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  • 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

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Global health
Protocol
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
  1. Elodie Besnier1,
  2. Katie Thomson2,
  3. Donata Stonkute3,
  4. Talal Mohammad3,
  5. Nasima Akhter4,
  6. Adam Todd5,
  7. Magnus Rom Jensen6,
  8. Astrid Kilvik7,
  9. Clare Bambra8
  1. 1 Centre for Global Health Inequalities Research (CHAIN) / Department of Sociology and Political Science, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway
  2. 2 Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, UK
  3. 3 Department of Public Health and Nursing / CHAIN, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway
  4. 4 Department of Anthropology, Durham University, Stockton-on-Tees, UK
  5. 5 School of Pharmacy / CHAIN, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, UK
  6. 6 Dragvoll library, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway
  7. 7 Medicine and Health Library, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway
  8. 8 Institute of Health & Society / CHAIN, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, UK
  1. Correspondence to Elodie Besnier; elodie.besnier{at}ntnu.no

Abstract

Introduction Despite 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 analysis An 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 dissemination This 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 number CRD42019141673

  • child health
  • health equity
  • population health
  • global health
  • public health

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-032981

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    Footnotes

    • Twitter @adam.todd138

    • Contributors EB led the drafting and revising of the manuscript. KT, CB, AT and NA provided key input on the scope and design of the review. KT, MRJ and AK provided advice, support and comments on the search strategy and the pilot, with MRJ reviewing pilot search strings prior to the final search. TM, DS, KT, CB, AT and NA contributed to the writing and revision of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Ethics approval This review will exclusively work with anonymous group-level information available from published reviews. As a result, there is no risk to identifying individual data or disclosing confidential information. Thus, this study did not require seeking ethical approval.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.