Publicaties

The ANSER publication 'Five years of global academic collaboration building evidence for sexual and reproductive health and rights policies' has been published. As a network, we consider it our duty to bridge the gap between research and policymaking, as we strongly believe sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) policies should be based on scientific evidence. In this publication you will find a glimpse of what we have achieved so far. ...

Background: The importance of viewing health from a broader perspective than the mere presence or absence of disease is critical at primary healthcare level. However, there is scanty evidence-based stratification of population health using other criteria than morbidity-related indicators in developing countries. We propose a novel stratification of population health based on cognitive, functional and social disability and its covariates at ...

Introduction: Afghanistan has an estimated annual burden of severe acute malnutrition in children under five of over 600,000, with less then 30% accessing care. Since 2009, acute malnutrition has been part of the country’s Basic Package of Health Services, which is outsourced for implementation to local partners and regulated by the Ministry of Public Health. A gradual transition to government implementation is expected to change the dynamics of ...

Introduction: Moving from existing segmented care to integrated care is complex and disruptive. It is complex in the sense that the type of changes and the timeframe of these changes are not completely predictable. It is disruptive in the sense that the process of change modifies but also is influenced by the nature of interactions at the individual and organisational level. As a consequence, building competences to govern the necessary changes ...

The study explored pathways of integrating severe acute malnutrition interventions into health systems using a theory-driven approach to understand how and why integration progressed in given contexts. Different methodologies under the realist paradigm provided increasing insights into complexity. A scoping study explored integration concepts and attributes, policies and evidence. Using a framework approach, causal loop analysis and agent-based ...

Objective: Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) interventions aim to detect and treat children at highest risk of death who benefit most from treatment. SAM services reach less than 20% of affected children worldwide, and innovative policy changes are needed to scale up services. This paper discusses anthropometry to diagnose SAM as one pathway to improve the effectiveness coverage of SAM services. Results: WHO defines SAM by either MUAC <115 mm ...

Introduction Reliable prospective estimates of annual severe acute malnutrition (SAM) caseloads for treatment are needed for policy decisions and planning of quality services in the context of competing public health priorities and limited resources. This paper compares the reliability of SAM caseloads of children 6-59 months of age in Niger estimated from prevalence at the start of the year and counted from incidence at the end of the year. ...

Background: Severe acute malnutrition (SAM) is currently defined by the WHO as either a low mid-upper arm circumference (i.e. MUAC <115 mm), a low weight-for-height z-score (i.e. WHZ <− 3), or bilateral pitting oedema. MUAC and WHZ do not always identify the same children as having SAM. This has generated broad debate, as illustrated by the recent article by Grellety & Golden (BMC Nutr. 2016;2:10). Discussion: Regional variations in ...

Health interventions improve the management of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in children under 5 in high-burden low-income countries. However, evaluation of their implementation faces a paucity of information and could benefit from a system perspective derived from the knowledge of implementers and experts. These challenges could be addressed using simulation modelling. We compared Markov and agent-based models of interventions for improving ...

Summary Points • Worldwide, 8.5 million infants aged less than 6 months (<6m) are acutely malnourished. For the first time, 2013 WHO Malnutrition Guidelines describe their treatment, but on the basis of “very low quality” evidence, per WHO. More and better research is urgently needed. • To prioritise the many possible research questions on infant <6m malnutrition, we used the systematic, transparent, well-established Child Health and ...