Barriers and facilitators to implementing reusable personal protective equipment in hospitals, and their impacts on environment, care safety, costs, and supply chain resilience: a scoping review protocol.

Introduction: Climate degradation poses a significant global health challenge, with healthcare systems paradoxically contributing to this issue while adhering to the principle of 'do no harm'. Notably, the healthcare sector accounts for a considerable share of greenhouse gas emissions in many industrialised countries, primarily due to the supply chain, including pharmaceuticals, disposable medical devices and personal protective equipment (PPE). The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this issue, with millions of tons of CO emissions attributed to single-use PPE.

The public health impact of COVID-19 variants of concern on the effectiveness of contact tracing in Vermont, United States.

Case investigation and contact tracing (CICT) are public health measures that aim to break the chain of pathogen transmission. Changes in viral characteristics of COVID-19 variants have likely affected the effectiveness of CICT programs. We estimated and compared the cases averted in Vermont when the original COVID-19 strain circulated (Nov.

Estimated public health impact of concurrent mask mandate and vaccinate-or-test requirement in Illinois, October to December 2021.

Background: Facing a surge of COVID-19 cases in late August 2021, the U.S. state of Illinois re-enacted its COVID-19 mask mandate for the general public and issued a requirement for workers in certain professions to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing.

Building a Simple Model to Assess the Impact of Case Investigation and Contact Tracing for Sexually Transmitted Diseases: Lessons From COVID-19.

Introduction: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed a simple spreadsheet-based tool to help state and local public health officials assess the performance and impact of COVID-19 case investigation and contact tracing in their jurisdiction.

Optimal spatial evaluation of a pro rata vaccine distribution rule for COVID-19.

The COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) is a World Health Organization (WHO) initiative that aims for an equitable access of COVID-19 vaccines. Despite potential heterogeneous infection levels across a country, countries receiving allotments of vaccines may follow WHO's allocation guidelines and distribute vaccines based on a jurisdictions' relative population size. Utilizing economic-epidemiological modeling, we benchmark the performance of this pro rata allocation rule by comparing it to an optimal one that minimizes the economic damages and expenditures over time, including a penalty representing the social costs of deviating from the pro rata strategy.

Cost-effectiveness of combining drug and environmental treatments for environmentally transmitted diseases.

Control of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) via mass drug administration (MDA) has increased considerably over the past decade, but strategies focused exclusively on human treatment show limited efficacy. This paper investigated trade-offs between drug and environmental treatments in the fight against NTDs by using schistosomiasis as a case study. We use optimal control techniques where the planner's objective is to treat the disease over a time horizon at the lowest possible total cost, where the total costs include treatment, transportation and damages (reduction in human health).