Evaluation of a Depression Intervention in People With HIV and/or TB in Eswatini Primary Care Facilities: Implications for Southern Africa.

Introduction: Depression associated with chronic illnesses is common in Southern Africa, yet there are major treatment gaps. This study assesses the feasibility and acceptability of the Healthy Activity Program intervention for depression among people with HIV and/or TB. The intervention involves training nonspecialist nurses in depression, including identification, counseling based on behavioral activation theory, and structured referral.

Protocol to develop sustainable day care for children aged 1-4 years in disadvantaged urban communities in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Introduction: Lack of safe, stimulating and health-promoting environments for children under-5 hinders their physical, social and cognitive development, known as early childhood development (ECD). Improving ECD impacts on children, and can improve educational attainment for girls, who often care for younger siblings, and employment prospects for mothers. Developing and evaluating the impacts of ECD programmes within childcare needs to assess a range of social, health, educational and economic impacts, including women's empowerment.

Are we monitoring the quality of cataract surgery services? A qualitative situation analysis of attitudes and practices in a large city in South Africa.

Purpose: To evaluate the current quality "assurance" and "improvement" mechanisms, the knowledge, attitudes and practices of cataract surgeons in a large South African city.

Methodology: A total of 17 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with ophthalmologists in June 2012 at 2 tertiary institutions in the Republic of South Africa. Recruitment of the purposive sample was supplemented by snowball sampling.

Motivations for donating blood and reasons why people lapse or never donate in Leeds, England: a 2001 questionnaire-based survey.

Blood donors' motivations and reasons for lapsing and never donating were determined from a questionnaire completed by 489 adults (89 regular donors, 105 lapsed donors, 295 never donors) in Leeds, UK. The free text responses were classified according to themes that arose. Altruistic motivations including reciprocation and kinship towards family, friends, and unknowns were most numerous.

International health in medical education: students' experiences and views.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the experiences and views of the first group of medical students to complete the intercalated International Health BSc in Leeds.

Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws on experiences of international health and draws parallels with those of other international health students. The paper also discusses how studying international health may benefit future doctors and considers how medical education can take a more international approach.

A whole system study of intermediate care services for older people.

Background: Intermediate care (IC) services have been widely introduced in England and have the strategic objectives of reducing hospital and long-term care use. There is uncertainty about the clinical outcomes of these services and whether their strategic aims will be realised.

Setting: A metropolitan city in northern England.

The inception of the National Health Service: a daily managerial accomplishment.

Purpose: It is commonplace to talk of the UK's National Health Service (NHS) as having its inception in 1948 in an Act of Parliament which brought together many hundreds of widely dispersed organisations into one, new organisation, "the" NHS. This paper aims to challenge the concept of "a" National Health Service and to argue that the (seeming) accomplishment of this "organisation" is the daily task of health managers.

Design/methodology/approach: The paper develops a theoretically-based analysis of how an "organisation" is accomplished through ongoing processes of construction.

Examining leadership through critical feminist readings.

Purpose: This paper seeks to explore a critique of the limitations of mainstream leadership research and publications and offers a critical management analysis through drawing on a feminist reading of leadership in organizations.

Design/methodology/approach: There has recently been witnessed a growing interest in the promotion of effective leadership within both organizational studies literature and organisational policy as the route to ensuring employee commitment and enhanced organisational performance and the achievement of ever demanding goals and targets. This turn to leadership is represented in both an upsurge of research studies and a proliferation in the promotion of leadership as the organisational panacea.

Cost-effectiveness of alternative strategies for the initial medical management of non-ST elevation acute coronary syndrome: systematic review and decision-analytical modelling.

Objectives: To identify and prioritise key areas of clinical uncertainty regarding the medical management of non-ST elevation acute coronary syndrome (ACS) in current UK practice.

Data Sources: Electronic databases. Consultations with clinical advisors.

A prospective baseline study of frail older people before the introduction of an intermediate care service.

This paper describes the first part of a two-stage research project designed to investigate the clinical and service outcomes of a comprehensive intermediate care service. It is a baseline study of patients presenting to two elderly care departments as emergencies with the clinical syndromes of falls, incontinence, confusion or poor mobility before the introduction of a city-wide intermediate care service. The outcome measures were: mortality; disability (Barthel Index, BI); social activities (Nottingham Extended Activities of Daily Living); service use; and carer distress (General Health Questionnaire -28).

