From "period poverty" to "period parity" to meet menstrual health needs.

Menstruation is a natural experience for most girls and women, yet it is often associated with socially imposed taboos and shame. "Period poverty" is a new term that has garnered the attention of media and politicians. It has articulated a public discussion of the menstrual health challenges that remain in many cultures.

Five enablers to deliver safe water and effective sewage treatment to remote Indigenous communities in Australia.

Context: Safe drinking water and effective sanitation in remotely located Indigenous communities are essential services and their provision is a human right. Yet sustainable provision of these services can be challenging. Risks to human health from inadequate provision include transmission of hygiene-related infections from microbial contamination, and toxic chemicals that may cause kidney damage or dysfunction.

Housing conditions and health in Indigenous Australian communities: current status and recent trends.

Ensuring sufficient and adequately maintained housing in Indigenous Australian communities remains an ongoing policy challenge for government, with major implications for the health of Indigenous Australians. This study sought to characterise the current status of housing conditions experienced by Indigenous Australians, with special reference to the Northern Territory. The assessment examined a range of indicators relating to crowding, dwelling condition, 'health hardware', and provision of maintenance and repairs.

Climate change and infectious diseases in Australia's Torres Strait Islands.

Objective: This research seeks to identify climate-sensitive infectious diseases of concern with a present and future likelihood of increased occurrence in the geographically vulnerable Torres Strait Islands, Australia. The objective is to contribute evidence to the need for adequate climate change responses.

Methods: Case data of infectious diseases with proven, potential and speculative climate sensitivity were compiled.

Menstrual health and hygiene among Indigenous Australian girls and women: barriers and opportunities.

Health inequities inhibit global development and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. One gendered health area, Menstrual Health & Hygiene (MHH), has received increasing attention in Low- and Middle-Income Countries as a barrier to health, wellbeing, and gender equity. Recent anecdotal evidence in Australia highlights that MHH also present challenges to High Income Countries, particularly among underrepresented populations, such as Indigenous Australian peoples, people from low socio-economic backgrounds, or communities that are remotely located.

What Contributions, if Any, Can Non-Indigenous Researchers Offer Toward Decolonizing Health Research?

Four non-Indigenous academics share lessons learned through our reflective processes while working with Indigenous Australian partners on a health research project. We foregrounded reflexivity in our work to raise consciousness regarding how colonizing mindsets-that do not privilege Indigenous ways of knowing or recognize Indigenous land and sovereignty-exist within ourselves and the institutions within which we operate. We share our self-analyses and invite non-Indigenous colleagues to also consider socialized, unquestioned, and possibly unconscious assumptions about the dominance of Western paradigms, asking what contributions, if any, non-Indigenous researchers can offer toward decolonizing health research.

Improving rural public health through 'best practice' water, sanitation and hygiene initiatives.

An understanding of best practice rural water, sanitation and hygiene (rWASH) and its associated indicators can ensure greater success and reduced failure of future projects. While numerous organisations have actively implemented rWASH projects since the early 1990s with donor reports, funding proposals and reviews frequently claiming best practice, there remains a paucity of information on what constitutes 'best practice' rWASH. A scoping review of qualitative and quantitative literature was done with six primary factors identified as key contributors to best practice rWASH: regulatory environment, community ownership, programme methodology, funding, technology and capacity.

The Relationship between Infectious Diseases and Housing Maintenance in Indigenous Australian Households.

This research aimed to identify systemic housing-level contributions to infectious disease transmission for Indigenous Australians, in response to the Government program to 'close the gap' of health and other inequalities. A narrative literature review was performed in accordance to PRISMA guidelines. The findings revealed a lack of housing maintenance was associated with gastrointestinal infections, and skin-related diseases were associated with crowding.

Health and the Sustainable Development Goals: Challenges for four Pacific countries.

Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3) focuses on health and well-being. To understand the in-country monitoring challenges for developing countries of reporting against SDG 3, this research sought published data for the four Pacific countries of Fiji, Papua New Guinea (PNG), the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu-within a region with well-documented and significant health challenges. This research found that there are limited recent, comprehensive, and comparable data with identified sources against the SDG 3 outcome indicators at an in-country level.

Global climate adaptation governance: Why is it not legally binding?

In the last decade, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has moved from a strong focus on mitigation to increasingly address adaptation. Climate change is no longer simply about reducing emissions, but also about enabling countries to deal with its impacts. Yet, most studies of the climate regime have focused on the evolution of mitigation governance and overlooked the increasing number of adaptation-related decisions and initiatives.

Prescription drug spending: contribution to health care spending and cost containment strategies.

Prescription drug costs have been the focus of much research in the health care economy, within managed care organizations, and hospital systems. Pharmacy costs are drivers of general health care spending, premium increases, and to a lesser extent, hospital spending. Factors contributing to increased prescription spending include increased prescription use, replacement of older, cheaper drugs with new and more expensive ones, and the costly prices of retail prescription drugs.

Bactericidal function of alveolar macrophages in mechanically ventilated rabbits.

Protective ventilation strategies have been universally embraced because of reduced mortality. We tested the hypothesis that tidal volume (VT) in an in vivo model of mechanical ventilation would modulate bactericidal function of alveolar macrophages (AMs). Adult New Zealand White rabbits were mechanically ventilated for 4 h with a VT of 6 ml/kg (low) or a VT of 12 ml/kg (traditional), with each group receiving 3 cm H2O positive end-expiratory pressure with and without intratracheal lipopolysaccharide (LPS) instillation (20 mg/kg).

ADAMTSL-3/punctin-2, a novel glycoprotein in extracellular matrix related to the ADAMTS family of metalloproteases.

The complete primary structure of ADAMTSL-3/punctin-2, a novel member of the family designated ADAMTSL (a disintegrin-like and metalloprotease domain with thrombospondin type I motifs-like), was determined by cDNA cloning from a human placenta library. The predicted open reading frame encodes a protein of 1690 amino acids that has considerable similarity to ADAMTSL-1/punctin-1. These multi-domain proteins lack both a protease domain and a disintegrin-like domain but are remarkably similar in their domain organization to the ADAMTS proteases, hence the name ADAMTS-like.

Chemistry and biology in the new age.

Ahmed Zewail won the 1999 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his visionary work in probing the motions of atoms at the femtosecond level. This pioneering research, a decade earlier, opened up a new frontier of scientific knowledge. Zewail and his multidisciplinary team at Caltech are now pushing further into the realm of molecular complexity, with the ultimate aim of exploring the global dynamics of biological systems at atomic resolution.