Evidence Aid bulletin: 30 May 2023
Hello everyone,
We are pleased to send you Evidence Aid’s May 2023 bulletin. It has been an exciting month for Evidence Aid, most recently marked by our 24 May 2023 webinar which celebrated Phase 2 of our Evidence Aid Collection on Resilient Health Systems in the context of Health Emergencies and Disasters.
Phase 2 included publishing over 100 more summaries, bringing the total to 227 summaries which are available in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.
The summaries cover a variety of topics including telehealth, migrants, refugees, and displaced populations, post-event recovery and surge, hospital preparedness, and rural capacities, to name only several examples.
As such, this month’s bulletin will spotlight some of the Collection’s summaries, recognizing the importance of access to reliable information before, during, and after disasters and health emergencies and within that the importance of resilient health systems to support the affected communities. The start of Phase 3 of the project is imminent and we look forward to telling you about that in our next newsletter.
As usual, thank you for your continued support and reading. Anyone who would like to receive these bulletins directly or has general questions about our work, please contact Jane Copsey (info@evidenceaid.org). If you like our work and think it is important that we continue through 2023, please consider donating here.
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Food security interventions for refugees
In 2021 data showed that 80% of refugees faced food insecurity, including physical availability of food, economic and physical access to food, food utilization and stability over time. Our summary showed that this scoping review aimed to not only assess what is currently known about food security interventions in refugees, but also identified existing gaps in knowledge. It included all published articles between 2010-2020 that discussed food security interventions (57 articles were eligible for inclusion). The authors found that the most common interventions included cash, vouchers, food transfers, urban agriculture, gardening, animal husbandry, foraging, nutrition education, and infant and young child feeding. However, the authors also examined when to use certain types of interventions, such as cash. The authors found that due to a lack of proper and universal evaluation approaches, the efficacy of interventions are unclear, particularly in the context of marginalized populations such as children, seniors, women, LGBTQIA+, persons with disabilities, and minority groups.
Citation: Nisbet C, Lestrat KE, Vatanparast H. Food Security Interventions among Refugees around the Globe: A Scoping Review. Nutrients. 2022;14(3):522.
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Preventing needle injuries in healthcare workers
Healthcare workers exposed to percutaneous exposure injuries from devices used for blood collection and/or injections face heightened risk for infections such as hepatitis B and C, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). As such, the authors sought to determine the benefits and harms of safety medical devices which work to prevent such injures by evaluating a range of data related to safe modifications of blood collection systems, intravenous (IV) systems, injection systems, multiple devices, sharps containers, and legislation on the implementation of safe devices. The authors found both very low-quality evidence of inconsistent effects on needlestick injuries (NSI), as well as low-quality evidence of a decrease in NSI. Mitigation solutions, such as the introduction of multiple safety devices or the introduction of sharps containers, were also found to have no clear evidence of benefits. According to the authors, more high-quality studies that include cost-effectiveness measures are needed in order to fill knowledge gaps.
Citation: Reddy VK, Lavoie MC, Verbeek JH, et al. Devices for preventing percutaneous exposure injuries caused by needles in healthcare personnel. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2017;(11):CD009740.
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Frameworks for incident classification in emergency departments
The distinct character of hospital emergency departments (ED) makes it challenging to understand safety issues and support risk management. The authors utilized a comparative review of emergency medicine, health management, and general medical publications to identify certain taxonomies and classification-like frameworks for ED related incidents. Their comparison revealed some commonality, but no overall consistency nor evolution towards an ideal, agreed-upon framework as the design methodology and evidential basis of classification changes depending on ED, resulting in significant variation across hospitals. As such, the authors propose that an ideal incident classification framework should be created with the support of wider theories related to both the organization and structure of systems, as well as clinical and human factors.
Citation: Murray M, McCarthy S. Review article: A systematic review of emergency department incident classification frameworks. Emergency Medicine Australasia. 2018;30(3):293-308.
You can find a full summary of all these views in the Resilient Health Systems evidence collection.
Thank you very much for reading this month’s bulletin. As a final reminder, anyone who would like to receive these bulletins directly or has questions about our work should contact Jane Copsey (info@evidenceaid.org). And, as a donor-based organization, we appreciate your continued support. If you think our work is important, please consider donating here.
From,
Your Evidence Aid team