Increasing and maintaining vaccination uptake is crucial for preventing and managing infectious diseases. In the context of the post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic landscape, this paper examines the perceptions of immunisation implementers and policymakers to uncover the challenges and evidence gaps in routine immunisation efforts.
Data on routine childhood vaccination coverage can only tell us who is under-vaccinated; it cannot explain why vaccine coverage is low. Collecting data on the reasons behind under-vaccination is necessary to implement cost-effective strategies that address key barriers and target interventions appropriately. However, no instruments [...]
The US Preventive Services Task Force has updated its recommendation for the age when all women should start mammography screening, lowering it from 50 to 40. This change immediately affects more than 20 million American women and other people assigned female at birth who are [...]
Abbasi’s assertion of “society’s betrayal of children, their health, and our future” and the appalling decline in child health is sobering. The International Network for Epidemiology in Policy (INEP) represents 24 epidemiology societies across the globe and works to tackle policies that have global public [...]
Newborn bloodspot screening is a well-established population health initiative that detects serious, childhood-onset, treatable conditions to improve health outcomes. With genomic technologies advancing rapidly, many countries are actively discussing the introduction of genomic assays into newborn screening programs. While adding genomic testing to Australia’s newborn [...]
Child health is being betrayed, and the physical and mental health of children is in appalling decline. This verdict belongs not to a fortune hunting social media influencer but to a new report from the Academy of Medical Sciences. The UK was recently ranked 30 [...]
Using scoping review methods, we systematically searched multiple online databases for publications in the first year of the pandemic that proposed pragmatic population or health system-level solutions to health inequities. We found 77 publications with proposed solutions to pandemic-related health inequities. Most were commentaries, letters, [...]
Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMP) are increasingly used to identify people prescribed high-dose opioids. However, little is known about whether PDMPs impact opioid agonist treatment (OAT) uptake, the gold standard for opioid use disorder. This study examined the impact of PDMP implementation on OAT initiation [...]
The Australian government, through Medicare, defines the type of medical specialist services it covers and subsidizes, but it does not regulate prices. Specialists in private practice can charge more than the fee listed by Medicare depending on what they feel ‘the market will bear’. This [...]
Increasing harms related to prescription opioids over the past decade have led to the introduction of a range of key national and state policy initiatives across Australia. These include introducing a mandatory real-time prescription drug–monitoring program in the state of Victoria from April 2020 and [...]