Policy Briefs Research Articles

What is Known About the Numbers, Experiences and Outcomes of Young People Transitioning from Out-of-home Care in Indonesia?

Young people transitioning from out-of-home care (OOHC), commonly known as care leavers, are widely recognised internationally as a vulnerable group often subject to disadvantage. Yet, most studies of their pathways and outcomes to date have been completed in affluent Global North countries, and there have been relatively few reports on their experiences in Global South locations where different political, legislative, cultural and religious contexts exist. The particular attention of this article is on the Republic of Indonesia. Previous literature regarding children and young people in OOHC in Indonesia highlighted the poor quality of care within OOHC institutions and their adverse experiences of institutionalisation. In recent years, the Government of Indonesia has encouraged deinstitutionalisation by preventing family separation, promoting family-based alternative care and only utilising residential care as a last resort for child care. Nevertheless, little scholarly attention and studies have been given to researching young people leaving OOHC, who are likely to have poor life outcomes. Utilising existing grey government and non-government literature and reports, this policy briefing critically examines what is known about the numbers, experiences and outcomes of young people transitioning from OOHC in Indonesia.

Where should health system investments be made to protect the mental health of healthcare workers?

Abstract Background This study explores trends and work-related determinants of mental health and wellbeing among health and care workers in Europe since the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim is to determine where investments can best be made to protect and support mental health and wellbeing among health and care workers to improve retention and recruitment. Methods Data are analysed from the National Health Service staff survey in England and the Health Service Executive ‘Your Opinion Counts’ survey in Ireland to explore trends in mental health and wellbeing and burnout. Evidence is then taken from a series of European Observatory policy briefs, based on expert-led literature reviews, to explore determinants of poor mental health and wellbeing and to identify potential areas for investment. Results Rates of burnout and poor mental health and wellbeing have increased in England and Ireland since the start of the pandemic among all professional groups. Workplace-based factors are important determinants of poor mental health and wellbeing, and can be grouped into: macro-level structural factors such as staff shortages, poor working conditions and low pay; meso-level organisational factors including poor leadership, and insufficient education, training and support; micro-level individual factors such as insufficient self-care or not seeking support. However, determinants at the micro-level, especially seeking support from others, are largely shaped by structural or organisational factors. Conclusions Increased financing to address structural and organisational determinants of mental health and wellbeing contributes to improved patient care, better staff experience, lower rates of absenteeism, and enhanced recruitment and retention. It is therefore one of the best health system investments that can be made.

Improving Performance in Surgical department through Communicating Information to Decision Makers: Intervention Study in a tertiary Hospital

Hospital performance evaluation is crucial for early detection of pitfalls, and problem-solving. Data shouldn’t be passively collected. They must be measured and understood through an underlying conceptual framework. Purpose: The General Surgical Department in collaboration with the Public Health Department had the objective of developing a module for periodic monitoring and evaluation of the eight general surgical units based on calculated key performance indicators (KPIs), Composite Indices (CIs) and communication of growing out information through policy briefs directed to the heads of units for better resources allocation and evidence based decision making. Methodology: An operations research using pre-post intervention design. The exploratory component was completed in six months in the 8 units of the department. Pretest service statistical data analyzed KPIs derived from hospital bed and surgical room utilization. Data were utilized for the calculation of 5 CIs for each unit. Study intervention included the development of policy briefs (PB) that were submitted to the head of the department. Informed decisions were made guided by the info-graph data in the form of traffic color coded ranking matrix to promote various services and to improve performance in the department units particularly lower ranked units. The post-test included reanalyzing of the service statistical data. Findings: Comparing pre-posttest figures revealed improvement in the calculated KPIs and CIs. Originality and practical implications: Bringing up a novel, feasible monitoring and evaluation model using refitted tools would support surgical unit heads in evidence-based decision-making and eventually improve performance efficiency.

