Leaving no one behind: a methodology for setting health inequality reduction targets for Sustainable Development Goal 3*

Objectives.

To present a methodology for the simultaneous setting of quantitative targets that reflect both an improvement in the national average of an indicator for Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3), as well as a reduction in its geographic inequality.

Critical care medicine in the French Territories in the Americas: Current situation and prospects

Hospitals in the French Territories in the Americas (FTA) work according to international and French standards. This paper aims to describe different aspects of critical care in the FTA. For this, we reviewed official information about population size and intensive care unit (ICU) bed capacity in the FTA and literature on FTA ICU specificities. Persons living in or visiting the FTA are exposed to specific risks, mainly severe road traffic injuries, envenoming, stab or ballistic wounds, and emergent tropical infectious diseases.

Planning for health equity in the Americas: an analysis of national health plans

There is growing recognition that health and well-being improvements have not been shared across populations in the Americas. This article analyzes 32 national health sector policies, strategies, and plans across 10 different areas of health equity to understand, from one perspective, how equity is being addressed in the region. It finds significant variation in the substance and structure of how the health plans handle the issue. Nearly all countries explicitly include health equity as a clear goal, and most address the social determinants of health.

COVID-19 deaths: Distribution by age and universal medical coverage in 22 countries

Objective.

Relate standardized age distribution of COVID-19 deaths in 22 countries in the Americas and Europe to different indicators of population characteristics and health systems.

Methods.

Distributions of COVID-19 deaths by age group in 22 countries of the Americas and Europe were standardized based on the age pyramid of the world's population. Correlations were calculated between the standardized proportion of people aged <60 years among the deceased and each of six indicators.

Traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine evidence map: a methodology to an overflowing field of data and noise

Every day there is criticism about lack of evidence on traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine (TCIM). But is this narrative evidence-based? Are we really missing research about TCIM? Or are we just not looking correctly at the evidence? Evidence maps are a useful method with the dual function of synthesizing available evidence on a specific topic and identifying knowledge gaps. This article presents a six-step evidence map methodology along with recently published TCIM evidence maps, including one related to COVID-19.

The demographic features and outcome indicators of the Barbados HIV Pre-exposure Prophylaxis Program, 2018-2019

Objectives.

To assess the demographics, risk profiles and outcome indicators of one of the few government-supported programs on pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in the English-speaking Caribbean.

Methods.

Chart review of all persons enrolled into the national PrEP Program from its inception on March 1st 2018 to November 30th 2019, with a descriptive summary analysis of the data extracted.

Regulatory reliance to approve new medicinal products in Latin American and Caribbean countries

Objective.

To describe the current status of regulatory reliance in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) by assessing the countries’ regulatory frameworks to approve new medicines, and to ascertain, for each country, which foreign regulators are considered as trusted regulatory authorities to rely on.

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