Designing and implementing equity-based pandemic preparedness and response learning modules: lessons from a multi-country short-course.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had disproportionate impacts across race, social class, and geography. Insufficient attention has been paid to addressing the massive inequities worsened by COVID-19. In July 2020, Partners In Health (PIH) and the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) delivered a four-module short course, 'An Equity Approach to Pandemic Preparedness and Response: Emerging Insights from COVID-19 Global Response Leaders.

American Academy of Nursing Expert Panel consensus statement on nursing's roles in ensuring universal palliative care access.

The purpose of this consensus paper was to convene leaders and scholars from eight Expert Panels of the American Academy of Nursing and provide recommendations to advance nursing's roles and responsibility to ensure universal access to palliative care. Part I of this consensus paper herein provides the rationale and background to support the policy, education, research, and clinical practice recommendations put forward in Part II. On behalf of the Academy, the evidence-based recommendations will guide nurses, policy makers, government representatives, professional associations, and interdisciplinary and community partners to integrate palliative nursing services across health and social care settings.

Optimizing the Global Nursing Workforce to Ensure Universal Palliative Care Access and Alleviate Serious Health-Related Suffering Worldwide.

Context: Palliative care access is fundamental to the highest attainable standard of health and a core component of universal health coverage. Forging universal palliative care access is insurmountable without strategically optimizing the nursing workforce and integrating palliative nursing into health systems at all levels. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored both the critical need for accessible palliative care to alleviate serious health-related suffering and the key role of nurses to achieve this goal.

Time for the ethical management of COVID-19 vaccines.

The ethical distribution of life-saving medical and public health interventions to vulnerable groups has often been overlooked. Valuation of life linked to an individual's country of origin, the pharmaceutical industry's prioritisation of profit, the exploitation of vulnerable groups in clinical trials, and the resulting hesitancy towards drugs and vaccines have, among other factors, made the human right to health unattainable for many people. The COVID-19 pandemic presents itself as an opportunity to reverse this long-standing trajectory of unethical practices in global health.

Equitable and Effective Distribution of the COVID-19 Vaccines - A Scientific and Moral Obligation.

The rapid development of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines has not been met with the assurance of an effective and equitable global distribution mechanism. Low-income countries are especially at-risk, with the price of the vaccines and supply shortages limiting their ability to procure and distribute the vaccines. While the COVAX initiative is one of the solutions to these challenges, vaccine nationalism has resulted in the hoarding of vaccines and the signing of parallel bilateral deals, undermining this formerly promising initiative.

Addressing power dynamics in community-engaged research partnerships.

Background: Successful community-engaged research depends on the quality of the collaborative partnerships between community -members and academic researchers and may take several forms depending on the purpose which dictates the degree to which power dynamics are handled within the collaborative arrangement.

Methods: To understand the power dynamics and related concepts within community-engaged research arrangements, a secondary analysis of an existing qualitative data set was undertaken. Two models of community-engaged research, a review of literature, and the applied experiences of researchers familiar with community engagement practices confirmed the power dynamics concepts used to carry out the analysis of the qualitative data set according to the principles of directed content analysis.

Health system reconstitution syndrome: an often misunderstood phenomenon in global health practice.

The beginning of the 21st century was marked by the new definition and framework of health systems strengthening (HSS). The global movement to improve access to high-quality care garnered new resources to design and implement comprehensive HSS programs. In this effort, billions of dollars flowed from novel mechanisms such as The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and several bilateral funders.

Strengthening Health Systems While Responding to a Health Crisis: Lessons Learned by a Nongovernmental Organization During the Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic in Sierra Leone.

An epidemic of Ebola virus disease (EVD) beginning in 2013 has claimed an estimated 11 310 lives in West Africa. As the EVD epidemic subsides, it is important for all who participated in the emergency Ebola response to reflect on strengths and weaknesses of the response. Such reflections should take into account perspectives not usually included in peer-reviewed publications and after-action reports, including those from the public sector, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), survivors of Ebola, and Ebola-affected households and communities.

Investing in Nurses is a Prerequisite for Ensuring Universal Health Coverage.

Nurses and midwives constitute the majority of the global health workforce and the largest health care expenditure. Efficient production, successful deployment, and ongoing retention based on carefully constructed policies regarding the career opportunities of nurses, midwives, and other providers in health care systems are key to ensuring universal health coverage. Yet nurses are constrained by practice regulations, workplaces, and career ladder barriers from contributing to primary health care delivery.

Three perspectives on partnering to close the care gap.

Given their frontline relationship with patients, community pharmacists fill a vital role in our healthcare system. This article offers three perspectives on how a team-based approach, which integrates the community pharmacist, can enhance patient care and reduce system costs. It is the success of these partnership models which have helped drive system-level change.

Trois points de vue sur les partenariats pour corriger les lacunes en matière de soins de santé.

Puisqu'ils sont en première ligne auprès des patients, les pharmaciens communautaires jouent un rôle essentiel au sein du système de santé. Le présent article propose trois points de vue sur la manière dont une approche concertée, qui inclut le pharmacien communautaire, peut améliorer les soins aux patients et réduire les coûts pour le système. C'est la réussite de ces modèles de partenariat qui contribue à susciter des changements systémiques.

"Moving the needle" through partnerships.

Two projects illustrate how the application of real-world evidence can help to address healthcare challenges to generate better outcomes and efficiencies. In the first example, a broad coalition of public and private partners in Alberta is applying enhanced measurement techniques and the Triple Aim methodology to improve health outcomes among complex care, high needs patients in Edmonton's Eastwood community. The innovative findings, it is hoped, will be scaled to other areas of the province.

Prendre le virage des partenariats.

Deux projets démontrent que la mise en œuvre de données colligées sur le terrain peut contribuer à régler des problèmes dans le milieu de la santé pour favoriser de meilleurs résultats et de plus grandes efficiences. Dans le premier exemple, une vaste coalition de partenaires publics et privés de l'Alberta recourt aux techniques de mesures améliorées et à la méthodologie du Triple objectif pour améliorer les résultats cliniques de populations de cas complexes et lourds du quartier Eastwood d'Edmonton. On espère que les conclusions novatrices qui en sont tirées seront adaptées à d'autres régions de la province.

Aligning Provider Team Members With Polyvalent Community Health Workers.

In light of the fragmentation of health care services and the need for health promotion and disease prevention, it is time to consider the important role community health workers (CHWs) could play as part of the health care team. Globally, CHWs tend to focus on a single patient condition, resulting in fragmented, uncoordinated health care services. Polyvalent (or multimodal) CHWs can provide a comprehensive, patient-centric range of care coordination services with other members of the health care team, ultimately improving patient outcomes and decreasing the cost of care.

Interprofessional Teamwork and Collaboration Between Community Health Workers and Healthcare Teams: An Integrative Review.

Objectives: Community Health Workers (CHWs) serve as a means of improving outcomes for underserved populations. However, their relationship within health care teams is not well studied. The purpose of this integrative review was to examine published research reports that demonstrated positive health outcomes as a result of CHW intervention to identify interprofessional teamwork and collaboration between CHWs and health care teams.

Real-time resolution of point mutations that cause phenovariance in mice.

With the wide availability of massively parallel sequencing technologies, genetic mapping has become the rate limiting step in mammalian forward genetics. Here we introduce a method for real-time identification of N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea-induced mutations that cause phenotypes in mice. All mutations are identified by whole exome G1 progenitor sequencing and their zygosity is established in G2/G3 mice before phenotypic assessment.