Evaluating the effects, implementation experience and political economy of primary healthcare facility autonomy reforms within counties in Kenya: a mixed methods study protocol

IntroductionThere is a growing emphasis on improving primary healthcare (PHC) services and granting frontline service providers more decision-making autonomy. In October 2023, Kenya enacted legislation mandating nationwide facility autonomy. There...

ECO-MIND: enhancing pro-environmental behaviours and mental health through nature contact for urban youth – a research protocol for a multi-country study using geographic ecological momentary assessment and mental models

IntroductionUrban youth are experiencing increasing mental health problems due to diverse personal, social and environmental concerns. Youths’ detachment from natural environments, including green and blue spaces, may intensify such issues...

Evaluating artificial intelligence-driven stress echocardiography analysis system (EASE study): A mixed method study

IntroductionThe use and value of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven tools and techniques are under investigation in detecting coronary artery disease (CAD). EchoGo Pro is a patented AI-driven stress echocardiography analysis system...

Policy Briefs With Personality: How to Innovatively Disseminate Evidence for Advocacy.

Policy Briefs With Personality: How to Innovatively Disseminate Evidence for Advocacy.

Navigating Climate Change: Alberta’s Carbon Program for Sustainable Agriculture

In 2021, the Government of Alberta launched the carbon program initiative to evaluate environmental practices and greenhouse gas reduction strategies in the agricultural sector. The program has produced various technical reports, policy briefing papers, industry surveys and roundtables. This policy paper consolidates the findings of the research. It presents an analysis of Alberta’s greenhouse gas emission profile, historical trends and the policy framework, as well as an examination of mitigation strategies such as carbon pricing and their effectiveness in Alberta’s agricultural system. The key question addressed in this paper is how Alberta can continue to support its thriving agricultural industry while responding to the federal and global calls to significantly reduce its methane and nitrous oxide emissions and fulfil Canada’s climate commitments. The paper also outlines the obstacles that producers encounter when implementing these strategies, as well as the limitations of the current emission estimation methodology in measuring the impact. To effectively address the challenges of emission mitigation in Alberta’s agriculture sector, a co-ordinated approach at both the federal and provincial levels is crucial. The paper concludes with the following recommendations that outline specific actions to help reduce uncertainties and support producers in implementing best management practices (BMPs) to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Writing Effective Policy Briefs to Bridge Research and Policy

Writing Effective Policy Briefs to Bridge Research and Policy

Beyond BiCIKL: Towards Building an AI-Assisted “Biodiversity Supergraph”

BiCIKL (Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library) is a European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 project (2021–2024) building a new community of research infrastructures (RIs), researchers and other stakeholders, through improved access to interlinked, open and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) biodiversity data along the biodiversity research cycle (specimens, sequences, taxon names, publications) (Penev et al. 2022). The project’s 14 partners developed or substantially improved 16 tools and services currently in process of onboarding to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), presented in the FAIR Data Place (FDP) of BiCIKL’s flagship product, the Biodiversity Knowledge Hub (BKH). The tools and data were used in Open Call projects, performed by research groups worldwide. A key achievement of BiCIKL is the establishment of several new bi-directional links between the participating RIs through shared and interoperable data standards and web services. The sustainability of the BiCIKL services and especially of the strong collaborative spirit developed through the project will be ensured by a membership agreement for the BKH maintenance and further development. The results of BiCIKL are diverse and tackle various aspects of the implementation of open science practices in biodiversity research. The project partners and external collaborators from the Open Call projects published more than 80 papers and conference abstracts (see the article collections in Penev et al. 2022a and Thessen et al. 2023), two policy briefs (Penev et al. 2024, Agosti et al. 2024), three Biodiversity Information Science (TDWG) symposia (2021, 2023, 2024), several videos and factsheets and other training materials, guidelines and best practice recommendations, and so on. In the special focus of BiCIKL was the extraction and liberation of data from the PDFs of several thousands of published biodiversity articles making it accessible and re-usable. The new BiCIKL community proved to be successful in both technological innovation and long-lasting spirit of collaboration between biodiversity and genomics researchers, data repositories, RIs, publishers and other stakeholders. Beyond BiCIKL, we envisage our work towards further integration and interoperability between data domains by embracing human-in-the-loop collaborations, enhanced by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The implementation of AI and Large Language Models (LLM) should be possible when considering an important condition: to understand the complexity of past, recent and future changes in biodiversity and natural environments the use of AI tools should be based on аdequately curated, semantically structured and interlinked biodiversity data. We see this radical new step as a concerted community effort towards building a “Biodiversity Supergraph” (Fig. 1), understood here as a two-component ecosystem consisting of: centrally orchestrated system of tools and services, and distributed sources of transformed, semantically enhanced FAIR Linked Open Data, supplied by the partnering RIs. centrally orchestrated system of tools and services, and distributed sources of transformed, semantically enhanced FAIR Linked Open Data, supplied by the partnering RIs. The “Biodiversity Supergraph'' will provide integration of the biodiversity data on a scale and operational level that has never been attempted before. It is key for the next decade, to enable a baseline of global, biodiversity-related information serving organisations, academia, industry and society.

