite of services for harmonising longitudinal population health data using OHDSI tools.

Introduction: Population health data integration remains a critical challenge in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), hindering the generation of actionable insights to inform policy and decision-making. This paper proposes a pan-African, Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) research architecture and infrastructure named the INSPIRE datahub. This cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and on-premises setup aims to enhance the discovery, integration, and analysis of clinical, population-based surveys, and other health data sources.

Enabling data sharing and utilization for African population health data using OHDSI tools with an OMOP-common data model.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred the use of AI and DS innovations in data collection and aggregation. Extensive data on many aspects of the COVID-19 has been collected and used to optimize public health response to the pandemic and to manage the recovery of patients in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, there is no standard mechanism for collecting, documenting and disseminating COVID-19 related data or metadata, which makes the use and reuse a challenge.

Effect of justification of wife-beating on experiences of intimate partner violence among men and women in Uganda: A propensity-score matched analysis of the 2016 Demographic Health Survey data.

Introduction: In some communities, rationalization of men's controlling attitudes is associated with the justification of gender norms such as wife-beating as a method of correcting spouse behaviour. In this quasi-experimental study, we investigate the causal effects of the acceptability of gender norms justifying wife-beating on experiences of sexual, emotional, and physical intimate partner violence (IPV) among Ugandan men and women.

Methods And Materials: We analysed the 2016 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey data using propensity-score matching.

Sex-disaggregated data matters: tracking the impact of COVID-19 on the health of women and men.

Sex and gender matter to health outcomes, but despite repeated commitments to sex-disaggregate data in health policies and programmes, a persistent and substantial absence of such data remains especially in lower-income countries. This represents a missed opportunity for monitoring and identifying gender-responsive, evidence-informed solutions to address a key driver of the pandemic. In this paper we review the availability of national sex-disaggregated surveillance data on COVID-19 and examine trends on the testing-to-outcome pathway.

Eave and swarm collections prove effective for biased captures of male Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes in Uganda.

Background: Traditional malaria vector sampling techniques bias collections towards female mosquitoes. Comprehensive understanding of vector dynamics requires balanced vector sampling of both males and females. Male mosquito sampling is also necessary for population size estimations by male-based mark-release-recapture (MRR) studies and for developing innovations in mosquito control, such as the male-targeted sterile insect technique and other genetic modification approaches.

Understating the barriers to achievement of the UNAIDS 90-90-90 goal in Tanzania using a population-based HIV impact assessment survey 2016-2017.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and partners launched the 90-90-90 targets. We used Tanzania HIV Impact Survey (THIS) data in 2017 to study the barriers to achieve 90-90-90 targets. THIS was a population-based survey with a stratified multistage stage sampling design.

Prevalence and Risk Factors for Women's Reports of Past-Year Intimate Partner Violence: A Comparative Analysis of Six East African National Surveys.

Violence against women, in all its forms, has been acknowledged as a violation of basic human rights and research evidence shows that it could lead to adverse health consequences. In this study we aimed to determine the prevalence and coexistence of different forms of IPV as well as examine individual-level factors associated with ever experiencing any form of IPV in the 12 months preceding the survey using the most recent Demographic Health Survey data from six East African countries. Results show that the prevalence ranged between 16.

Effect of women's intra-household bargaining power on postnatal and infant healthcare in rural Uganda-Results from a cross sectional survey in Kyenjojo district.

Decision-making power and access to and control over resources are key elements of women's bargaining power within a household, and plays an important role in improving healthcare seeking behaviours for women and their children, which in turn augment maternal and child health outcomes. We examined the relationship between intra-household bargaining power and utilization of postnatal and child healthcare services within 6 months after delivery, based on cross-sectional survey data from Kyenjojo district, Tooro sub-region of Western Uganda. We assessed independent associations between women's intra-household bargaining autonomy and postnatal care attendance using a modified Poisson approach for common outcomes.

Lessons for test and treat in an antiretroviral programme after decentralisation in Uganda: a retrospective analysis of outcomes in public healthcare facilities within the Lablite project.

Background: We describe the decentralisation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) alongside Option B+ roll-out in public healthcare facilities in the Lablite project in Uganda. Lessons learned will inform programmes now implementing universal test and treat (UTT).

Methods: Routine data were retrospectively extracted from ART registers between October 2012 and March 2015 for all adults and children initiating ART at two primary care facilities (spokes) and their corresponding district hospitals (hubs) in northern and central Uganda.