[Extract] Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have made great efforts over recent decades to increase effective coverage of health services over recent decades, although large inequities persist among and within the countries. The urban–rural gap is the most notable inequity in this region. However, unlike most of the public health problems that are predominant in LAC, COVID-19 has primarily affected urban areas, especially areas of concentrated poverty.

The COVID-19 pandemic struck the world in 2020 and was particularly harsh in Latin America, where a combination of social disparities and vulnerabilities led to unprecedented health and economic crises.1 One remarkable impact is the exceedingly high death toll in the region, especially given the “excess mortality rate,” which is probably the measure that best reflects the total numbers of direct and indirect deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic.(2,3)

Before COVID-19 reached Colombia and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the pandemic, in Antioquia we were already strengthening our capacity to face it. Seeing the experiences in other countries, we took this threat seriously from the onset.

This article uses a health stewardship perspective to interpret the strengths of and challenges to national health authorities' capacities to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic through the renewed essential public health functions (EPHF) framework. Based on a literature review, this article argues that the institutional capacities required by countries to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Americas included all four stages of the new EPHF policy cycle: assessment, policy development, allocation of resources and access. While health authorities provided these key functions (e.g.

Objectives

To examine the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on cancer care access in Chile, analyzing differential effects by insurance type, gender, and age.

Methods

We conducted a quasi-experimental study using interrupted time series analysis. We used multiple data sources for a broad evaluation of cancer-related health care utilization from January 2017 to December 2020. We fit negative binomial models by population groups for a range of services and diagnoses.

Objectives

To assess the baseline prevalence of mental health conditions and associated exposures in a cohort of health care workers (HCWs) in Guatemala.

Methods

We analyzed baseline information from 2020 Web-based COVID-19 Health Care Workers Study (HEROES)–Guatemala. Outcomes included mental distress and depressive symptoms. Exposures included COVID-19 experiences, sociodemographic characteristics, and job characteristics. We used crude and adjusted Poisson regression models in our analyses.

Objectives

To quantify socioeconomic inequalities in COVID-19 mortality in Colombia and to assess the extent to which type of health insurance, comorbidity burden, area of residence, and ethnicity account for such inequalities.

Methods

We analyzed data from a retrospective cohort of COVID-19 cases. We estimated the relative and slope indices of inequality (RII and SII) using survival models for all participants and stratified them by age and gender. We calculated the percentage reduction in RII and SII after adjustment for potentially relevant factors.

This article describes eight guiding principles for the digital transformation of the health sector and identifies their relationship with the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as highlighting their importance to countries undergoing digital transformation processes. In the Region of the Americas, among other gaps, 30% of people do not have access to the Internet, which is why it is mandatory to develop policies and actions to deliver public health interventions equitably and sustainably to ensure that no one is left behind.

This article describes the situation of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in the Americas, implementation of NCD interventions according to key progress indicators, the impact of COVID-19 on NCD services, and ways to reprioritize NCDs following COVID-19. Information was retrieved from institutional data and through a supplementary