Cohort profile: The Aboriginal Families Study – a prospective cohort of Aboriginal children and their mothers and caregivers in South Australia

PurposeThe Aboriginal Families Study is a prospective, intergenerational cohort study with well-established Aboriginal governance arrangements and community partnerships to support all research processes including data collection, interpretation and knowledge translation.Participants344...

Response to Health Crises in Africa: Insight From Executing a 2-Year Project in Nigeria

Science advice aids in integrating scientific evidence into policymaking. In Africa, a significant gap exists between science and policy, necessitating high-quality advisory services. The Multifaceted Response Development from Research on COVID-19 in Africa (MURDER COVID-19) project by the Nigerian Young Academy (May 2021–April 2023) aimed to bridge this gap. Project outputs included eight policy briefs, 10 webinars, a hybrid international conference, and a searchable research equipment database. The project effectively dispelled COVID-19 myths, promoted vaccine confidence, and highlighted the need to strengthen health systems and research capacity. The project provides valuable lessons/recommendations and serves as a model for collaborative initiatives addressing health crises and enhancing research capacity.

Eliciting psychiatric nurses' preferences for workplace violence prevention: a protocol for discrete choice experiment.

Workplace violence against healthcare workers has become a serious global public health problem. The incidence of workplace violence towards Psychiatric nurses is higher than in all other medical institutions, up to 84.2% per year. It not only negatively affects many aspects of healthcare workers' lives, but also destroys the harmony of the nurse-patient relationship and reduces the quality of nursing care. The number of psychiatric nurses in China was approximately 96,000, far lower than most other countries and unable to meet the growing demand for mental health. However, the increase in workplace violence has future exacerbates the current shortage of nurses. Therefore, it is necessary to develop effective strategies to prevent psychiatric nurses from suffering from workplace violence, thereby to reduce nurse turnover and improve the quality of nursing care. A comprehensive understanding of psychiatric nurses' preferences and priorities for preventing workplace violence is an important prerequisite before formulating strategies and taking measures. Unfortunately, to date, no research has investigated the psychiatric nurses' preferences. Therefore, a discrete choice experiment (DCE) is conducting to explore the psychiatric nurses' preferences for workplace violence prevention. This article reports on methodological details of the DCE. Six attributes were developed through a literature review, one-on-one interviews and focus group discussions. D-efficient design in NGENE was used to generate choice sets. SPSS 24.0 will be used for descriptive analysis of social Demography, and Stata 16.0 will be used for analysis of DCE data. A multinomial logit model will be used to preliminarily explore trade-offs between workplace violence prevention characteristics included in the choice tasks. Then, in a mixed logit model, we plan to choose some arbitrarily defined base violence prevention program and will use the nlcom command to evaluate the probability of an alternative violence prevention program. The study was approved by the relevant ethics committees. Our findings will emphasize priority intervention areas based on the preferences of psychiatric nurses and provide references for hospitals to develop and improve workplace violence prevention strategies. The results will be shared through seminars, policy briefs, peer-reviewed journal articles and online blogs.

