Here, twice a month, we highlight an article written by one of the students in the doctoral program in Global Health. Here is an article by Daniel Martinez Garcia
Filling the Gaps in Humanitarian Paediatrics: A Systematic Review of Child Health Interventions in Conflict Settings
Child public health interventions for conflict-affected populations: A systematic review | PLOS Global Public Health
Children living through armed conflict are among the most vulnerable populations on earth, yet the evidence base guiding interventions to protect their health remains strikingly thin and this gap is highlighted in this piece.
Published in PLOS Global Public Health, this systematic review screened over 3,600 records spanning more than a decade of literature, ultimately identifying only 51 studies that met inclusion criteria: a number that speaks volumes about how neglected this field remains.
Beyond the sheer scarcity of evidence, the review exposes a deeper structural problem: the absence of consistent definitions and outcome frameworks across the field makes it extraordinarily difficult to compare findings, build cumulative knowledge, or design adequate policies for conflict-affected children. Nowhere is this gap more glaring than in paediatric neglected conditions such as tuberculosis: of all studies reviewed, only two addressed TB interventions in children, and neither reported outcome data. This near-total absence of evidence for one of the leading infectious killers of children in humanitarian settings is both alarming and actionable. By rigorously mapping what exists and what does not, this paper makes a critical contribution to the emerging discipline of Humanitarian Paediatrics, and lays the essential groundwork for a dedicated, larger-scale systematic review of paediatric TB interventions in conflict, resource-limited, and humanitarian settings. In a field where children have long been invisible in the data, this work insists they can no longer be.
Daniel Martinez Garcia