Listening to those on the frontline: lessons for community-based tuberculosis programmes from a qualitative study in Swaziland.

This study explored the experience of people involved in a new community-based tuberculosis (TB) programme in rural Swaziland. Patients have their treatment observed in the community after choosing a treatment supporter (either community health worker or family member) in dialogue with the TB nurse. Interviews were conducted with TB patients, treatment supporters, clinic nurses, nurses working in the hospital-based TB team and medical staff.

Clinical and cost-effectiveness of electroconvulsive therapy for depressive illness, schizophrenia, catatonia and mania: systematic reviews and economic modelling studies.

Objectives: To establish the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for depressive illness, schizophrenia, catatonia and mania.

Data Sources: Electronic bibliographic databases. The reference lists of relevant articles and health services research-related resources were consulted via the Internet.

Relationships between patient dependency, nursing workload and quality.

The nature and value of dependency-acuity-quality (DAQ) demand-side nursing workforce planning methods are set in the context of nursing workforce planning and development. Extensive DAQ data from one of the largest UK nursing workforce studies (347 wards) involving 64 high-quality and 62 low-quality hospital wards, are reconsidered in a workload and quality context. Results generate new insights; for example, poor quality care is more likely to be a feature of larger wards with fluctuating workloads than smaller wards with consistently high workloads owing to inflexible nurse staffing.

A model for effective involvement of private medical practitioners in TB care.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a process to help to develop a new model for partnerships in tuberculosis (TB) control, based on experiences to date. We start by identifying the essential service components needed in order to deliver quality care. Secondly, we identify the main partners in a collaboration or partnership.

Inter-brand differences in iron content of breakfast cereals and their impact on measurement of iron intake.

Background/aims: Fortified breakfast cereals (FBCs) are an important source of iron in the UK diet. In order to quantify their contribution to iron nutrition, food composition data for these products must be accurate. The very large amount of products available, together with inter-brand differences in iron content mean that discrepancies between the iron content of many FBCs and values in standard food composition databases (FCD) exist.

The impact of high non-starch polysaccharide intake on serum micronutrient concentrations in a cohort of women.

Objective: Many public health campaigns encourage increased fibre consumption, but short-term studies suggest that various components of dietary fibre inhibit the absorption of certain micronutrients including carotenoids. These do not take into account long-term adaptation to nutrient intake levels. We aimed to investigate the effect of non-starch polysaccharide (NSP) fibre on plasma micronutrient concentrations in a large free-living population consuming their usual diet.

Control of tuberculosis in an urban setting in Nepal: public-private partnership.

Objectives: To implement and evaluate a public-private partnership to deliver the internationally recommended strategy DOTS for the control of tuberculosis (TB) in Lalitpur municipality, Nepal, where it is estimated that 50% of patients with TB are managed in the private sector.

Methods: A local working group developed a public-private partnership for control of TB, which included diagnosis by private practitioners, direct observation of treatment and tracing of patients who missed appointments by nongovernmental organizations, and provision of training and drugs by the Nepal National TB Programme (NTP). The public-private partnership was evaluated through baseline and follow-up surveys of private practitioners, private pharmacies, and private laboratories, together with records kept by the Nepal NTP.

Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques and spatial-temporal modelling for medical EIT.

Many imaging problems such as imaging with electrical impedance tomography (EIT) can be shown to be inverse problems: that is either there is no unique solution or the solution does not depend continuously on the data. As a consequence solution of inverse problems based on measured data alone is unstable, particularly if the mapping between the solution distribution and the measurements is also nonlinear as in EIT. To deliver a practical stable solution, it is necessary to make considerable use of prior information or regularization techniques.

Health and fitness series--5. Managing anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders.

At a time when obesity is a major public health concern, society paradoxically prefers thinness. This, along with the increase in dieting seen over recent years, has inevitably been linked to a rise in the incidence of eating disorders. This article describes the features and complications of eating disorders and gives advice on how these disorders can be identified and managed.