Evaluation of the Friendship Bench’ Circle Kubatana Tose (CKT): an add-on support group intervention – a mixed-methods pilot interventional cohort study protocol

IntroductionMental disorders are endemic. However, the mental health treatment gap remains high, especially in low-resource settings. Task-shifting is a universally recommended strategy to mitigate the care gap. The Friendship Bench...

A Quick Fix for Promoting Reading Compliance and Improved Class Discussions: Quizgecko and Low-Stakes Quizzes

Quizzes and exams are widely used to assess student learning. As such, writing high-quality questions for these assessments remains a perennial task, but it is also time-consuming. Time spent crafting these questions is unavailable for developing more engaging assignments and classroom activities. In this Quick Fix, the author describes how he used the AI question generator, Quizgecko, to quickly produce dozens of candidate questions based on journal articles, book chapters, and policy briefs. With the time saved, he replaced pop quizzes with low-stakes quizzes for each week’s readings. This led to increased reading compliance and stimulated more reading-informed class discussions.

Hidden From Sight—From the Closet to the Paywall: A Rapid Evaluation of Restricted and Monetized Access to LGBTQ+ Inclusive Palliative, End-of-Life, and Bereavement Care Research

IntroductionLGBTQ+ people experience higher burdens of life-limiting illnesses, poorer health outcomes, and multilevel barriers to accessing palliative, end-of-life, and bereavement care. High quality evidence is needed to inform interventions to address these inequities, and inform inclusive practices and policies. Despite global initiatives to improve availability of peer-reviewed journal articles, the minority of research is open access (OA). We aimed to evaluate accessibility of literature related to LGBTQ+ inclusive palliative, end-of-life, and bereavement care. MethodsA rapid review of the evidence regarding LGBTQ+ inclusive palliative, end-of-life, and bereavement care was conducted; OA status of identified articles was assessed. Articles from three published systematic reviews were included (2012, 2016, and 2020). Review articles were updated using the original search and inclusion/exclusion strategies. Results66 articles related to LGBTQ+ inclusive palliative, end-of-life and bereavement care were identified between 1990-2022. Of these, only 21% (n=14) were OA. Of the OA articles, 79% were published between 2017 and 2022, and 50% were published between 2020-2022, reflecting more recent shifts towards OA publishing. DiscussionHealth and social care professionals and policy makers rely on access to high quality evidence to inform their work. Failing to make articles related to the needs of LGBTQ+ people and populations OA risks further marginalisation and worsened inequities. Innovative journal policies and funding are needed to enable access, particularly for research that foregrounds the needs of marginalised communities. Where articles are currently behind paywalls, there is a need for accessible summaries or policy briefs to inform inclusive policy and practice.

A health technology assessment of COVID-19 vaccination for Nigerian decision-makers: Identifying stakeholders and pathways to support evidence uptake

BackgroundNigeria commenced rollout of vaccination for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in March 2021 as part of the national public health response to the pandemic. Findings from appropriately contextualized cost–effectiveness analyses (CEA) as part of a wider process involving health technology assessment (HTA) approaches have been important in informing decision-making in this area. In this paper we outline the processes that were followed to identify COVID-19 vaccine stakeholders involved in the selection, approval, funding, procurement and rollout of vaccines in Nigeria, and describe the process routes we identified to support uptake of HTA-related information for evidence-informed policy in Nigeria.MethodsOur approach to engaging with policy-makers and other stakeholders as part of an HTA of COVID vaccination in Nigeria consisted of three steps, namely: (i) informal discussions with key stakeholders; (ii) stakeholder mapping, analysis and engagement; and (iii) communication and dissemination strategies for the HTA-relevant evidence produced. The analysis of the stakeholder mapping uses the power/interest grid framework.ResultsThe informal discussion with key stakeholders generated six initial policy questions. Further discussions with policy-makers yielded three suitable policy questions for analysis: which COVID-19 vaccines should be bought; what is the optimal mode of delivery of these vaccines; and what are the cost and cost–effectiveness of vaccinating people highlighted in Nigeria’s phase 2 vaccine rollout prioritized by the government, especially the inclusion of those aged between 18 and 49 years. The stakeholder mapping exercise highlighted the range of organizations and groups within Nigeria that could use the information from this HTA to guide decision-making. These stakeholders included both public/government, private and international organizations The dissemination plan developed included disseminating the full HTA results to key stakeholders; production of policy briefs; and presentation at different national and international conferences and peer-reviewed publications.ConclusionsHTA processes that involve stakeholder engagement will help ensure important policy questions are taken into account when designing any HTA including any underpinning evidence generation. Further guidance about stakeholder engagement throughout HTA is required, especially for those with low interest in vaccine procurement and use.

