Articles

The impact of sociodemographic factors on the utilization of radiation therapy in breast cancer patients in Estonia: a register-based study

Radiation therapy is an important part of multimodal breast cancer treatment. The aim was to examine the impact of sociodemographic factors on radiation therapy use in breast cancer (BC) patients in Estonia, l...

Authors: Fereshteh Shahrabi Farahani, Keiu Paapsi and Kaire Innos

Pride Camp: Pilot study of an intervention to develop resilience and self-esteem among LGBTQ youth

Many LGBTQ youth experience rejection and discrimination in their families and schools, and the range of interventions for improving their resilience and well-being is limited. We developed and piloted an LGBT...

Authors: Lance S. Weinhardt, Linda M. Wesp, Hui Xie, Jennifer (Jen) Murray, Jeanette Martín, Sarah DeGeorge, Caleb B. Weinhardt, Maren Hawkins and Patricia Stevens

Recruiting people facing social disadvantage: the experience of the Free Meds study

Researching access to health services, and ways to improve equity, frequently requires researchers to recruit people facing social disadvantage. Recruitment can be challenging, and there is limited high qualit...

Authors: Pauline Norris, Kimberly Cousins, Marianna Churchward, Shirley Keown, Mariana Hudson, Leina Isno, Leilani Pereira, Jacques Klavs, Lucy Linqing Tang, Hanne Roberti and Alesha Smith

How do breastfeeding workplace interventions work?: a realist review

Women are representing an increasing share of the labor force, thus, raising the need to accommodate breastfeeding working mothers at the workplace. While there is an emerging body of evidence supporting the p...

Authors: Kathrin Litwan, Victoria Tran, Kate Nyhan and Rafael Pérez-Escamilla

Chronic pain experience and health inequities during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada: qualitative findings from the chronic pain & COVID-19 pan-Canadian study

Chronic pain affects about 20 % of the Canadian population and can lead to physical, psychological and social vulnerabilities. However, this condition remains poorly recognized and undertreated. During 2020, a...

Authors: Lise Dassieu, M. Gabrielle Pagé, Anaïs Lacasse, Maude Laflamme, Vickie Perron, Audrée Janelle-Montcalm, Maria Hudspith, Gregg Moor, Kathryn Sutton, James M Thompson and Manon Choinière

Pervasive systemic drivers underpin COVID-19 vulnerabilities in migrants

Asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented foreign nationals have always been identified as a vulnerable population owing to the longstanding structural barriers and inequalities that they continually face. The...

Authors: Ferdinand C Mukumbang

Hukou-based rural–urban disparities in maternal health service utilization and delivery modes in two Chinese cities in Guangdong Province

Most existing research on rural–urban health inequalities focuses on disparities in service access and health outcomes based on region. This paper examines rural–urban disparities in maternal healthcare utiliz...

Authors: Menghan Shen, Yushan Wu and Xin Xiang

Inequities in the delivery of mental health care: a grounded theory study of the policy context of primary care

Strengthening capacity for mental health in primary care improves health outcomes by providing timely access to coordinated and integrated mental health care. The successful integration of mental health in pri...

Authors: Rachelle Ashcroft, Matthew Menear, Jose Silveira, Simone Dahrouge, Monica Emode, Jocelyn Booton and Kwame McKenzie

Temporal trends and variation in out-of-pocket expenditures and patient cost sharing: evidence from a Chinese national survey 2011–2015

This study aims to examine: (1) temporal trends in the percentage of cost-sharing and amount of out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) from 2011 to 2015; (2) factors associated with cost-sharing and OOPE; and (3) th...

Authors: Vicky Mengqi Qin, Yuting Zhang, Kee Seng Chia, Barbara McPake, Yang Zhao, Emily S. G. Hulse, Helena Legido-Quigley and John Tayu Lee

Exploring different methods to evaluate the impact of basic income interventions: a systematic review

Persistent income inequality, the increase in precarious employment, the inadequacy of many welfare systems, and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic have increased interest in Basic Income (BI) interventi...

