PLoS medicine
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Delays in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment lead to worse survival and quality of life. Racial disparities in care timeliness have been reported, but few studies have examined access at multiple points along the care continuum (diagnosis, treatment initiation, treatment duration, and genomic testing). ⋯ Black patients face more frequent delays throughout the care continuum, likely stemming from different types of access barriers at key junctures. Improving breast cancer care access will require intervention on multiple aspects of SES and healthcare access.
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Increasing evidence supports an association between in-labour cesarean section and recurrent preterm birth in subsequent pregnancies. This clinically challenging problem may be caused by cervical damage at the time of in-labour cesarean section.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study Observational Study
Comparative analysis of 2 approaches to monitor countries' progress towards full and equal access to sexual and reproductive health care, information, and education in 75 countries: An observational validation study.
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 5.6.2 is the "Number of countries with laws and regulations that guarantee full and equal access to women and men aged 15 years and older to sexual and reproductive health care, information, and education." This indicator plays a key role in tracking global progress toward achieving gender equity and empowerment, ensuring its validity is essential. Significant challenges related to the indicator's calculation have been noted, which have important implications for the indicator's validity in measuring progress towards meeting the SDG target. Recommendations have been made to revise the scoring of the indicator. This study examines the indicator's validity by proposing a revision to the indicator's calculation that addresses these global concerns and comparing the resulting values. ⋯ Our results illustrate underlying challenges with the current indicator formulation that impact its interpretability. The proposed changes could alter the way the current legal landscape governing sexual and reproductive health is understood, thereby pointing to different programmatic and policy priorities that may better support countries in achieving full and equal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights globally.
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Raquel González and colleagues discuss the drugs available to HIV-exposed children to prevent malaria infection and the urgent need to evaluate alternative agents.
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This study estimated to what extent the number of measurements of cardiometabolic risk factors (e.g., blood pressure, cholesterol, glycated haemoglobin) were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and whether these have recovered to expected levels. ⋯ There was a substantial reduction in routine measurements of cardiometabolic risk factors following the COVID-19 pandemic, with variable recovery. The implications for missed diagnoses, worse prognosis, and health inequality are a concern.