272 papers
Public and global health examines how we protect communities from disease, manage outbreaks, and improve well-being across the world. This vital field connects diverse research on everything from infectious disease control and vaccination strategies to the social factors that shape our collective health. Because these studies often impact policy and daily life, understanding them quickly is more important than ever.
At Gist.Science, we track every new preprint published in this category on medRxiv to ensure you never miss a breakthrough. We process each submission to provide both plain-language explanations for general readers and detailed technical summaries for experts, making complex findings accessible to everyone.
Below are the latest papers in public and global health, freshly summarized from the most recent medRxiv releases.
This study demonstrates that a one-year interruption of vector control activities on Bioko Island caused a rapid resurgence in malaria transmission and burden in 2024, but the subsequent rapid reimplementation of indoor residual spraying successfully contained and reversed this trend, highlighting the critical importance of sustained control efforts.
This study demonstrates that incorporating just three discharge characteristics into risk prediction models significantly improves the accuracy of six-month post-discharge mortality predictions for under-five children with suspected sepsis in Ugandan hospitals compared to models relying solely on admission data.
A UK cohort study found that while smoking and dual use of smoking and vaping during pregnancy are significantly associated with lower birthweights and longer hospital stays, vaping alone showed no such adverse neonatal outcomes, highlighting the critical importance of quitting smoking completely without reverting to it if a pregnant woman chooses to vape.
This qualitative study identifies specific usability barriers and "pain points" faced by people with disabilities when seeking COVID-19 health information online, highlighting challenges related to distracting layouts, physical fatigue, and low trust in AI-generated content, while recommending that future digital health design incorporate direct user feedback from this community.
This mixed-methods study of Michigan gun buybacks reveals that many individuals acquire unwanted firearms through non-purchase transfers like inheritance, leading them to seek safe, non-punitive disposal options driven by concerns over misuse, theft, and the desire for emotional relief.
This study demonstrates that integrating machine learning-based variable selection, particularly using Random Forest, significantly improves the accuracy of Heat Vulnerability Index assessments in Chicago by identifying key determinants like poverty, lack of air conditioning, and elderly population proportion, outperforming conventional unsupervised PCA methods in predicting heat-related excess mortality.
This study demonstrates that combining multiple epigenetic clocks into a holistic biological age acceleration factor reveals significant positive associations between adiposity measures (BMI, waist circumference, and waist-to-height ratio) and accelerated biological aging in a young Filipino adult cohort.
This retrospective analysis of 572 self-pay patients on a US telehealth platform reveals that while long-term GLP-1 RA treatment yields substantial weight loss comparable to clinical trials, significant gender disparities exist where females achieve higher rates of major weight loss but males demonstrate greater platform engagement, suggesting that current "one-size-fits-all" telehealth models may require tailored strategies to address biological and behavioral differences.
A simulation study projects that increasing physical activity across Australia would significantly improve population health, reduce premature deaths, and boost economic output, although the net health and economic benefits are maximized by helping the least active individuals meet guidelines rather than pushing the entire population to maximum activity levels due to diminishing returns and injury risks at extreme exertion.
This study in Kilifi County, Kenya, reveals a substantial prevalence of urogenital schistosomiasis among women of reproductive age and identifies haematuria as the strongest independent predictor of infection, underscoring the need to integrate screening into reproductive health services.