Authors: Andrew D. Pinto, Melissa Perri, Cheryl L. Pedersen, Tatiana Aratangy, Ayu Pinky Hapsari and Stephen W. Hwang

Sociodemographic inequities in dental care utilisation among governmental welfare recipients in Japan: a retrospective cohort study

Maintaining oral health is one of the global public health challenges. Income and out-of-pocket payments for dental care services are predictors of dental care utilisation. Although public assistance programme...

Authors: Daisuke Nishioka, Keiko Ueno, Shiho Kino, Jun Aida and Naoki Kondo

Tipping the scales: a theoretical model to describe the differential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in changes in almost every aspect of life. The fatal consequences of the pandemic have been clearly reported, with direct and indirect effects; however, there is some evidenc...

Authors: Mor Saban, Vicki Myers, Osnat Luxenburg and Rachel Wilf-Miron

Inequitable access to healthcare in Africa: reconceptualising the “accountability for reasonableness framework” to reflect indigenous principles

The “Accountability for Reasonableness” (A4R) framework has been widely adopted in working towards equity in health for sub-Saharan Africa (SAA). Its suitability for equitable health policy in Africa hinges, a...

Authors: Samuel J. Ujewe and Werdie C. van Staden

Transnational social networks, health, and care: a systematic narrative literature review

While transnational social ties and exchanges are a core concern within migration studies, health researchers have often overlooked their importance. Continuous and circular exchanges of information within tra...

Authors: Inez Roosen, Sarah Salway and Hibbah Araba Osei-Kwasi

Symbolic annihilation of Syrian refugees by Turkish news media during the COVID-19 pandemic

This article presents a discussion about the representation of Syrian refugees in Turkish news media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Media play a critical role during pandemics by affecting values, opinions, pub...

Authors: Alev Yücel

Experts prioritize osteoarthritis non-surgical interventions from Cochrane systematic reviews for translation into “Evidence4Equity” summaries

Osteoarthritis generates substantial health and socioeconomic burden, which is particularly marked in marginalized groups. It is imperative that practitioners have ready access to summaries of evidence-based i...

Authors: Elizabeth Houlding-Braunberger, Jennifer Petkovic, Nicholas Lebel and Peter Tugwell

Factors associated with access to health care among foreign residents living in Aichi Prefecture, Japan: secondary data analysis

In Japan, foreign residents, and particularly new arrivals in the country, experience barriers to health care and show poorer health outcomes when compared to Japanese nationals. The health-care-related situat...

Authors: Michiyo Higuchi, Maki Endo and Asako Yoshino

First Nations and Metis peoples’ access and equity challenges with early childhood oral health: a qualitative study

Inequities in early childhood oral health are evident amongst Indigenous peoples and communities in Manitoba, Canada. Early childhood caries (ECC) is decay in primary dentition in children under 6 years of age...

Authors: Grace Kyoon-Achan, Robert J. Schroth, Daniella DeMaré, Melina Sturym, Jeannette M. Edwards, Julianne Sanguins, Rhonda Campbell, Frances Chartrand, Mary Bertone and Michael E. K. Moffatt

Inequalities in access to safe drinking water in Peruvian households according to city size: an analysis from 2008 to 2018

Peru is one of the countries with the lowest percentage of population with access to safe drinking water in the Latin American region. This study aimed to describe and estimate, according to city size, socioec...

Authors: Akram Hernández-Vasquéz, Carlos Rojas-Roque, Denise Marques Sales, Marilina Santero, Guido Bendezu-Quispe, Tonatiuh Barrientos-Gutiérrez and J. Jaime Miranda

Equity in newborn care, evidence from national surveys in low- and middle-income countries

High coverage of care is essential to improving newborn survival; however, gaps exist in access to timely and appropriate newborn care between and within countries. In high mortality burden settings, health in...

