Evidence Aid Bulletin: 4 August 2022
Here is Evidence Aid’s August 2022 bulletin, containing shortened versions of four of our recent summaries relevant to the health of refugees and asylum seekers. Please forward this to others who might be interested. Anyone who would like to receive these bulletins directly should contact Mark Gavin (info@evidenceaid.org) and questions about our work can be sent to Claire Allen (callen@evidenceaid.org).
Hello everyone,
We are pleased to send you Evidence Aid’s August 2022 bulletin, containing shortened versions of three of our recent summaries. Please forward this to others who might be interested. Anyone who would like to receive these monthly bulletins directly should contact Mark Gavin (info@evidenceaid.org) and questions about our work can be sent to Claire Allen (callen@evidenceaid.org).
Interventions to improve primary health care quality for refugees and asylum seekers. Citation: Iqbal PM, et al. Improving primary health care quality for refugees and asylum seekers: A systematic review of interventional approaches. Health Expectations. 2021;1–30.
This review included 55 studies from Australia, Europe and North America, published before September 2020. Most of the identified interventions focused on developing the skills of individual refugees or asylum seekers and their families, but many were focused on models and systems of care to improve communication and care arrangements. Some of the challenges identified included communication, confidence or trust in the provision of care, and continuity of care including resettlement.
(Full summary available in our Health of Refugees and Asylum Seekers and Resilient Health Systems collections.)
Analysis of social media for psychological surveillance during disasters. Citation: Karmegam D, et al. A systematic review of techniques employed for determining mental health using social media in psychological surveillance during disasters. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. 2020;14(2):265-72. (Note: Full article not free to view.)
Disasters can lead to adverse impacts on the mental health of populations. Social media analysis might be used to try to understand people’s emotional state by using social media messages to provide real-time data. This review examines the use of social media data for mental health surveillance and the techniques used for determining mental health using social media data during disasters. They found that analysis of language use and emotions from social media can predict several mental health problems, but that further research is needed into how best to use social media analysis for this purpose.
(Full summary available in our Resilient Health Systems, Earthquakes, and Windstorms collections.)
Mobile triage applications for use in health emergencies. Citation: Montano IH, et al. Mobile triage applications: a systematic review in literature and play store. Journal of Medical Systems. 2021;45(9):86.
Many mobile health applications, or apps, are available in the field of health care and telemedicine. Some of these are intended to help with triage by healthcare services in health emergencies. The authors of this review searched the healthcare literature for studies of mobile triage apps and then searched the Google Play Store for the apps that they are identified, for use in health emergencies. They found that since 2019, there has been an increase in research evaluating triage apps for health emergencies, with a shift from research focusing on catastrophes towards research on emergency triage. They identified 13 different apps in the literature, but only three were found to be accessible. These were TRIAGIST, Major Trauma Triage and ESITriage. The remainder of the apps they found were inaccessible, required paid access for external users or lacked continuous support for the affected individuals.
(Full summary available in our Resilient Health Systems and Managing physical injuries in disasters collections.)
We hope to send you our monthly Evidence Aid newsletter in the next few weeks, but if you would like to stop receiving our bulletins or newsletters, please contact info@evidenceaid.org.
Mark Gavin, Administrative Assistant
Evidence Aid: Championing evidence-based humanitarian action.
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