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The practice of evaluating epidemic response in humanitarian and low-income settings: a systematic review

BACKGROUND: Epidemics of infectious disease occur frequently in low-income and humanitarian settings and pose a serious threat to populations. However, relatively little is known about responses to these epidemics. Robust evaluations can generate evidence on response efforts and inform future improv...

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Autores principales: Warsame, Abdihamid, Murray, Jillian, Gimma, Amy, Checchi, Francesco
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7606030/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33138813
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12916-020-01767-8
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author Warsame, Abdihamid
Murray, Jillian
Gimma, Amy
Checchi, Francesco
author_facet Warsame, Abdihamid
Murray, Jillian
Gimma, Amy
Checchi, Francesco
author_sort Warsame, Abdihamid
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Epidemics of infectious disease occur frequently in low-income and humanitarian settings and pose a serious threat to populations. However, relatively little is known about responses to these epidemics. Robust evaluations can generate evidence on response efforts and inform future improvements. This systematic review aimed to (i) identify epidemics reported in low-income and crisis settings, (ii) determine the frequency with which evaluations of responses to these epidemics were conducted, (iii) describe the main typologies of evaluations undertaken and (iv) identify key gaps and strengths of recent evaluation practice. METHODS: Reported epidemics were extracted from the following sources: World Health Organization Disease Outbreak News (WHO DON), UNICEF Cholera platform, Reliefweb, PROMED and Global Incidence Map. A systematic review for evaluation reports was conducted using the MEDLINE, EMBASE, Global Health, Web of Science, WPRIM, Reliefweb, PDQ Evidence and CINAHL Plus databases, complemented by grey literature searches using Google and Google Scholar. Evaluation records were quality-scored and linked to epidemics based on time and place. The time period for the review was 2010–2019. RESULTS: A total of 429 epidemics were identified, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. A total of 15,424 potential evaluations records were screened, 699 assessed for eligibility and 132 included for narrative synthesis. Only one tenth of epidemics had a corresponding response evaluation. Overall, there was wide variability in the quality, content as well as in the disease coverage of evaluation reports. CONCLUSION: The current state of evaluations of responses to these epidemics reveals large gaps in coverage and quality and bears important implications for health equity and accountability to affected populations. The limited availability of epidemic response evaluations prevents improvements to future public health response. The diversity of emphasis and methods of available evaluations limits comparison across responses and time. In order to improve future response and save lives, there is a pressing need to develop a standardized and practical approach as well as governance arrangements to ensure the systematic conduct of epidemic response evaluations in low-income and crisis settings.
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spelling pubmed-76060302020-11-03 The practice of evaluating epidemic response in humanitarian and low-income settings: a systematic review Warsame, Abdihamid Murray, Jillian Gimma, Amy Checchi, Francesco BMC Med Research Article BACKGROUND: Epidemics of infectious disease occur frequently in low-income and humanitarian settings and pose a serious threat to populations. However, relatively little is known about responses to these epidemics. Robust evaluations can generate evidence on response efforts and inform future improvements. This systematic review aimed to (i) identify epidemics reported in low-income and crisis settings, (ii) determine the frequency with which evaluations of responses to these epidemics were conducted, (iii) describe the main typologies of evaluations undertaken and (iv) identify key gaps and strengths of recent evaluation practice. METHODS: Reported epidemics were extracted from the following sources: World Health Organization Disease Outbreak News (WHO DON), UNICEF Cholera platform, Reliefweb, PROMED and Global Incidence Map. A systematic review for evaluation reports was conducted using the MEDLINE, EMBASE, Global Health, Web of Science, WPRIM, Reliefweb, PDQ Evidence and CINAHL Plus databases, complemented by grey literature searches using Google and Google Scholar. Evaluation records were quality-scored and linked to epidemics based on time and place. The time period for the review was 2010–2019. RESULTS: A total of 429 epidemics were identified, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. A total of 15,424 potential evaluations records were screened, 699 assessed for eligibility and 132 included for narrative synthesis. Only one tenth of epidemics had a corresponding response evaluation. Overall, there was wide variability in the quality, content as well as in the disease coverage of evaluation reports. CONCLUSION: The current state of evaluations of responses to these epidemics reveals large gaps in coverage and quality and bears important implications for health equity and accountability to affected populations. The limited availability of epidemic response evaluations prevents improvements to future public health response. The diversity of emphasis and methods of available evaluations limits comparison across responses and time. In order to improve future response and save lives, there is a pressing need to develop a standardized and practical approach as well as governance arrangements to ensure the systematic conduct of epidemic response evaluations in low-income and crisis settings. BioMed Central 2020-11-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7606030/ /pubmed/33138813 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12916-020-01767-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Warsame, Abdihamid
Murray, Jillian
Gimma, Amy
Checchi, Francesco
The practice of evaluating epidemic response in humanitarian and low-income settings: a systematic review
title The practice of evaluating epidemic response in humanitarian and low-income settings: a systematic review
title_full The practice of evaluating epidemic response in humanitarian and low-income settings: a systematic review
title_fullStr The practice of evaluating epidemic response in humanitarian and low-income settings: a systematic review
title_full_unstemmed The practice of evaluating epidemic response in humanitarian and low-income settings: a systematic review
title_short The practice of evaluating epidemic response in humanitarian and low-income settings: a systematic review
title_sort practice of evaluating epidemic response in humanitarian and low-income settings: a systematic review
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7606030/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33138813
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12916-020-01767-8
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