Authors: Kimberly Peven, Lindsay Mallick, Cath Taylor, Debra Bick, Louise T. Day, Lionel Kadzem and Edward Purssell

Trajectories of antidepressant use before and after a suicide attempt among refugees and Swedish-born individuals: a cohort study

To identify key information regarding potential treatment differences in refugees and the host population, we aimed to investigate patterns (trajectories) of antidepressant use during 3 years before and after ...

Authors: Ridwanul Amin, Syed Rahman, Magnus Helgesson, Emma Björkenstam, Bo Runeson, Petter Tinghög, Lars Mehlum, Ping Qin and Ellenor Mittendorfer-Rutz

Prevalence and sociogeographical inequalities of violence against women in Ecuador: a cross-sectional study

Violence against women (VAW) is a vast public health problem in Latin America. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of violence against women and to assess its sociogeographical inequalities i...

Authors: Agnes Edeby and Miguel San Sebastián

Correction to: Horizontal inequity in self-reported morbidity and untreated morbidity in India: Evidence from National Sample Survey Data

Authors: Veenapani Rajeev Verma and Umakant Dash

Promoting equity in breastfeeding through peer counseling: the US Breastfeeding Heritage and Pride program

In the United States, Black and Hispanic mothers have lower breastfeeding rates compared with White mothers. To address breastfeeding inequities, the Breastfeeding Heritage and Pride program (BHP) provides bre...

Authors: Elizabeth C Rhodes, Grace Damio, Helen Wilde LaPlant, Walter Trymbulak, Carrianne Crummett, Rebecca Surprenant and Rafael Pérez-Escamilla

Sharing power in global health research: an ethical toolkit for designing priority-setting processes that meaningfully include communities

To promote social justice and equity, global health research should meaningfully engage communities throughout projects: from setting agendas onwards. But communities, especially those that are considered disa...

Authors: Bridget Pratt

The benefits of an integrated social medical insurance for health services utilization in rural China: evidence from the China health and retirement longitudinal study

Improving health equity is a fundamental goal for establishing social health insurance. This article evaluated the benefits of the Integration of Social Medical Insurance (ISMI) policy for health services util...

Authors: Xiaojing Fan, Min Su, Yafei Si, Yaxin Zhao and Zhongliang Zhou

Cultural adaptation of health interventions including a nutrition component in Indigenous peoples: a systematic scoping review

Indigenous populations throughout the world experience poorer health outcomes than non-indigenous people. The reasons for the health disparities are complex and due in part to historical treatment of Indigenou...

Authors: Lisa Vincze, Katelyn Barnes, Mari Somerville, Robyn Littlewood, Heidi Atkins, Ayala Rogany and Lauren T. Williams

Socioeconomic inequalities in curative healthcare-seeking for children under five before and after the free healthcare initiative in Sierra Leone: analysis of population-based survey data

Socioeconomic inequalities between and within countries lead to disparities in the use of health services. These disparities could lead to child mortality in children under 5 years by depriving them of healthc...

Authors: Joel D. Bognini, Sekou Samadoulougou, Mady Ouedraogo, Tiga David Kangoye, Carine Van Malderen, Halidou Tinto and Fati Kirakoya-Samadoulougou

Integrating equity and social justice for indigenous peoples in undergraduate health professions education in Canada: a framework from a critical review of literature

Understanding how to create structural change by actively counteracting racialized ways of interacting with Indigenous peoples at an individual and organizational level within health care systems and health pr...

Authors: Amélie Blanchet Garneau, Marilou Bélisle, Patrick Lavoie and Catherine Laurent Sédillot

Financial protection effects of private health insurance: experimental evidence from Chinese households with resident basic medical insurance

After achieving universal basic medical insurance coverage, Chinese government put the development of private health insurance (PHI) on its agenda to further strengthen financial risk protection. This paper ai...

