434 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 paper pioneers a four-way factorial analysis of U.S. lifespan data to demonstrate that while education and its interactions are the primary drivers of between-group lifespan inequality, such heterogeneity accounts for only a small fraction (7–10%) of total lifespan variance, with the majority arising from individual stochasticity.
This paper argues that for emerging diseases, the timing of vaccine efficacy trials creates a paradox where conducting randomized clinical trials during an outbreak peak increases the likelihood of statistical approval but reduces cost-effectiveness due to delayed implementation, whereas early implementation offers better economic value but risks trial failure due to insufficient transmission.
This study evaluates the interest, power, and operational capacity of key stakeholders in Mali and Burkina Faso to identify a complementary institutional and community framework essential for sustaining and scaling up the Pfizer Chlamydia Project's prevention efforts among youths aged 15–24.
This field study demonstrates that spraying a 10% lambda-cyhalothrin microcapsule suspension effectively reduces tick density in wild natural environments for 3–4 weeks, offering a viable strategy for preventing tick-borne diseases in outdoor gatherings and post-disaster resettlement areas.
This retrospective study of 1,000 adult patients at a Ghanaian regional hospital demonstrates that linear discriminant analysis using routinely collected vital signs, particularly body weight, can accurately classify patients into hypotensive, normotensive, or hypertensive categories, supporting the feasibility of data-driven risk stratification for cardiovascular and metabolic conditions.
This study demonstrates that collaborative mapping with residents of two peripheral communities in Salvador, Brazil, effectively identified specific local sanitation needs and intervention priorities—particularly regarding sewage and waste management near local rivers—that are essential for preventing leptospirosis, revealing a negative correlation between perceived intervention needs and predicted disease seropositivity.
This paper presents CASPER, the largest publicly available untargeted wastewater metagenomic dataset to date, comprising 1,206 deep-sequenced samples from across the United States that enable population-scale pathogen surveillance, correlation with clinical trends, and the detection of emerging viral threats like avian influenza and measles.
This study quantifies the excess mortality in Hong Kong from 2014 to 2023, estimating that extreme heat caused between 1,455 and 3,238 preventable deaths—disproportionately affecting males and the elderly—and highlighting a mortality burden comparable to diabetes that necessitates urgent, targeted public health interventions.
This paper outlines the protocol for a mixed-methods process evaluation of the EMPOWER-D trial, which aims to assess the implementation, mechanisms of impact, and contextual factors of a participatory learning and action intervention for preventing type 2 diabetes in community settings across Pakistan and Afghanistan.
This retrospective study of 46 Hump-nosed pit viper envenomation cases in Coastal Karnataka characterizes the clinical syndrome and complications, notably venom-induced consumptive coagulopathy and acute kidney injury, while evaluating the limited efficacy of current treatments like antivenom and blood products to underscore the urgent need for a species-specific antivenom.