[note from HIFA moderator, NPW: due to a technical glitch I am forwarding this message from Claire Allen on her behalf]
Hello everyone,
Welcome to the December 2022 newsletter from Evidence Aid. Please forward it to anyone who might be interested. If they would like to receive our newsletters directly, they should email info@evidenceaid.org.
As we reach the end of the year, we have more than 1300 summaries across our special collections including 222 for resilient health systems, nearly 160 for the health of refugees and asylum seekers, more than 130 on the injuries caused by disasters such as earthquakes and windstorms, and 600 relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic. To help maintain our work, please consider a December donation to ensure that it continues into 2023: details here.
If you have time to let us know how you use any of our collections, please do so as we are developing some case studies about the impact of these and would very much appreciate input from users. Also, if there are other ways in which we can work with you or you have suggestions for how our work can be improved, we would be pleased to hear from you. If you aren’t sure of what we do or how we might explore opportunities together, we’ve developed a one-page explanatory document in an easy and accessible format, which you can get here.
Excerpts from recent additions to our evidence collections: click the link to get to the full summary
Community health workers and health equity in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)
Community health workers are widely used to reduce health inequity in LMICs and this review looks at evidence from 167 studies. It shows that community health workers successfully reached many marginalized groups that experience barriers to accessing health services although the enhanced access did not always lead to better population health outcomes. The authors of the review concluded that building meaningful partnerships between community health workers, communities and policymakers will help to confront and address the underlying structures of inequity.
(You can find the full summary for this review in our Resilient Health Systems Collection)
Symptoms of COVID-19: overview of systematic reviews
COVID-19 remains an issue of substantial concern in many parts of the world and there have been many systematic reviews of the symptoms that might help practitioners and policy makers to identify and treat the condition. This overview includes 102 of these reviews, identifying a total of 74 symptoms of COVID-19, including 17 symptoms of the respiratory system, 21 of the neurological system, 10 of the gastrointestinal system, and 16 and 10 that were skin or eye related, respectively.
(You can find the full summary for this review in our COVID-19 collection)
Infectious disease surveillance for refugees at borders and in destination countries
Surveillance methods for detecting infectious disease in newly arriving refugees may help prevent and control these diseases. In this scoping review, the authors searched for information on infectious disease surveillance that targeted refugees and included 20 documents from across the world. They concluded that countries need to better document their surveillance methods, which would, in turn, help other countries to improve their surveillance systems.
(You can find the full summary for this review in our COVID-19, Refugees and Resilient Health Systems Collections)
Ongoing work
• In November 2022, we published the 600th summary in our COVID-19 collection. We would like to acknowledge and thank all the volunteers and staff who have worked on this collection over the last few years.
• During November, we also added 12 new summaries to our Resilient Health Systems collection, which is produced in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organisation.
• We are continuing to work with the World Health Organization on the WHO Knowledge Hub for the WHO Guidance on Research Methods for Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (EDRM). This includes linking with the authors of the Guidance to prepare additional content, including podcasts, slideshows and videos of presentations of these slideshows. We are also starting to share the contents more widely with those who teach on topics relevant to Health EDRM. If you do so, please get in touch with us.
How can we help you?
We would welcome your comments on how we can improve the Evidence Aid resources, including our evidence collections, so that these are as helpful as possible for you. Please let us know about your needs and how we might meet them.
Social media
Four of our volunteers (Leen, Molly, Carmela and Alice) promote our summaries and the work of Evidence Aid generally through Twitter (@Evidence Aid), Facebook (Evidence Aid – page and group) and Instagram (evidenceaid). We hope that you will follow us and share our content, including our recent Twitter posts:
https://twitter.com/EvidenceAid/status/1599490723446808576
https://twitter.com/EvidenceAid/status/1598764324058693664
https://twitter.com/EvidenceAid/status/1599127580707364864
If you have suggestions for how we can improve what we do on social media or would like to help us to analyse the impact of the Evidence Aid website and our social media activities, please contact us.
The Evidence Aid team
Information about Evidence Aid staff, interns, advisors and trustees is available on our website.
Volunteers
Our volunteers are vital to our work. They provide a huge amount of support and contribute to searching, screening, and downloading reviews, preparing, and writing summaries, supporting our website and social media and advising on translations as well as helping out with project management. If you are interested in joining the team, please email info@evidenceaid.org.
If you would like to stop receiving these newsletters from Evidence Aid, please contact info@evidenceaid.org.
Claire Allen, Operations Manager
Evidence Aid: Championing evidence-based humanitarian action.
Please note that my regular working days are Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Please do not expect a response outside of those days.
Support our activities by donating here.
Email: callen@evidenceaid.org | Skype: claireallencochrane | Website: www.evidenceaid.org | Twitter: @EvidenceAid | Facebook/Instagram: EvidenceAid
Our evidence collections can be found here: https://evidenceaid.org/evidence/
HIFA profile: Claire Allen is Operations Manager at Evidence Aid, UK. Professional interests: Evidence Aid (www.evidenceaid.org) provides evidence for people in disaster preparedness and response to make better decisions. Areas of interest = humanitarian crises, natural disasters and major healthcare emergencies (disaster = when a country is unable to cope with the disaster/crisis or emergency). She is a member of the HIFA Working Group on Access to Health Research. http://www.hifa.org/working-groups/access-health-research Email: callen AT evidenceaid.org
