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Global health research partnerships are increasingly taking the form of consortia. Recent scholarship has proposed what features of governance may be necessary for these consortia to advance justice in global health. That guidance purports three elements of global health research consortia are essential — their research priorities, research capacity development strategies, research translation strategies — and should be structured to promote the health of the worst-off globally. This paper adopted a reflective equilibrium approach, testing the proposed ethical guidance against the experience of a global health research consortium with equity objectives. Case study research was performed with Future Health Systems (FHS), a health systems research consortium funded over two phases. Data on FHS Phase-2 were gathered through in-depth interviews with steering committee members and junior researchers and collection of consortium-related documents. Thematic analysis of the data for consistency with the proposed guidance generated recommendations for how the guidance might be better articulated and identified areas where it could usefully be expanded. Factors facilitating FHS alignment with the ethical guidance were also identified, including early engagement and partnership with low and middle-income country stakeholders, the learning developed during FHS Phase-1, and aspects of the grant program funding it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insufficiency of vitamin D, during pregnancy, is a common cause of various pregnancy-related complications. Despite such insufficiency being frequently reported among South Asian pregnant women, the absence of systematic review and meta-analysis renders the true extent of this problem being poorly characterised. In this systematic review, three main databases (PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar) were searched for original studies. We included original studies published between 1January 2001 to 31 December 2019, conducted on pregnant women who lived in South Asian countries and reported the prevalence of vitamin D insufficiency among the study participants. Twenty studies with a total of 7804 participants from four South Asian countries finally met our selection criteria. Overall pooled prevalence of insufficiency was 65 % (95 % CI: 51 %, 78 %) with a significant heterogeneity (I2 = 99·37 %; P = 0·00). The average level of vitamin D ranged from 9 ng/ml to 24·86 ng/ml with a weighted mean of 16·37 ng/ml (weighted standard deviation 7·13 ng/ml). The highest prevalence of insufficiency was found in Pakistan (76 %) followed by India (67 %), Bangladesh (64 %) and Nepal (14 %). Results obtained in this study suggest that vitamin D insufficiency is highly prevalent among South Asian pregnant women. Being the first systematic review in this region, findings from this study will help the future studies and strengthen the evidence for policymakers to develop effective mitigation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]