223 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 study demonstrates that benzalkonium chloride from disinfectants accumulates in household dust, where higher concentrations correlate with increased microbial tolerance, suggesting that indoor antimicrobial use may drive the development of microbial resistance.
This study analyzes noise complaint data from Whidbey Island Naval Air Station to demonstrate that current annual noise models fail to capture the full scope of community impacts, revealing widespread negative sentiment, health concerns, and life disruptions driven by low-frequency noise and training schedules that necessitate improved metrics and operational adjustments.
A 2021 cross-sectional study in Dar es Salaam reveals that adherence to national HIV viral load testing guidelines is suboptimal due to significant delays in sample collection and result turnaround, poor documentation, and challenges related to patient negligence and storage capacity.
This study challenges the prevailing view that female genital cutting (FGC) stems from maternal disempowerment by demonstrating that mothers' attitudes strongly predict their daughters' circumcision status, with this predictive relationship actually strengthening rather than weakening in high-prevalence regions.
Through a two-round Delphi study with 20 experts in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya, this paper identifies critical priorities for strengthening school WASH implementation, including coordinated governance, dedicated funding, inclusive infrastructure, and menstrual hygiene management, to improve learner health and educational equity.
This systematic review and meta-analysis of 38 studies concludes that school-based interventions, particularly psychological and social-emotional skills training, are effective in reducing youth loneliness, although findings should be interpreted with caution due to significant study heterogeneity and reporting inconsistencies.
This cross-sectional study of over 62,000 older adults in India found that household use of unclean cooking fuels is significantly associated with increased depression symptoms, particularly among those living in urban areas.
This study concludes that while AI-driven disease surveillance at Tanzania's Julius Nyerere International Airport is currently infeasible due to infrastructure deficits, workforce gaps, and policy limitations, strategic investments in these areas could enable future implementation to strengthen public health security in low-resource settings.
This study of Ethiopian caregivers of children with severe acute malnutrition reveals that higher caregiver knowledge, driven by factors like literacy, wealth, and health service utilization but hindered by depression, is significantly associated with improved infant feeding and water, sanitation, and hygiene practices.
This study of 859 secondary school students in Bukavu, DRC, found that young people's intention to use mobile health apps for comprehensive sexuality education is primarily driven by performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and social influence, with age serving as a significant moderator that strengthens these effects among younger adolescents.