Category Archives: Determinants of Health
What palliative care-related problems do patients experience at HIV diagnosis? A systematic review of the evidence
CONTEXT: Palliative care is an essential element of HIV care throughout the disease trajectory, but there is a lack of information to guide clinical care at HIV diagnosis. OBJECTIVES: This...
Challenges, coping strategies, and recommendations related to the HIV services field in the HAART era: A systematic literature review of qualitative studies from the United States and Canada
Qualitative research methods have been utilized to study the nature of work in the HIV services field. Yet current literature lacks a Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Treatment (HAART) era compendium of...
Supervised and unsupervised self-testing for HIV in high- and low-risk populations: A systematic review.
BACKGROUND: Stigma, discrimination, lack of privacy, and long waiting times partly explain why six out of ten individuals living with HIV do not access facility-based testing. By circumventing these barriers,...
Neurocognitive impairment in HIV-1-infected adults in Sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic review and meta-analysis
OBJECTIVE: To estimate the burden of HIV neurocognitive impairment (NCI) among adult patients on and off antiretroviral therapy (ART) in Sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS: Estimates were derived from a random effects...
Family-centred approaches to the prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV
Prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) programmes have traditionally been narrow in scope, targeting biomedical interventions during the perinatal period, rather than considering HIV as a family disease. This...
The measurement of spirituality in palliative care and the content of tools validated cross-culturally: A systematic review
CONTEXT: Despite the need to assess spiritual outcomes in palliative care, little is known about the properties of the tools currently used to do so. In addition, measures of spirituality...
A systematic review of heterosexual anal intercourse and its role in the transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in Papua New Guinea
BACKGROUND: Papua New Guinea (PNG) has a high burden of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and the highest adult HIV prevalence in the Pacific region. Despite this burden of disease, heterosexual...
A systematic review of qualitative findings on factors enabling and deterring uptake of HIV testing in Sub-Saharan Africa
BACKGROUND: Despite Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) being the epicenter of the HIV epidemic, uptake of HIV testing is not optimal. While qualitative studies have been undertaken to investigate factors influencing uptake...
Determinants of male involvement in maternal and child health services in sub-Saharan Africa: A review
INTRODUCTION: Male participation is a crucial component in the optimization of Maternal and Child Health (MCH) services. This is especially so where prevention strategies to decrease Mother-to-Child Transmission (MTCT) of...
A systematic review of randomized controlled trials of prenatal and postnatal vitamin A supplementation of HIV-infected women
We searched the Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, EMBASE, AIDSearch, and Gateway to assess the effect of prenatal and/or postnatal vitamin A supplementation on the risk of mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV...
