Evidence Aid newsletter: 18 July 2022
Welcome to the July 2022 newsletter from Evidence Aid. In it, you’ll find brief details of some of our latest summaries, information on the recent work of Evidence Aid and an invitation to let us know how we can help you and your work. Please forward the newsletter to anyone who might be interested. If they would like to receive our newsletters directly, they should email info@evidenceaid.org.
Recent additions to our evidence collections
School-based interventions to support student refugees, migrants and immigrants, and their families – Some child migrants arrive in a host country with physical and mental illnesses, for which they will need support from the host country’s healthcare services. This review found that therapeutic groups may help to lessen their feelings of isolation and hopelessness and normalize their emotional and behavioural reactions. It also identified some of the ways that mental health professionals and educators can play a key role in improving the lives of refugee, migrant, and immigrant children. (In our Resilient Health Systems and Physical Injuries collections.)
Maternal health care for refugee women – This qualitative review identified several barriers to maternal health care for refugee and migrant women. These include difficulties in finding their way around the health system of the host country and challenges in communication between healthcare professionals and refugee and migrant women, with one proposed solution being to have interpreters available in health settings and to use non-verbal communication methods. (In our Health of Refugees and Asylum Seekers and Resilient Health Systems collections.)
Challenges for tuberculosis (TB) control during the COVID-19 pandemic – Understanding the challenges for TB control efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic may help strengthen health system preparedness and four major challenges have been identified. These are unprepared health system leadership and infrastructure, coexisting health priorities, insufficient health care workforce support and weak connections to primary health centres. The review makes four main recommendations: ensure leadership and governance for sustainable national health budgets, build networks of community stakeholders, support healthcare worker training and safe workplace environments and use digital health interventions for TB care. (In our COVID-19 and Resilient Health Systems collections.)
Ongoing work: We are continuing to work on the expansion of our Resilient Health Systems collection, in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization, and have added more than a dozen new summaries in recent weeks. We’re also working with the World Health Organization to further develop the WHO Knowledge Hub for the WHO Guidance on Research Methods for Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management and will be liaising with the authors of the content of that book in the coming months to prepare additional content, including podcasts, slideshows and videos.
Presentation of our work: Our Research Director, Professor Mike Clarke, presented on the work of Evidence Aid during a session on Applying Science to Aid: Evidence-Based Humanitarian Healthcare at the Intensive Care Society State of the Art 2022 (SOA22) Conference in Belfast UK on 30 June. The presentation is available here.
How can we help you? Please tell us how we can improve the Evidence Aid resources, including our evidence collections, so that we can better provide you with the information you need. We’d love to hear from you, so that we can ensure we are reflecting your needs.
Social media: We promote our summaries and the work of Evidence Aid generally through Twitter (@Evidence Aid), Facebook (Evidence Aid – page and group) and Instagram (evidenceaid). Please follow us and share our posts. If you have suggestions for how we can improve what we do on social media, please contact us.
The Evidence Aid team: For information about Evidence Aid staff, interns and Trustees go to our website.
Volunteers: Our volunteers provide us with a huge amount of support and contribute to searching, screening, and downloading reviews, preparing, and writing summaries, supporting our website, and advising on translations. They are vital to our work, and anyone interested in joining should email info@evidenceaid.org.