A hybrid framework for sustaining and managing Somali indigenous knowledge

This paper represents the important of preserving Somali Indigenous Knowledge for the future generations to come. This paper presents a systematic review of the indigenous knowledge Management Systems deployed for different sectors in Africa and other countries in the world. The acquisition and management of IK is being used to rejuvenate endangered cultural practices and improve domestic socio-economic sustainability of Somali society. This paper presents how social media platforms and their components could be integrated into the KMS to manage and sustain Somali Indigenous knowledge (IK). The discovery of knowledge and its utilization is now fueled by the advancement of technology, which connects users to external sources through different platforms. The rapidly increasing use of SM and mobile technologies creates opportunities to form knowledge networks that can facilitate the process of creating, preserving, and sharing knowledge and skills that are unique to communities in the Somali context. As an oral society with rich IK and other cultural practices, Somali society lacked a framework to organize the existing knowledge in various methods. We used knowledge products from journal articles, policy documents, working papers, policy briefs, and other gray literature. The paper refers to existing methodology E-learning and KM functions. If properly integrated, this method first identifies functional similarities between SM, E-Learning, and KM systems and their interactions. The proposed framework consists of two functional parts; KM and SM. The KM part involves knowledge capturing, validation, formatting, storing, and distribution. SM part of the framework involves knowledge presentation, sharing, and application. Since the Somalis are said to be an oral society, this framework helps to capture and disseminate IK residing in knowledge holders.

Scoping review protocol on the perception and attitude of women on methods for collecting cervicovaginal samples for human papillomavirus testing in sub-Saharan Africa

IntroductionSub-Saharan Africa (SSA) regions have the highest burden of cervical cancer (CC), accounting for nearly a quarter of global mortality. Many women in SSA are reluctant to access CC screening...

Strengthening legal preparedness and response within the global health emergency framework: the role of the GHSA Legal Preparedness Action Package*

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed failings in preparedness and response across the world and a shortfall in global health security. The crisis also highlighted shortcomings in global and regional legal frameworks, including the International Health Regulations (2005) and relevant European Union law, as well as in national public health legislation and emergency plans. Lessons learned from the pandemic converge around strengthening preparedness and response capacities at all levels, with special attention to be paid to legal preparedness, a critical component of public health emergency preparedness. Improving legal capacities at country level is one of the strategic priorities set by the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), which established a new Legal Preparedness Action Package (LP AP) in order to elevate attention to and the importance of legal preparedness worldwide. Since 2021 the LP AP has been front and centre in international efforts to bridge the legal preparedness gap at national level. In bringing together technical experts in global health law and government health policy officials from a broad range of countries and partners, the LP AP seeks to set a foundation for legal preparedness by developing technical and capacity-building tools, legal guidelines, policy briefs, information and training. This article aims to illustrate and contextualize the work of the GHSA LP AP and raise awareness about the importance of its contribution to enhanced global health security. It also intends to highlight how its work promotes and develops synergies with parallel initiatives, processes and tools, facilitates regime interaction and harmonization of technical assistance and ultimately ensures consistency of action, methodology and approaches.