📄 Category

public and global health

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.

📄 public and global health

Diagnostic Accuracy of WHO IMCI Visual Inspection for Neonatal Jaundice: A Prospective Multi-Country Cohort

A prospective multi-country cohort study of over 14,000 infants reveals that the WHO IMCI visual inspection method for detecting neonatal jaundice has critically low sensitivity (16%) compared to transcutaneous bilirubinometry, indicating that reliance on visual assessment alone is inadequate for screening hyperbilirubinemia in low-resource community settings and necessitates a shift toward affordable, objective diagnostic tools.

Khan, A., Shapiro, A., Yazdani, N. S., Abraham, S. G., Akelo, V., Asante, K. P., Aweyo, F., Cherian, A. G., Jat, M., Jeh (…)2026-09-22
📄 public and global health

Menstrual Health in South India: Knowledge, Stigma, and Barriers to Participation

An exploratory educational evaluation conducted in South India revealed that while most participants recognize menstruation as a biological process, significant stigma, pain, and inadequate facilities persist as barriers to social participation, highlighting the need for gender-inclusive, context-responsive education and improved infrastructure.

Ravi, R., Amitrano, J. A., Seshadri, D.2026-09-22
📄 public and global health

Boosting vaccination uptake using wastewater surveillance: a county-randomized controlled trial

This county-randomized controlled trial found that while a wastewater surveillance-driven social media campaign in New York State significantly increased weekly COVID-19 vaccination rates during an 11-week period, it did not result in a significant difference in overall seasonal vaccination uptake for either COVID-19 or influenza compared to control counties.

Blatz, M. N., Neigel, D., Larsen, D. A., Kmush, B. L.2026-09-21
📄 public and global health

Genomic insights into methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus from Swiss wastewater and clinical samples

This study of Swiss MRSA isolates from 2021–2024 reveals that while wastewater surveillance effectively captures community and livestock-associated lineages (such as ST97) and complements clinical monitoring, it offers limited unique insight into clinical circulation as most major genetic and resistance profiles found in wastewater are already represented in hospital isolates.

Kamer, J., Conforti, S., Brugger, S. D., Francois, P., Gaia, V., Stadler, T., Harbarth, S., Julian, T. R.2026-09-21
📄 public and global health

Spatiotemporal dynamics, factors associated with neonatal mortality and health interventions in Mali: a modeling study

This modeling study analyzes spatiotemporal trends in Mali from 2012 to 2023, identifying persistent high-mortality clusters in specific regions and key protective factors, while projecting that scaling up thermal care, neonatal resuscitation, and clean cord care could avert more than half of preventable neonatal deaths by 2035.

TRAORE, F. B., Sidibe, C. S., Keita, Y., Sidibe, F., Terera, I., Traore, M., Berthe, M., Dembele, H., Belem, B., Kone, K (…)2026-09-21
📄 public and global health

Multi-component chlorination intervention to reduce neonatal infections in healthcare facilities in western Kenya (CLEAN Trial): study protocol for a cluster randomized controlled trial

The CLEAN Trial is a cluster randomized controlled study in western Kenya designed to evaluate whether a multi-component chlorination intervention in healthcare facilities can reduce environmental contamination and lower the incidence of bacterial infections and sepsis among facility-born neonates and their mothers.

Crider, Y., Chiyenge, M., Odoyo, E., Kisiangani, J., Lowe, J., Wangia, J., Bwire, B., Kioko, M., Alexander, K., Nekesa (…)2026-09-21
📄 public and global health

Compound climate extremes, socioeconomic conditions and human mobility influence dengue dynamics heterogeneously across Vietnam

This study analyzes 20 years of data across 670 Vietnamese districts to reveal that dengue risk is heterogeneously driven by compound climate extremes (particularly dry-then-wet sequences), socioeconomic conditions, and human mobility patterns, demonstrating that stratifying these factors by subregion significantly improves the predictive accuracy of early warning systems.

Fletcher, C., Belman, S., Do, K. Q., Pham, Q. D., Nguyen, T. T. T., Gibb, R., Lan, P. T., Tu, T. C., Tuan, N. H., Lührs (…)2026-09-21
📄 public and global health

Insurance coverage, healthcare use, and outpatient payment among adults with disability in Kenya before the SHA transition: a secondary analysis of KDHS 2022

This secondary analysis of the 2022 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey reveals that while adults with disabilities exhibited significantly higher healthcare utilization and hospitalization rates than non-disabled peers, their higher uninsurance rates were largely explained by socioeconomic factors, and most outpatient users still incurred out-of-pocket payments regardless of insurance status, establishing a critical pre-transition benchmark for Kenya's new Social Health Authority.

Amollo, N. W., Ouma, J. O.2026-09-21
📄 public and global health

Implementation strategies for integrating TB treatment into community pharmacies for people with TB/HIV in Uganda using human-centered design methodology

Using a Human-Centered Design methodology in Kampala, Uganda, researchers developed and refined a four-component implementation strategy to integrate tuberculosis treatment into community pharmacies for people with TB/HIV, focusing on trust-building, standardized workflows, capacity strengthening, and quality assurance for future pilot evaluation.

Izudi, J., Cattamanchi, A., Sekaggya-Wiltshire, C., King, R., Kiwanuka, N., Sammann, A.2026-09-17