Publications by authors named "Kumanan Rasanathan"

Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how to define and measure community healthcare (CHC) resilience during crises by analyzing recent shocks in four countries: Nepal, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.
  • Through focus group discussions and interviews with 486 participants, several themes emerged, emphasizing community involvement, health system features, and the importance of preparedness and learning from past crises.
  • Participants identified 193 indicators of resilience across five domains, suggesting that a community-centered approach is essential for enhancing resilience, and more research is needed to align these findings with other contexts to improve health system evaluation.
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Article Synopsis
  • Health systems worldwide are facing multiple interconnected challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, armed conflicts, and economic pressures, which threaten the goal of universal health coverage (SDG 3.8) by 2030.
  • Factors like demographic changes, urbanization, and a rise in noncommunicable diseases, alongside ongoing shortages of health workers, are further straining these systems and worsening existing inequities.
  • To enhance resilience in health systems, there's a need for not just technological upgrades but also investments in workforce, financing, and governance, while prioritizing social innovation, community participation, and resources for marginalized groups.
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Despite recognized need and reasonable demand, health systems and rehabilitation communities keep working in silos, independently with minimal recognition to the issues of those who require rehabilitation services. Consolidated effort by health systems and rehabilitation parties, recognizing the value, power and promise of each other, is a need of the hour to address this growing issue of public health importance. In this paper, the importance and the need for integration of rehabilitation into health system is emphasized.

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The Sustainable Development Goals are far off track. The convergence of global threats such as climate change, conflict and the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic-among others-call for better data and research evidence that can account for the complex interactions between these threats. In the time of polycrisis, global and national-level data and research evidence must address complexity.

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Article Synopsis
  • * There's strong evidence showing that investing in health equity and its social determinants yields significant returns, especially amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • * Now is a critical time to prioritize investments in health equity, as these initiatives can help prevent long-term health issues and ensure better access to healthcare for all.
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argue that governments and other societal actors, including the health sector, must ensure current global crises lead to choices and action to build healthy societies that enhance social, economic, and environmental equity and sustainability

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The importance of strong coordination for research on public health and social measures was highlighted at the Seventy-fourth World Health Assembly in 2021. This article describes efforts undertaken by the World Health Organization (WHO) to develop a global research agenda on the use of public health and social measures during health emergencies. This work includes a multistep process that started with a global technical consultation convened by WHO in September 2021.

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Health taxes are effective policy instruments to save lives, raise government revenues and improve equity. Health taxes, however, directly conflict with commercial actors' interests. Both pro-tax health advocates and anti-tax industry representatives seek to frame health tax policy.

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Since the 2008 publication of the reports of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health and its nine knowledge networks, substantial research has been undertaken to document and describe health inequities. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need for a deeper understanding of, and broader action on, the social determinants of health. Building on this unique and critical opportunity, the World Health Organization is steering a multi-country Initiative to reduce health inequities through an action-learning process in 'Pathfinder' countries.

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Social inequalities are perpetuating unhealthy living and working conditions and behaviours. These causes are commonly called 'the social determinants of health'. Social inequalities are also impacting climate change and vice-versa, which, is causing profound negative impacts on planetary health.

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Background: The Global Financing Facility (GFF) offers an opportunity to close the financing gap that holds back gains in women, children's and adolescent health. However, very little work exists examining GFF practice, particularly for adolescent health. As momentum builds for the GFF, we examine initial GFF planning documents to inform future national and multi-lateral efforts to advance adolescent sexual and reproductive health.

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Background: Embedded implementation research (IR) can play a critical role in health systems strengthening by tackling systems and implementation bottlenecks of a program. To achieve this aim, with the financial support of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, in 2016, the Government of Pakistan, UNICEF and the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (AHPSR) launched an Embedded IR for Immunisation Initiative (the Initiative) to explore health systems and implementation bottlenecks, and potential strategies to tackle such bottlenecks in the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) in Pakistan. In total, 10 research teams were involved in the Initiative, which was the first of its kind in the country.

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Adolescents are an increasing proportion of low and middle-income country populations. Their coming of age is foundational for health behaviour, as well as social and productive citizenship. We mapped intervention areas for adolescent sexual and reproductive health, including HIV, mental health and violence prevention to sectors responsible for them using a framework that highlights settings, roles and alignment.

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