Authors: Xian-zhi Fu

Community support model on breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices in remote areas in Vietnam: implementation, cost, and effectiveness

Poor access to healthcare facilities and consequently nutrition counseling services hinders the uptake of recommended infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices. To address these barriers and improve IYCF...

Authors: Tuan T. Nguyen, Nemat Hajeebhoy, Jia Li, Chung T. Do, Roger Mathisen and Edward A. Frongillo

Trends and equity in the use of health services in Spain and Germany around austerity in Europe

Following the 2008 economic crisis many countries implemented austerity policies, including reducing public spending on health services. This paper evaluates the trends and equity in the use of health services...

Authors: Almudena Moreno, Lourdes Lostao, Johannes Beller, Stefanie Sperlich, Elena Ronda, Siegfried Geyer, José Pulido and Enrique Regidor

Medication risk management and health equity in New Zealand general practice: a retrospective cross-sectional study

Despite an overt commitment to equity, health inequities are evident throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. A general practice electronic alert system was developed to notify clinicians about their patient’s risk of...

Authors: Sharon Leitch, Jiaxu Zeng, Alesha Smith and Tim Stokes

Evidence‐based priorities of under‐served pregnant and parenting adolescents: addressing inequities through a participatory approach to contextualizing evidence syntheses

This study describes an interdiscursive evidence-based priority setting process with pregnant and parenting adolescents and their services providers.

Authors: Anna Dion, Aime Klevor, Amy Nakajima and Neil Andersson

Perceptions about the accessibility of healthcare services among ethnic minority women: a qualitative study among Arab Bedouins in Israel

Access to healthcare services has major implications for vulnerable populations’ health. Socio-cultural and gender characteristics shape the utilization and access of healthcare services among ethnic minoritie...

Authors: Haneen Shibli, Limor Aharonson-Daniel and Paula Feder-Bubis

Assessing healthcare access using the Levesque’s conceptual framework– a scoping review

Countries are working hard to improve access to healthcare through Universal Healthcare Coverage. To genuinely address the problems of healthcare access, we need to recognize all the dimensions and complexitie...

Authors: Anthony Cu, Sofia Meister, Bertrand Lefebvre and Valéry Ridde

“The devil is in the detail”: geographical inequalities of femicides in Ecuador

Femicide is a very important public health problem in Ecuador. Since regional and country-level femicide rates can obscure significant variations at the sub-national level, it is important to provide informati...

Authors: Osvaldo Fonseca-Rodríguez and Miguel San Sebastián

Breastfeeding inequities in South Africa: Can enforcement of the WHO Code help address them? – A systematic scoping review

Suboptimal breastfeeding rates in South Africa have been attributed to the relatively easy access that women and families have had to infant formula, in part as a result of programs to prevent maternal-to-chil...

Authors: Debbie Vitalis, Mireya Vilar-Compte, Kate Nyhan and Rafael Pérez-Escamilla

Innovations in the national household random sampling in Brazilian National Health Survey: results from Starfield and Shi’s adult primary care assessment tool (PCAT)

Several middle and upper income countries carry out household surveys that seek to trace the profile of access and use of health services. Probably one of the most ambitious examples is Brazil, with its Nation...

Authors: Luiz Felipe Pinto, Otavio Pereira D’Avila, Lisiane Hauser and Erno Harzheim

Health system responsiveness: a systematic evidence mapping review of the global literature

The World Health Organisation framed responsiveness, fair financing and equity as intrinsic goals of health systems. However, of the three, responsiveness received significantly less attention. Responsiveness ...

Authors: Gadija Khan, Nancy Kagwanja, Eleanor Whyle, Lucy Gilson, Sassy Molyneux, Nikki Schaay, Benjamin Tsofa, Edwine Barasa and Jill Olivier

A multi-center longitudinal study on responsive breastfeeding in China from the perspective of health equity: research protocol

Socio-economic inequities can strongly influence suboptimal infant feeding outcomes. Factors such as lack of knowledge about breastfeeding, low family income, low educational attainment, social and economic st...

