Although Value-Based Health Care (VBHC) is widely debated and cited, there are few empirical studies focused on how its concepts are understood and applied in real-world contexts. This comparative case study of two prominent adopters in Brazil and Sweden, situated at either end of the spectrum in terms of contextual prerequisites, provides insights into the complex interactions involved in the adoption of value-based strategies. We found that the adoption of VBHC emphasized either health outcomes or costs – not both as suggested by the value equation. This may be linked to broader health system and societal contexts. Implementation can generate tensions with traditional business models, suggesting that providers should first analyze how these strategies align with their internal context. Adoption by a single provider organization is challenging, if not impossible. An effective VBHC transformation seems to require a systematic and systemic approach where all stakeholders need to clearly define the purpose and the scope of the transformation, and together steer their actions and decisions accordingly.

It is generally agreed that striking a balance between resuming economic and social activities and keeping the effective reproductive number (R0) below 1 using non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important goal until and even after effective vaccines become available. Therefore, the need remains to understand how the virus is transmitted in order to identify high-risk environments and activities that disproportionately contribute to its spread so that effective preventative measures could be put in place.

The prevalence of overweight, obesity, and diabetes is rising rapidly in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), but there are scant empirical data on the association between body-mass index (BMI) and diabetes in these settings.

As mass vaccination campaigns against COVID-19 accelerate worldwide, there remains only limited evidence regarding vaccine effectiveness (VE) among pregnant women. Pregnant women have been shown to be at risk for severe COVID-19, resulting in adverse obstetrics outcomes, and their immune system is known to undergo alterations during pregnancy.

Background As screening programs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) often do not have the resources to screen the entire population, there is frequently a need to target such efforts to easily identifiable priority groups. This study aimed to determine (1) how hypertension prevalence in LMICs varies by age, sex, body mass index, and smoking status, and (2) the ability of different combinations of these variables to accurately predict hypertension. Methods and Results We analyzed individual-level, nationally representative data from 1 170 629 participants in 56 LMICs, of whom 220 636 (18.8%) had hypertension. Hypertension was defined as systolic blood pressure ≥140 mm Hg, diastolic blood pressure ≥90 mm Hg, or reporting to be taking blood pressure-lowering medication. The shape of the positive association of hypertension with age and body mass index varied across world regions. We used logistic regression and random forest models to compute the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve in each country for different combinations of age, body mass index, sex, and smoking status. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for the model with all 4 predictors ranged from 0.64 to 0.85 between countries, with a country-level mean of 0.76 across LMICs globally. The mean absolute increase in the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve from the model including only age to the model including all 4 predictors was 0.05. Conclusions Adding body mass index, sex, and smoking status to age led to only a minor increase in the ability to distinguish between adults with and without hypertension compared with using age alone. Hypertension screening programs in LMICs could use age as the primary variable to target their efforts.

Variation in the approaches taken to contain the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic at country level has been shaped by economic and political considerations, technical capacity, and assumptions about public behaviours. To address the limited application of learning from previous pandemics, this study aimed to analyse perceived facilitators and inhibitors during the pandemic and to inform the development of an assessment tool for pandemic response planning.