September 2018 (Volume 96)

Original Scholarship

• 

  Featured Article

  The Impact of Parental and Medical Leave Policies on Socioeconomic and Health Outcomes in OECD Countries: A Systematic Review of the Empirical Literature

  Arijit Nandi, Deepa Jahagirdar, Michelle C. Dimitris, Jeremy A. Labrecque, Erin Strumpf, Jay S. Kaufman, Ilona Vincent, Efe Atabay, Sam Harper, Alison Earle, S. Jody Heymann

  This systematic review looks at the potential impacts of national paid leave policies in OECD countries on economic, social, and health outcomes. Researchers found that access to paid parental leave around the time of childbirth reduces rates of infant mortality. More generous paid leave in countries that offer unpaid or short duration of paid leave could help families strike a balance between the demands of earning income and attending to personal and family well-being. Read more

• 

  Systems Thinking as a Framework for Analyzing Commercial Determinants of Health

  Cécile Knai, Mark Petticrew, Nicholas Mays, Simon Capewell, Rebecca Cassidy, Steven Cummins, Elizabeth Eastmure, Patrick Fafard, Benjamin Hawkins, Jørgen Dejgård Jensen, Srinivasa Vittal Katikireddi, Modi Mwatsama, Jim Orford, Heide Weishaar

  Worldwide, more than 70% of all deaths are attributable to noncommunicable diseases (NCDS), such as cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes, and mental illness. Although such deaths are preventable, effective solutions continue to elude the public health community. This study uses a complex systems perspective to analyze the commercial determinants of NCDs and how unhealthy commodity industries influence public health policy. Read more

• 

  Diversity in Medical Device Clinical Trials: Do We Know What Works for Which Patients?

  Stephanie R. Fox-Rawlings, Laura B. Gottschalk, Laurén A. Doamekpor, Diana M. Zuckerman

  A 2012 law encouraged the US Food and Drug Administration to ensure that new medical products be analyzed for safety and effectiveness for key demographic patient groups. Researchers looked at 22 high-risk medical devices reviewed by the FDA in 2014-2017 and found that due to lack of patient diversity and publicly available data, clinicians and patients often cannot determine which devices are safe and effective for specific demographic groups. Read more

• 

  Patient-Centered Insights: Using Health Care Complaints to Reveal Hot Spots and Blind Spots in Quality and Safety

  Alex Gillespie, Tom W. Reader

  Health care complaints contain valuable data on quality and safety. Using a complaints analysis tool to analyze a benchmark national dataset of health care complaints in England, researchers found that systematic analysis of health care complaints can improve quality and safety by providing patient-centered insights that localize issues and shed light on difficult-to-monitor problems. Read more

• 

  Impact of Pharmacists on Access to Vaccine Providers: A Geospatial Analysis

  Parth D. Shah, Justin G. Trogdon, Shelley D. Golden, Carol E. Golin, Macary Weck Marciniak, Noel T. Brewer

  The largest disparities in human papillomavirus vaccination in the United States are due to geography, with lower uptake in rural areas. Researchers used publicly available 2016 workforce data of physicians and pharmacists—and conducted an analysis of census tracts to analyze their distribution. Pharmacists are more geographically dispersed than primary care physicians in Texas; including pharmacists among available adolescent vaccine providers would improve the geographic distribution of vaccine providers. Read more