Authors: Wen Shu, Menglong Li, Nubiya Amaerjiang, Xin Fan, Shunna Lin, Sofia Segura-Pérez, Rafael Pérez-Escamilla and Yifei Hu

Breastfeeding at the workplace: a systematic review of interventions to improve workplace environments to facilitate breastfeeding among working women

Breastfeeding can be affected by maternal employment. This is important considering that in 2019, 47.1% of women globally participated in the labor force. The aim of this study was to review workplace interven...

Authors: Mireya Vilar-Compte, Sonia Hernández-Cordero, Mónica Ancira-Moreno, Soraya Burrola-Méndez, Isabel Ferre-Eguiluz, Isabel Omaña and Cecilia Pérez Navarro

Distribution of under-5 deaths in the neonatal, postneonatal, and childhood periods: a multicountry analysis in 64 low- and middle-income countries

As under-5 mortality rates declined all over the world, the relative distribution of under-5 deaths during different periods of life changed. To provide information for policymakers to plan for multi-layer hea...

Authors: Zhihui Li, Omar Karlsson, Rockli Kim and S. V. Subramanian

Fifteen-year trends in self-reported racism and link with health and well-being of African Canadian adolescents: a secondary data analysis

We assessed the prevalence and trends in racial discrimination among African Canadian adolescents in British Columbia. The association between racial discrimination and self-rated health, access to mental heal...

Authors: Helen U. Okoye and Elizabeth Saewyc

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food rations of refugees in Rwanda

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has significantly impacted the global economy, by forcing people to stay indoors and creating a ‘new normal’ of living. Rwanda has made notable efforts to fight the pandemic....

Authors: Emery Manirambona, Theogene Uwizeyimana, Emmanuel Uwiringiyimana and Henna Reddy

Income-related health inequality among Chinese adults during the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence based on an online survey

Partial- or full-lockdowns, among other interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic, may disproportionally affect people (their behaviors and health outcomes) with lower socioeconomic status (SES). This study e...

Authors: Peng Nie, Lanlin Ding, Zhuo Chen, Shiyong Liu, Qi Zhang, Zumin Shi, Lu Wang, Hong Xue, Gordon G. Liu and Youfa Wang

Associations of psychosocial factors, knowledge, attitudes and practices with hospitalizations in internal medicine divisions in different population groups in Israel

Inequalities in healthcare utilization exist across ethnic groups; however, the contributions of health-related knowledge and psychosocial factors to these inequalities remain unclear. We examined associations...

Authors: Shira Sagie, Wasef Na’amnih, Juda Frej, Gershon Alpert and Khitam Muhsen

Needs and resources of people with type 2 diabetes in peri-urban Cochabamba, Bolivia: a people-centred perspective

The rising prevalence of type 2 diabetes results in a worldwide public healthcare crisis, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with unprepared and overburdened health systems mainly focused o...

Authors: Christine Cécile Leyns, Niek Couvreur, Sara Willems and Ann Van Hecke

“This is my boy’s health! Talk straight to me!” perspectives on accessible and culturally safe care among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients of clinical genetics services

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people do not enjoy equal access to specialist health services that adequately meet their needs. Clinical genetics services are at the vanguard of realising the health ben...

Authors: Philippa Dalach, Ravi Savarirayan, Gareth Baynam, Julie McGaughran, Emma Kowal, Libby Massey, Misty Jenkins, Yin Paradies and Margaret Kelaher

Inequalities in antenatal care coverage and quality: an analysis from 63 low and middle-income countries using the ANCq content-qualified coverage indicator

Antenatal care (ANC) is an essential intervention associated with a reduction of maternal and new-born morbidity and mortality. However, evidence suggested substantial inequalities in maternal and child health...

Authors: Luisa Arroyave, Ghada E. Saad, Cesar G. Victora and Aluisio J. D. Barros