Which public health interventions are effective in reducing morbidity, mortality and health inequalities from infectious diseases amongst children in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs): protocol for an umbrella review

Abstract

IntroductionDespite significant progress in the last few decades, infectious diseases remain a significant threat to children’s health in low-income and middle-income countries. Effective means of prevention and control for these diseases exist, making any differences in the burden of these diseases between population groups or countries inequitable. Yet, gaps remain in our knowledge of the effect these public health interventions have on health inequalities in children, especially in low-income and middle-income countries. This umbrella review aims to address some of these gaps by exploring which public health interventions are effective in reducing morbidity, mortality and health inequalities from infectious diseases among children in low-income and middle-income countries.Methods and analysisAn umbrella review will be conducted to identify systematic reviews or evidence synthesis of public health interventions that reduce morbidity, mortality and/or health inequalities due to infectious diseases among children (aged under 5 years) in low-income and middle-income countries. The interventions of interest are public health interventions targeting infectious diseases or associated risk factors in children. We will search for reviews reporting health and health inequalities outcomes in and between populations. The literature search will be undertaken using the Cochrane Library, Medline, EMBASE, the CAB Global Health database, Health Evidence, the Campbell Collaboration Library of Systematic Reviews, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation Systematic review repository, Scopus, the Social Sciences Citation Index and PROSPERO. Additionally, a manual search will be performed in Google Scholar and three international organisations websites (UNICEF Office of Research—Innocenti, UNICEF, WHO) to capture grey literature. Data from the records meeting our inclusion/exclusion criteria will be collated using a narrative synthesis approach.Ethics and disseminationThis review will exclusively work with anonymous group-level information available from published reviews. No ethical approval was required.The results of the review will be submitted for publication in academic journals and presented at international public health conferences. Additionally, key findings will be summarised for dissemination to a wider policy and general public audience as part of the Centre for Global Health Inequalities Research’s policy work.PROSPERO registration numberCRD42019141673

Which public health interventions are effective in reducing morbidity, mortality and health inequalities from infectious diseases amongst children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs): An umbrella review

“…An umbrella review, also called an ‘overview of reviews’ or ‘review of reviews’, involves the compilation and synthesis of evidence from multiple (systematic) reviews into a single, easy-to-use document [ 32 ]. The full methodology has been described in a published protocol (see S2 Appendix ) [ 33 ], which was also registered with PROSPERO (Registration number: CRD42019141673). The PRISMA-E checklist [ 34 ] for this review is attached in S3 Appendix .…”

New Approaches for Improved Service Delivery in Rural Settings

“…As one of the most far-reaching health interventions, it closely reflects the ethos of the SDGs, "leaving no one behind". Other proven interventions that reduce the burden of diseases and mortality are well established; these interventions are not implemented on a large scale in most Low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) [45][46][47].…”

Systematic searches

“…There are several standards for flowcharts. Perhaps the most popular is the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) (See Moher, Liberati, Tetzlaff, Altman & The PRISMA Group 2009 and www.prisma-statement.org), and one which we use in most of the searches we are involved in (e.g Besnier, 2019;Weiss, 2018).…”

“…Our first project started early 2017 when we started working with researchers from the Centre for Global Health Inequalities Research (CHAIN) at NTNU (https://www.ntnu.edu/chain/). This collaboration resulted in a publication the following year (Weiss et al 2018), as well as planting the seeds for further work with CHAIN ( Besnier et al 2019;Besnier et al 2020). These projects as well as others in earlier stages of the process have all been very demanding, but also highly rewarding.…”