312 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 cross-sectional study of 379 healthcare workers in Northern Uganda reveals that approximately half lack adequate knowledge for snakebite management, a deficit strongly linked to geographic location and outdated training, highlighting a critical gap between clinician self-efficacy and objective competence that threatens patient safety.
This pilot study demonstrates that a gamified digital platform significantly improved college students' self-efficacy and knowledge regarding substance use and overdose response, correlating with a substantial increase in campus naloxone distribution and warranting further randomized controlled trials.
This retrospective cohort study of 384 MDR-TB patients in Ghana treated with second-line all-oral drugs found that while gastrointestinal adverse events were common and mostly mild, the presence of comorbidities significantly increased the risk of adverse events, whereas older age was associated with a lower risk, ultimately resulting in a 74.9% successful treatment outcome.
This paper reports on a usability study of a prototype AI-driven air-safety tool (AISaT) involving ten hospital staff members, which identified specific interface improvements and highlighted critical decisions regarding data variables, infection assumptions, and user autonomy needed for future development.
This study develops an individual-based transmission model demonstrating that improving indoor air quality significantly reduces respiratory virus transmission at the population level, with the greatest benefits achieved by targeting interventions to high-risk locations rather than deploying them randomly.
This study utilizes quantitative metagenomics to reveal that phages, prophages, and plasmids contribute to the persistence of nontuberculous mycobacteria in chloraminated drinking water by encoding functions related to disinfectant tolerance and stress response, while also highlighting complex, site-specific phage-host dynamics.
This qualitative study across six low- and middle-income countries identifies routine community outreach as the most effective strategy for reaching out-of-school girls with HPV vaccination, while highlighting critical challenges related to data disaggregation, tailored approaches for specific subpopulations, and the cost sustainability of these delivery models.
This cross-sectional study of Finnish adults found no dose-response associations between active commuting and anxiety symptoms or mental wellbeing, nor did the perceived greenness of the commute route moderate these relationships.
Although Zambia exhibits high average coverage of antenatal care components, significant gaps persist in early initiation and contact frequency, with care quality strongly influenced by maternal education, pregnancy intention, and regional disparities.
This study investigates why the United States has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child by employing a new "veto fulcrum" framework to demonstrate how powerful individual actors have obstructed ratification through undemocratic executive decisions despite broad public and professional support.