43 papers
Health policy sits at the crossroads of medical science and public decision-making, shaping how communities access care and respond to health crises. This field examines everything from insurance regulations and vaccine distribution to the economic impact of new treatments, translating complex research into real-world guidelines that affect us all.
On Gist.Science, we curate the latest preprints from medRxiv specifically focused on health policy, ensuring you never miss a critical study before it reaches formal publication. For every new paper in this category, our team generates both a clear, plain-language overview and a detailed technical summary, making these vital insights accessible to everyone from policymakers to concerned citizens. Below are the most recent health policy studies from medRxiv, now explained and ready for you to explore.
This study compared physical activity policy evaluation tools across 27 EU member states and found that diverse indicators and inconsistent methodologies lead to significantly varying country rankings, highlighting the need for clearer communication, synergy, and reproducibility in future evaluations.
This longitudinal qualitative case study of West Sumbawa District, Indonesia, reveals that while the institutionalization of a district health data bank achieved structural formalization through centralized authority, its functional sustainability is hindered by unaddressed political economy factors, including resource constraints, uneven workload distribution, and underdeveloped accountability mechanisms.
Using 2023-2024 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey data, this study reveals that older women exhibit significantly higher awareness and utilization of HIV self-testing and antenatal testing compared to adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), highlighting the urgent need for targeted, AGYW-centered strategies to address these disparities and improve equitable access to HIV services.
This study presents the first needs-based workforce plan for audiology services in England, utilizing epidemiological and demographic models to project that while adult staffing requirements will rise by 7.4% by 2035, pediatric needs could increase by up to 71.2% depending on case complexity, thereby highlighting an urgent imperative for increased recruitment and training to meet future population demands.
This scoping review and bibliometric analysis of 588 Indonesian malaria publications from 2015 to 2025 reveals a continuously growing and diversifying research landscape dominated by environmental and community-based studies, highlighting the need for future strategies to balance biomedical priorities with implementation and diagnostic research to support elimination goals.
This frequency-matched case-control study of UK working-age adults reveals that those not in education, employment, or training (NEET) exhibit significantly higher rates of likely undiagnosed autism and ADHD traits compared to their employed or educated peers, with these neurodivergent traits contributing to NEET status both directly and indirectly through increased health burdens and lower educational attainment.
This large-scale randomized control trial in UK restaurants demonstrates that adding Nutri-Score labels to menus, alongside calorie information, significantly improves both the perceived effectiveness of menu labeling and the nutritional quality of food orders compared to calorie labeling alone.
By applying a novel MAIHDA-DiD approach to European survey data, this study reveals that while colorectal cancer screening programmes increased overall uptake, they failed to reduce—and potentially widened—inequalities by disproportionately benefiting already advantaged subgroups, particularly those not living alone.
This Bayesian spatial analysis of Texas counties reveals that late-stage breast cancer burden is significantly higher in rural areas with limited mammography access and lower population density, highlighting the need for geographically targeted interventions that address both infrastructure gaps and broader structural barriers to preventive care.
Through a stakeholder-led prioritization exercise using the CHNRI method, this study identified and ranked 61 context-specific maternal and newborn health research priorities in The Gambia, with a strong emphasis on delivery-focused implementation and health systems research—particularly pre-transfer emergency management—to inform the country's successor RMNCAH plan and align research investment with national needs.