Estimating global and regional disruptions to routine childhood vaccine coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020: a modelling study.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission substantially affected health services worldwide. To better understand the impact of the pandemic on childhood routine immunisation, we estimated disruptions in vaccine coverage associated with the pandemic in 2020, globally and by Global Burden of Disease (GBD) super-region.

Methods: For this analysis we used a two-step hierarchical random spline modelling approach to estimate global and regional disruptions to routine immunisation using administrative data and reports from electronic immunisation systems, with mobility data as a model input.

[Homicides in the Americas region: magnitude, distribution and trends, 1999-2009].

The scope of this study was to describe the magnitude and distribution of deaths by homicide in the Americas and to analyze the prevailing trends. Deaths by homicide (X85 to Y09 and Y35) were analyzed in 32 countries of the Americas Region from 1999 to 2009, recorded in the Mortality Information System/Pan American Health Organization. A negative binomial model was used to study the trends.

[Geographic information systems as a tool for monitoring health inequalities].

Objective: To show how geographic information systems (GISs) can be used as technological tools to support health policy and public health actions.

Methods: We assessed the relationship between infant mortality and a number of socio-economic and geographic determinants. In explaining how GISs are applied, we stressed their ability to integrate data, which makes it possible to perform epidemiologic evaluations in a simpler, faster, automated way that simultaneously analyzes multiple variables with different levels of aggregation.