Evidence Aid newsletter: 22 August 2022
Welcome to the August 2022 newsletter from Evidence Aid. It contains brief details of some of our latest summaries, including some of our COVID-19 summaries which have been updated, details of our new blog on monkeypox, information on our recent work and an invitation to let us know how Evidence Aid can help you and your work. Please forward this 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
Hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers and hospital-acquired infections
Good hand hygiene is important for preventing hospital-acquired infections. This review examines the association between hand hygiene compliance of healthcare workers and hospital-acquired infections in patients in healthcare settings in high-income countries. In most studies, hand hygiene compliance was between 60% and 70% and 60% seemed to be the threshold for having a low incidence of hospital-acquired infections. Few studies reported rates above 80% which is the threshold recommended by the World Health Organization.
(In our COVID-19 and Resilient Health Systems collections.)
Interventions for people who are homeless and use drugs
People who experience homelessness are at high risk of using drugs and related harms. Resilient health systems need to overcome barriers they face to accessing support and related treatment. This overview of reviews found that integrated care between services and programs appeared to be associated with better health outcomes and some evidence showed that harm reduction strategies were associated with decreased substance-related risk behaviours. Case management had positive outcomes on substance-related risk behaviours, housing and mental health and peer support interventions could reduce the number of days spent homeless. Housing interventions were associated with an improvement in housing stability.
(In our Resilient Health Systems collection.)
Financial inclusion programmes in low- and middle-income countries
During the COVID-19 pandemic and economic and other crises more generally, job losses due to business closures often disproportionately affect low-income families and less-skilled workers. One way to help might be through financial inclusion programmes which seek to increase access to financial services such as credit, savings, insurance and money transfers. These allow low‐income households in low‐ and middle‐income countries to enhance their welfare, grasp opportunities, mitigate shocks and ultimately escape poverty. This overview of reviews found that impacts of these programmes are likely to be more positive than negative, but effects varied and appeared not to be transformative in scope or scale.
(In our COVID-19 and Resilient Health Systems collections.)
New blog – Monkeypox 2022: Is there a case for quarantine?
We published a blog by Dr Kristi Koenig, Prof. Dr Aileen Marty and Christian Bey in response to the MonkeyPox outbreak and the question of the appropriateness of quarantine is appropriate.
Ongoing work
• As you can see from the above examples, we continue to expand our Resilient Health Systems collection, in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization, and have added more than two 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 chapter authors to prepare additional content, including podcasts, slideshows and videos. Mike Clarke presented the work of Evidence Aid on this project in a UK Alliance for Disaster Research (UKADR) online webinar on 13 July, 2022 – his presentation can be found here.
• In addition, we are working with the Florida International University to produce summaries and a report on urban disaster risk reduction strategies for informal settlements.
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 or would like to help us to compile reports and statistics on our media presence, please contact us.
The Evidence Aid team
For information about Evidence Aid staff, Interns, Advisors and Trustees go to our website. Mark Gavin’s 6-month ‘Kickstart Placement’ has now ended and we wish him all the best in his new venture.
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.