433 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.
Using 2024 UNICEF data and Bayesian spatial forecasting, this study reveals that significant geographical inequalities persist across Africa, with 41 of 49 countries unlikely to achieve the SDG 3.2 under-five mortality target by 2030, highlighting the urgent need for prioritized interventions in high-risk regions like West Africa.
This paper analyzes global COVID-19 vaccination data from 2021 to 2024, revealing that while primary series coverage reached high levels among older adults and health workers by the end of 2023, significant disparities persisted across income groups and regions, with lower booster uptake and limited 2024 coverage highlighting the urgent need for sustainably financed adult immunization platforms.
This policy analysis of the Rehabilitation Task Force's documents reveals that while Gaza's prosthetic and orthotic sector excels in policy formulation, the intentional destruction of infrastructure and withholding of resources have critically undermined its capacity to deliver essential products, personnel, and services, necessitating urgent international intervention to restore care for persons with disabilities.
A mediation analysis of the WINGS randomized controlled trial in Delhi, India, reveals that an integrated preconception-to-childhood intervention package significantly improved infant weight-for-age at six months primarily by enhancing fetal growth and reducing the incidence of small-for-gestational-age births.
This implementation research study evaluates a community-based maternal and newborn care model in rural Galmudug, Somalia, finding that while the program achieved high acceptability, coverage, and competency among community health workers, its long-term sustainability and equitable reach require addressing systemic challenges such as workload, referral pathways, and the needs of marginalized groups.
This study reveals that health system managers in Kenya's Lake Victoria basin view ceiling nets as a feasible and acceptable complementary vector control strategy, provided that implementation addresses systemic bottlenecks through community engagement, task-shifting to community health promoters, and strengthened supply chains.
This study reveals that Peripheral Artery Disease awareness is critically low among Chinese-speaking communities in California and highlights significant regional variations in preferred health information sources, underscoring the need for tailored, community-based education strategies.
This longitudinal cohort study in semi-rural Benin reveals that child mortality from birth to 14 years is concentrated in early life and primarily driven by neonatal respiratory distress and subsequent malaria, highlighting the critical need for improved neonatal care and scaled-up malaria prevention strategies.
A study in peri-urban Lusaka, Zambia, found that 29% of weaning foods were contaminated with *E. coli*, with animal source foods posing a significantly higher microbiological risk than porridge or non-animal foods, highlighting critical gaps in household hygiene practices that need to be addressed in nutrition guidelines.
In a rural Bangladeshi cohort, a combined food production and hygiene intervention failed to reduce the high burden of enteric pathogens, yet repeated subclinical infections were found to be significantly associated with enteric dysfunction and impaired child growth.