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.
A mixed-methods study in Zimbabwe demonstrates that a co-developed intervention providing risk-differentiated support and two-week food packs to sex workers testing positive for COVID-19 was feasible, acceptable, and cost-effective, though addressing stigma remains crucial for optimizing future implementation.
This qualitative study in rural Edo, Nigeria, reveals that while older adults possess knowledge of healthy diets and cultural preferences, their dietary choices are predominantly constrained by structural barriers such as economic instability, limited market access, and inadequate government policies, necessitating systemic interventions to support healthy ageing.
This systematic review and meta-analysis of 49 studies evaluates six wastewater concentration principles, revealing that while magnetic bead-based and flocculation methods show superior performance for enveloped and non-enveloped viruses respectively, no single method universally dominates, highlighting the need for context-specific selection in environmental surveillance.
This qualitative study of gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM) in Thailand reveals that while "hi-fun" (chemsex) offers a vital space for pleasure, intimacy, and community acceptance, it also entails significant risks, highlighting the urgent need to shift from abstinence-focused policies toward flexible harm reduction and structural reforms that prioritize dignity, safety, and equity.
This study conducted in Malawi reveals that while people living with HIV and the broader community generally accept the use of advanced Controlled Human Infection Models for pneumococcal and tuberculosis research, they emphasize the critical need for robust safety measures, informed consent, and culturally sensitive community engagement.
This mixed-methods realist evaluation protocol aims to determine how Healthy Conversation Skills (HCS) training enables diverse service providers to effectively deliver Making Every Contact Count (MECC) interventions by identifying which specific training elements work, for whom, and under what circumstances to inform future adaptations and public health policy.
This mixed-methods study demonstrates that a low-cost, point-of-care microscopy toolkit enables community health workers in rural Nigeria to accurately diagnose urogenital schistosomiasis with rapidly improving accuracy over time, validating a feasible community-led strategy for disease elimination.
This multi-country cohort analysis of 1,438 tuberculosis patients across five Southern African sites reveals that while 80% achieved successful treatment outcomes, the overall 15% rate of unsuccessful outcomes (death, loss to follow-up, or failure) exceeds WHO targets and is significantly predicted by multidrug-resistant TB, lack of formal education, and low BMI, highlighting an urgent need for improved retention and management strategies.
This paper presents a unified modeling platform and workflow developed by IARC/WHO that enables cervical cancer prevention policy modeling across 132 low- and middle-income countries by clustering nations based on sexual behavior and HPV transmission patterns to overcome data limitations and support efficient elimination strategies.
A study of over 10,000 women in Bristol found that while individual built environment features showed weak associations with depressive symptoms over an 18-year period, a combined factor of these features was significantly linked to depressive outcomes at baseline and short-term follow-up, though this association diminished over the long term.