Search

Background Childhood poverty and adverse experiences contribute to child vulnerability, hindering healthy childhood growth and development pathways. Currently, the evidence on adversities related to vulnerable and homeless children's health and social needs in Tanzania is limited as a result of the complex social, economic, and political environment. Objectives This review investigates the biopsychosocial indicators of health and social needs related to vulnerable and homeless children facing poverty and a range of adversities in Tanzania. The main objective is to conduct a scoping review of the published literature to identify key evidence and to suggest future research needs.MethodsA data search was undertaken between May and September 2020. Data sources included literature identified through electronic databases, such as CINAHL, Pub Med, Psych Info, and Medline. Further additional studies were located through a manual search of an organisational website and reference list. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they were: (i) Published in the English language; (ii) Peer-reviewed and published within the past 10 years; (iii) Subjects included children aged from 0-18 years who were vulnerable due to poverty and a range of adversities; and iv) Studies conducted only in Tanzania. The five-step scoping review process was followed, as developed by Arksey and Malley (2005). Data were analysed using thematic analysis, and conceptualised using the third iteration of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory to identify the indicators relating to vulnerable and homeless children's health and social needs (1, 2). Results Three themes were identified in the literature, including the increasing burden of disease and mortality, poor access to service delivery for vulnerable and homeless children, and a lack of adherence to local and national policies to protect children. The articles collated with similar themes were presented together. These themes were conceptualized using the third iteration of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory.Conclusion There is a need for greater investment in public health measures to detect vulnerable and homeless children's clinical risks, particularly given the COVID-19 pandemic which has exacerbated childhood adversities, with implications for children's overall health in Tanzania. Further research should explore ways to forge links for program implementation between multi-sector stakeholders and primary healthcare systems through early recognition of indicators and reduction of alienation within communities. This will enhance health and social support care for vulnerable and homeless children.

Leadership in public health is necessary, relevant, and important as it enables the engagement, management, and transformation of complex public health challenges at a national level, as well as collaborating with internal stakeholders to address global public health threats. The research literature recommends exploring the journey of public health leaders and the factors influencing leadership development, especially in developing countries. Thus, we aimed to develop a grounded theory on individual leadership development in the Nepalese context. For this, we adopted constructivist grounded theory, and conducted 46 intensive interviews with 22 public health officials working under the Ministry of Health, Nepal. Data were analysed by adopting the principles of Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory. The theory developed from this study illustrates four phases of leadership development within an individual–initiation, identification, development, and expansion. The ’initial phase’ is about an individual’s wishes to be a leader without a formal role or acknowledgement, where family environment, social environment and individual characteristics play a role in influencing the actualisation of leadership behaviours. The ’identification phase’ involves being identified as a public health official after having formal position in health-related organisations. The ’development’ phase is about developing core leadership capabilities mostly through exposure and experiences. The ’expansion’ phase describes expanding leadership capabilities and recognition mostly by continuous self-directed learning. The grounded theory provides insights into the meaning and actions of participants’ professional experiences and highlighted the role of individual characteristics, family and socio-cultural environment, and workplace settings in the development of leadership capabilities. It has implications for academia to fulfill the absence of leadership theory in public health and is significant to fulfill the need of leadership models grounded in the local context of Asian countries.

Research efforts in the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic focused on the actual and potential impacts on societies, economies, sectors, and governments. Less attention was paid to the experiences of individuals and less still to the impact of COVID-19 on an individual’s wellbeing. This research addresses this gap by utilising a holistic wellbeing framework to examine the impact of COVID-19 on the overall wellbeing of individuals in the Australian state of South Australia through an online survey. The research framework for the survey comprises six dimensions: psychological and emotional health, physical health, living standards, family and community vitality, governance, and ecological diversity and resilience. The results show that most respondents (71%) were able to maintain overall wellbeing during the pandemic. However, more than a half of the respondents could not maintain wellbeing in psychological and emotional health. Further examination of the drivers of inability to maintain overall wellbeing reveals that low-income individuals, younger respondents (aged 18–24) and women suffer disproportionate hardships. Defining poverty in terms of multi-dimensional deprivations in wellbeing enables a nuanced analysis of the unequal impacts of COVID-19 mitigation policies that can be used to improve policymaking.

The 2016 Iranian Census reveals that 14 of the country’s 31 provinces have sub-replacement fertility. The province of Tehran, where a woman on average gives birth to 1.5 children during her reproductive period, has the lowest fertility in Iran. However, the ‘two-child’ norm prevails in the country and even a woman of young reproductive age still values having at least two children on average. In other words, there exists a gap between a woman’s actual and desired fertility. This paper examines the demographic and socio-economic factors influencing the gap between actual and desired fertility in Tehran city based on a sample survey of 400 married women aged 15–49 years, conducted in 2015. The findings of the study reveal that the women of Tehran would be able to meet their fertility desires of two or more children if they were able to achieve their intended number of children they stated in the survey. However, should these women face any socio-economic constraint, they would be very likely to restrain their fertility desires and have fewer additional children than they initially intended, and thus continue with the sub-replacement fertility as being observed in Iran today.

The aim of this chapter is to present innovations associated with the linkage of statistics and well-being and human development, where the contexts of application are poor countries, and where there is a further linkage with international efforts to tackle multidimensional poverty. The chapter begins with background information focused on the following themes: recent developments in the search for innovations; flaws in the assumptions of the existing metric (GDP); the importance of process data and its linkage with subjectivity; innovations in the human development index (HDI) system; subjective/processual breakthrough enabled by the gross national happiness system; and a brief introduction to the Flinders University statistical innovation developed to assess people's experiences of development. The chapter then presents the technical details of this innovation, operationalized in calculating human well-being in Timor-Leste, and in the Indian state of Assam. This section covers the computation of the HDI of a section of the population defined by age, namely, the population of the youth of Timor-Leste. No previous attempt is known to have been made to compute HDI for a section of the population defined by age. The final part of the chapter describes the quantification of well-being, which was operationalized as the human well-being index in Assam. This index is presented as a complementary component of the HDI system. It represents the first time a National Human Development Report has attempted to measure well-being, a subjective aspect of the quality-of-life, through developing a dedicated index.

Global statistics of HIV/AIDS infection reveals the disastrous effects of discrimination against women in the area of human health. Women’s vulnerability to HIV/AIDS reflects their wider social, economic and sexual disadvantages compared to their male counterpart. Although the gender context of HIV/AIDS has received a considerable attention recently, however, in case of Vietnam gender aspects of the epidemic have still been a neglected area of research. Little is known about how gender affects the epidemic as well as how the epidemic affects the life of women. This paper reveals that the gender context of HIV/AIDS epidemic in Vietnam has a much complex reality. Institutions, social norms and opportunity structures, of which “Doi Moi” [Renovation] has become an integral part, combine to create new norms and conditions put women more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. A gendered strategy is crucial in order to successfully fight against the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic.