The investigators used two-way fixed-effects models to assess associations between check-up type and healthcare utilization while accounting for stable, time-invariant individual characteristics. Compared with participants who had not received a check-up, those in the self-paid group had a significantly higher probability of hospital admission and higher medical expenditure. Free health check-ups showed no consistent association with greater overall healthcare utilization.

Their clearest association was with inequality in inpatient outcomes. The pro-rich concentration index for annual hospital admissions was 0.07 lower in the free check-up group than in the no-check-up group, with a P value of 0.018. The difference in annual inpatient expenditure was 0.06, with a P value of 0.026.

The free check-up group also had a lower pro-rich inequality index than the self-paid group for annual hospital admissions, by 0.10 (P = 0.003), and for annual inpatient expenditure, by 0.07 (P = 0.013). The study did not define the term “pro-rich” in the supplied research summary, so the inequality measures should not be interpreted more specifically than the reported concentration-index comparisons allow. The authors additionally applied Recentered Influence Function regression decomposition, including an Oaxaca decomposition, to identify factors correlating with differences in inequality between check-up groups.

The factors accounting for those differences varied across pairwise comparisons, indicating that the statistical sources of inequality were not uniform across the three check-up categories or across the measured outcomes. Because the analysis was observational, its findings describe associations rather than causal effects. The fixed-effects approach reduced the influence of persistent individual differences, but the design could not rule out every source of confounding.

The results also apply to the older-adult population and setting covered by the CHARLS survey rather than establishing the effects of free or self-paid check-ups in other populations. The study did not show that free examinations reduced total hospitalization or spending, nor did it show that self-paid examinations caused greater use. Instead, it separated two related findings: self-paid check-ups were associated with more utilization and expenditure, while free check-ups were associated with smaller measured inequalities in selected inpatient outcomes.

The researchers argued that policy should go beyond expanding check-up coverage by strengthening follow-up, referral support and financial protection. Its central result is that the type of check-up was linked to different patterns of healthcare utilization and inequality: self-paid participation accompanied higher utilization and medical expenditure, whereas free participation did not consistently increase overall utilization and was associated with lower pro-rich inequality in hospital admissions and inpatient expenditure among older Chinese adults.

Subject of Research: Health check-up type, healthcare utilization and inequality among older adults in China

Article Title: Associations of different health check-up types with healthcare utilization and its inequalities among older adults in China: evidence from a nationally representative survey

Article References: Qian, Y., Liu, Y., Zhu, R., Wang, G., & Wang, Z. (2026). Associations of different health check-up types with healthcare utilization and its inequalities among older adults in China: evidence from a nationally representative survey. International Journal for Equity in Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-026-03086-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12939-026-03086-5

Keywords: health check-ups, older adults, healthcare utilization, health inequality, hospital admissions, inpatient expenditure, CHARLS, free screening, self-paid care, China, Associations, different

The study examined cervical cancer, HPV-associated cancers outside the cervix in females, and HPV-associated cancers in males. For females, researchers characterized relative burden patterns using country-specific ratios of age-standardised incidence rates and a quartile-based classification. They also evaluated associations between incidence rates and the Human Development Index, using data for 2022 to compare the geographic distribution of these cancers.

In 24 countries and territories, the age-standardised incidence rate of female non-cervical HPV-associated cancers exceeded that of cervical cancer. The analysis found contrasting development gradients: cervical cancer incidence was inversely associated with HDI, whereas female non-cervical and male HPV-associated cancer incidence showed positive associations with HDI. The relationships for cervical cancer and female non-cervical HPV-associated cancers were nonlinear, indicating that the association between national development and incidence was not uniform across all development levels.

Historical data from Cancer Incidence in Five Continents Plus were used to examine changes in 40 countries between 1998 and 2017. Joinpoint regression showed that cervical cancer age-standardised incidence decreased in 23 of the 40 countries. By contrast, incidence increased in 23 countries for female non-cervical HPV-associated cancers and in 13 countries for male HPV-associated cancers. These temporal results describe the study population of countries with available data, rather than every country worldwide.

The analysis also tested whether the time elapsed since HPV vaccine introduction into national immunisation programmes was associated with incidence rates in 2022. An inverse association was observed between years since vaccine introduction and cervical cancer incidence. That association was no longer statistically significant after adjustment for cervical screening coverage, with an adjusted coefficient of β = −0.19 and P = 0.537.

The positive association between years since HPV vaccine introduction and female non-cervical HPV-associated cancer incidence was attenuated after adjustment for HDI, but remained statistically significant, with β = 0.11 and P = 0.022. These analyses were ecological, so the results identify population-level associations between vaccination timing and incidence rather than demonstrating a causal effect of vaccination on an individual or establishing benefits from the vaccine itself.

Taken together, the findings show that the global burden of HPV-associated cancer does not follow one geographic pattern. Cervical cancer remained a major burden in low-HDI countries, while non-cervical HPV-associated cancers were increasingly prominent in many higher-HDI settings. The historical analysis also documented declines in cervical cancer in most of the 40 countries with usable time-series data, alongside increases in female non-cervical HPV-associated cancers in the same number of countries and male HPV-associated cancers in 13.

The authors concluded that future strategies should be tailored to local epidemiological contexts, with gender-neutral HPV vaccination considered where appropriate alongside integrated management of shared behavioural risk factors. Their conclusions are based on modelled global estimates for 2022, historical incidence data from a limited group of countries, and observational associations. As a result, the study supports context-specific planning rather than a single universal interpretation of HPV-associated cancer trends.

Subject of Research: Global epidemiology of cervical and non-cervical HPV-associated cancers

Article Title: The global landscape of HPV-associated cancers beyond the cervix: a comparative epidemiological analysis

Article References: Zhong, P., Zhang, X., Hu, S., Zhao, X., Xia, C., Yang, H., Stafford, R. S., Zhao, F., & Zhang, L. (2026). The global landscape of HPV-associated cancers beyond the cervix: a comparative epidemiological analysis. BMC Infectious Diseases. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-026-14563-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12879-026-14563-1

Keywords: HPV, cervical cancer, global epidemiology, cancer incidence, HPV vaccination, human development, cervical screening, anal cancer, oropharyngeal cancer, health inequality, global, landscape

Of the 922 adults, 918 contributed to latent class analysis based on 18 indicators covering physical conditions, mental health conditions, and behavioural risks. Adverse childhood experiences were represented in two ways: a standardised version of an archived 13-domain count and three re-estimated adversity classes. For the count measure, unobserved domains were treated as unendorsed when at least one domain had been observed; otherwise, the count was treated as missing. Multinomial models used 200 pseudo-class draws to propagate uncertainty in adult-profile assignments, while the adversity-class models also propagated uncertainty in the adversity classifications. The abstract reports both unadjusted and age-, gender-, and nationality-adjusted relative risk ratios.

Each one-standard-deviation increase in the childhood-adversity count had its strongest association with membership in the Mental health and multi-burden profile rather than the Low burden profile. The unadjusted relative risk ratio was 2.94 (95% confidence interval, 2.38–3.63), and the adjusted estimate was 2.86 (2.30–3.55). Smaller adjusted associations were reported for Substance/prescription vulnerability, at 1.51 (1.15–2.00), and Cardiometabolic burden, at 1.39 (1.03–1.86); the corresponding unadjusted confidence intervals included 1, making these smaller associations sensitive to model specification.

In the adversity-class models, Household/interpersonal adversity was associated with the Mental health and multi-burden profile relative to Low adversity, with an adjusted relative risk ratio of 7.21 (4.12–12.60). Polyvictimisation/high violence was associated with Mental health and multi-burden at 21.31 (8.74–51.95) and Cardiometabolic burden at 3.92 (1.21–12.72), although the abstract notes that these estimates were imprecise. The findings show associations in a convenience sample and do not establish that childhood adversity caused profile membership. The reliance on retrospective reports, the sample setting and the imprecision of some class-based estimates limit how broadly the results can be generalised or interpreted.

Subject of Research: Associations between retrospectively reported childhood adversity and adult health and behavioural-risk profiles in an Abu Dhabi convenience sample

Article Title: Patterns of adversity, patterns of burden: a person-centred analysis of adult health and behavioural-risk profiles in Abu Dhabi

Article References: Murphy, A., Horen, N., Long, T., Edgemon, T. G., Elbarazi, I., England, D., & Arafat, C. (2026). Patterns of adversity, patterns of burden: a person-centred analysis of adult health and behavioural-risk profiles in Abu Dhabi. BMC Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-026-29611-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-026-29611-3

Keywords: adverse childhood experiences, Abu Dhabi, adult health profiles, latent class analysis, mental health, behavioural risks, cardiometabolic burden, health inequality, retrospective reporting, BMC Public Health, Patterns, adversity

The motivation for the study lies in a well-documented imbalance in public health pedagogy. Prior analyses of Master of Public Health syllabi found that roughly ninety-three percent of commonly taught theories were behavioral, focusing on individual beliefs, motivation, and self-efficacy rather than on the social hierarchies, power relations, and institutional structures that shape disease distribution. Critics have argued that this “psychological fundamentalism” risks eliding the social-structural drivers of health, leaving practitioners ill-equipped to explain why disease burden falls unevenly across lines of class, race, gender, and citizenship status.

To test whether students would welcome a broader theoretical toolkit, the research team designed a course that split content between behavioral theories drawn from the widely used Glanz, Rimer, and Viswanath textbook and social-structural concepts with no established canon in public health instruction. The behavioral half covered the health belief model, the theory of planned behavior, social cognitive theory, the transtheoretical model, and related frameworks. The social-structural half included the social gradient, structural determinants of health, political economy of health, corporate determinants, life course theory, stigma, and community-based approaches such as popular epidemiology.

Assessment took place during the final class session of a Spring 2019 semester course. Students completed a questionnaire combining Likert scales with open-ended questions, administered after the instructor reviewed course content with the class and left the room to reduce pressure. All seventeen enrolled students participated, yielding a one hundred percent response rate. The researchers analyzed open-ended answers using reflexive thematic analysis, with three authors independently coding responses before reconciling them into shared themes.

The quantitative results were strikingly uniform. Every student rated the theoretical content as either good or very good, with sixty-five percent choosing the highest rating. Equally, all respondents judged the inclusion of social and structural theories to be important or very important, and similar levels of importance were assigned to behavioral theories. When asked which theories should be excluded from future versions of the course, thirteen of seventeen students left the question blank, one wrote that they liked all of them, and only a handful named specific candidates for removal.

The most revealing finding emerged when students ranked theories by relevance to two different goals. Asked which theories mattered most for their future professional work, students split roughly evenly: forty percent of all listed theories were behavioral and sixty percent were social-structural. But when asked which theories were most relevant to addressing health inequalities and achieving health equity, behavioral theories nearly vanished. Of seventy-eight total listings, only three, or four percent, were behavioral, while ninety-six percent were social-structural. Every single top-ranked answer for the health equity question was a social-structural theory, led by the social determinants of health, structural determinants, and the social-ecological model.

Qualitative responses added texture to these numbers. Students described behavioral theories as useful stepping-stones, noting that they provided an accessible introduction before the more complex social-structural material. Several emphasized that the course’s “ecological balance,” spanning multiple levels of the social-ecological model, was itself a strength. On the social-structural side, students highlighted professional relevance and a deeper grasp of the social determinants of health. One student wrote that these theories allow students to think on a deeper level about the issues they see, while another offered the phrase that became the study’s title: they teach us how to look at the world. A third noted their value for thinking upstream, toward the root causes of disease rather than downstream consequences.

The authors frame these findings within the scholarship of teaching and learning and connect them to the broader movement toward structural competency, defined as the trained ability to recognize and respond to disease and its unequal distribution as the outcome of harmful social structures such as policies, institutions, and systems. Structural competency curricula are already being developed for medical education, and the authors argue that incorporating social-structural theory into public health training could play a central role in cultivating this capacity among future practitioners.

The study’s limitations are considerable and acknowledged candidly. Seventeen students in a single course at one program, assessed once after the fact with no baseline or comparison group, cannot support broad generalization. Social desirability bias may have inflated the positive ratings, and students in a community health education specialization may have been predisposed to favor structural perspectives. The instrument itself was piloted with only two students, and an ambiguous instruction about blank responses left the authors unable to distinguish endorsement from oversight.

Even with those caveats, the findings carry practical weight for curriculum designers. The authors suggest that programs worried about overloading a single course might distribute theoretical instruction across required coursework rather than concentrating it, and that future evaluations should measure actual learning and application rather than perceived relevance alone. The absence of a consensus canon for social-structural instruction remains a pressing gap, but this pilot offers evidence that students do not merely tolerate the addition of structural theories to public health education. They see those theories as the essential lens for the field’s central moral project: understanding and dismantling health inequality.

Subject of Research: Student perceptions of behavioral versus social-structural theory content in a graduate public health course

Article Title: “They teach us how to look at the world”: student perceptions of traditional behavioral and underrepresented social-structural theoretical content in a graduate public health course

Article References: Harvey, M., Castle, A., & Mehta, V. (2026). “They teach us how to look at the world”: student perceptions of traditional behavioral and underrepresented social-structural theoretical content in a graduate public health course. Frontiers in Public Health, 14, Article 1893127. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1893127

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2026.1893127

Keywords: public health education, MPH curriculum, behavioral theory, social-structural theory, health inequality, social determinants of health, structural competency, thematic analysis, health equity, theory instruction, They, teach

The research team conducted a systematic search of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and the Iranian database Magiran, covering studies published from January 2000 to May 2026. From this sweep they identified twenty-four quantitative studies that examined factors associated with eye care service utilization among the Iranian population. Rather than pooling results statistically, the authors synthesized the evidence narratively, following the Synthesis Without Meta-Analysis guidelines, and classified each finding according to the Andersen Model’s three domains. This approach is technically significant because it preserves the heterogeneity of the underlying studies while still imposing a coherent conceptual structure, allowing patterns to emerge across different populations, settings and definitions of utilization, from simple eye examinations to cataract surgery and diabetic retinopathy screening.

Among the predisposing factors, those characteristics that exist before illness strikes, age played a complicated dual role. Increasing age was consistently associated with higher use of eye services, which makes intuitive sense given that cataracts, glaucoma and presbyopia accumulate over a lifetime. Yet the review also found that older adults carried the highest unmet need in the country, meaning that the population most vulnerable to vision loss was simultaneously the most likely to be falling through the cracks. This paradox sits at the heart of the paper’s central message: rising utilization with age is not the same as adequate coverage, and the gap between the two represents a reservoir of preventable blindness that the health system has yet to reach.

Gender shaped eye care behavior in equally nuanced ways. Women were more proactive than men when it came to preventive services, such as routine eye examinations, but they lagged in treatment follow-up, the crucial second step where a diagnosis is converted into lasting vision preservation. This split suggests that the barriers facing Iranian women are not primarily attitudinal; they appear at the stage of care that demands repeated visits, transportation, time away from household responsibilities and, often, money. Higher education, meanwhile, was generally associated with increased utilization across studies, reinforcing a familiar finding in health services research: people who understand the value of early detection and can navigate the health system are far more likely to use it before damage becomes irreversible.

The enabling domain, which captures the resources that make care physically and financially possible, produced the review’s most alarming and most consistent results. Economic status and insurance coverage were among the most frequently reported determinants, with what the authors describe as marked pro-rich inequality. Wealthier Iranians use eye services at substantially higher rates than poorer ones, a pattern that cannot be explained by differences in need alone. High out-of-pocket costs remained a major barrier across the evidence base. In ophthalmology, where cataract surgery, laser treatment and long-term glaucoma medication can impose significant cumulative expenses, the structure of financing effectively rations care by income, converting a treatable condition into a lasting disability for those who cannot pay.

Not every finding in the enabling domain was discouraging. Geographic access, functioning referral systems and macro-level policies, most notably Iran’s Health Transformation Plan, all played positive roles in connecting patients to services. The Health Transformation Plan, launched as part of Iran’s broader push toward Universal Health Coverage, expanded insurance coverage and reduced cost barriers for many services, and its appearance in the reviewed studies as a facilitating factor suggests that national policy can meaningfully shift utilization patterns. Still, the review notes that the predominantly cross-sectional nature of the evidence base makes it impossible to say with confidence how much any specific intervention has improved outcomes, and the authors explicitly call for further evaluation of policy effectiveness.

On the need side of the model, the clinical drivers of eye care use were, unsurprisingly, refractive errors, the simple uncorrected vision problems that affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide, and underlying chronic conditions such as diabetes, which puts patients at risk of sight-threatening retinopathy. But the review uncovered a critical breakdown in how need translates into action. Low awareness of the necessity of regular eye examinations, particularly among diabetic patients, was identified as a significant barrier to utilization. This is a technically important point: diabetic retinopathy is typically asymptomatic until it is advanced, so patients who wait for symptoms before seeking care are, by definition, waiting too long. Awareness campaigns and systematic screening programs, the review implies, are not optional extras but structural necessities for a country with a growing diabetic population.

The study’s conceptual framing deserves attention because it moves the policy conversation beyond a simple accounting of disease burden. By demonstrating that clinical need does not automatically translate into effective service use, the Andersen Model analysis shows that the intermediate machinery of the health system, financing, insurance, referral pathways, transport and education, determines whether a diagnosis of visual impairment ends in treatment or in blindness. In Iran, that machinery currently favors the educated and the affluent. The authors conclude that socioeconomic inequality in access to eye care remains a persistent challenge, and that financial barriers, geographic access, referral pathways and awareness should be central considerations for anyone planning eye health services in the country.

The review is not without limitations, and the authors are candid about them. Twenty-four studies, synthesized narratively rather than meta-analytically, cannot provide precise pooled effect sizes, and the dominance of cross-sectional designs means that the associations reported throughout the review are correlational rather than causal. Nonetheless, the consistency of certain signals, the pro-rich gradient, the role of insurance and out-of-pocket costs, the awareness gap among diabetics, gives the findings considerable weight. For a middle-income country navigating the twin pressures of an aging population and a rising diabetes epidemic, the message is clear and urgent: the technology to prevent most blindness already exists, but it will remain trapped in clinics unless the behavioral, financial and geographic pathways leading to it are rebuilt around equity rather than ability to pay.

The global implications extend well beyond Iran’s borders. Visual impairment affects well over a billion people worldwide, the vast majority of cases being preventable or treatable, and the same triad of poverty, poor access and low awareness that the review documents in Iran recurs in health systems from South Asia to sub-Saharan Africa. The Andersen framework offers these systems a practical diagnostic lens: instead of asking only how many people are blind, planners can ask who is predisposed to seek care, who is enabled to obtain it and who has been identified as needing it, and then target the weakest link. If the review’s findings spur rigorous evaluation of interventions like expanded insurance, mobile screening and community education, a study about utilization statistics may end up contributing to a measurable decline in avoidable blindness.

Subject of Research: Factors associated with eye care service utilization in Iran analyzed through the Andersen Behavioral Model

Article Title: Factors associated with eye care utilization in Iran: a systematic review based on the Andersen Behavioral Model

Article References: Zarei, E., Nematollahi, M. S., & Congdon, N. (2026). Factors associated with eye care utilization in Iran: a systematic review based on the Andersen Behavioral Model. BMC Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-026-29804-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-026-29804-w

Keywords: eye care utilization, Iran, systematic review, Andersen Behavioral Model, health inequality, visual impairment, out-of-pocket costs, insurance coverage, diabetic retinopathy, refractive errors, universal health coverage, BMC Public Health

The researchers, Xueneng Yang, Ruijuan Li, and Wendong Luo, quantified inequality using the slope index of inequality (SII) and the concentration index (CI). Countries were ranked from lowest to highest according to the socio-demographic index (SDI), a composite measure combining per capita income, educational attainment, and total fertility rate. The SII, estimated through population-weighted regression, expresses the absolute difference in disease burden between the most and least developed settings, while the CI, which ranges from −1 to +1, indicates whether disease burden is concentrated among low-SDI or high-SDI countries. Negative values in both measures signal that the burden falls disproportionately on the poorest nations—a pattern that dominated the study’s findings.

In 2021, the global disability-adjusted life year (DALY) rate—a measure combining years of life lost to premature death with years lived in poor health—stood at 22,377.4 per 100,000 people of reproductive age, with males shouldering a heavier burden (23,789.15) than females (20,928.80). Non-communicable diseases remained the dominant category at 13,109.2 DALYs per 100,000, followed by communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases and injuries. At the more granular level, COVID-19, road injuries, and depressive disorders ranked among the top causes, while migraine, major depressive disorder, and self-harm led the level-four classification—evidence that mental health and chronic pain now weigh as heavily on this age group as the infectious threats of previous decades.

The headline finding is that overall socioeconomic health inequality declined between 1990 and 2021. The SII for all causes moved from −17,755.23 to −13,789.27, and the CI improved from −0.15 to −0.13, meaning the gap in disease burden between the most and least developed countries shrank in both absolute and relative terms. A sensitivity analysis using 2019 as a pre-pandemic endpoint confirmed the pattern, and a population-weighted Gini index—which measures between-country differences without relying on socioeconomic ranking—showed a similarly stable trajectory from 0.15 in 1990 to approximately 0.15 in 2021, after dipping to 0.14 in 2019.

Beneath that aggregate improvement, however, the story diverges sharply by disease category. The most striking progress came in communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases: the SII nearly halved, from −15,690.50 to −9,571.89, with the CI improving from −0.51 to −0.38. Maternal and neonatal disorders showed a similar narrowing, as did neglected tropical diseases and malaria, where the SII fell from −2,982.90 to −762.83. These gains likely reflect decades of investment in vaccination campaigns, maternal health programs, and infectious disease control that have disproportionately benefited poorer countries—the populations with the most ground to make up.

Yet the study documents an ominous reversal elsewhere. Injuries, once nearly egalitarian in their distribution, saw their SII deteriorate from −344.35 to −1,686.57, with the CI worsening from −0.06 to −0.12, indicating that road accidents and other external causes of death and disability are now increasingly concentrated in lower-development settings. Transport injuries showed the same pattern, flipping from a slightly pro-rich gradient in 1990 to a strongly pro-poor one by 2021. HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections followed a parallel course: although overall inequality in infectious disease narrowed, the SII for HIV/AIDS worsened from −266.82 to −1,040.78, and drug-susceptible tuberculosis remained among the most unequally distributed conditions in the entire analysis, with a CI of −0.59 in 2021. Cardiovascular disease inequality also deepened, with the SII nearly doubling to −918.87.

The analysis also carved the data by sex, revealing that socioeconomic gradients in disease are not gender-neutral. For maternal and neonatal disorders, the SII among females in 2021 was −2,029.05, compared with a negligible −22.38 among males—unsurprising given the biology, but a stark reminder of where the inequity burden lands. More telling are the subtler contrasts: males showed much steeper socioeconomic gradients for injuries (SII of −2,749.96 versus −824.23 for females), road injuries, self-harm, and several digestive conditions, while females showed greater gradients for cardiovascular disease, HIV/AIDS, nutritional deficiencies, anxiety disorders, and migraine. The authors are careful to frame these as descriptive differences in sex-specific socioeconomic gradients rather than direct measures of sex-based health inequity, noting that GBD 2021 reports sex as a binary category and cannot capture gender identity.

The authors ground these patterns in an ecosocial framework—the idea that people biologically embody their social and ecological circumstances across their life courses. At the structural level, policies on insurance coverage, education, housing, and wages determine who accesses care; the study cites mechanisms such as racial segregation in the Americas, which have been associated with elevated rates of tuberculosis and perinatal depression in minority communities. At the social level, poverty shapes living conditions, employment stability, and health literacy, which in turn constrain behaviors like diet, sleep, and substance use that are often mislabeled as purely personal choices. Gendered factors compound the picture: female symptoms are more frequently underestimated, women are less likely to receive advanced therapies such as heart failure treatment or liver transplantation, and pregnant women are routinely excluded from clinical trials, leaving evidence gaps on drug safety in pregnancy.

The policy implications are as layered as the causes. The authors argue that health equity should be a national policy objective pursued through cross-sector collaboration spanning finance, education, labor, and urban planning—not merely through health ministries alone. Community-level interventions such as health education, digital outreach, and local support networks can extend reach to marginalized groups, while individual-level tools like text-message reminders and visual prompts can nudge healthier decisions. Crucially, they call for improved health surveillance with stratified data and long-term tracking systems, so that interventions can be evaluated against the populations and diseases where inequality is persistent or worsening. For the reproductive-age population specifically, the stakes extend beyond this generation: the health of people aged 15 to 49 shapes fertility, child development, and demographic sustainability, making health equity in this cohort an investment in the intergenerational future rather than a cost. The study’s limitations—data quality in low- and middle-income countries, coarse age stratification, and a descriptive rather than causal design—suggest the next research frontier lies in longitudinal, individual-level data that can trace how social position becomes biology.

Subject of Research: Socioeconomic health inequality in disease burden among the global reproductive-age population, 1990–2021

Article Title: Health inequalities in the global reproductive-age population: GBD 2021 trends and female-male differences, 1990–2021

Article References: Yang, X., Li, R., & Luo, W. (2026). Health inequalities in the global reproductive-age population: GBD 2021 trends and female-male differences, 1990–2021. iScience, 29(11), Article 117804. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2026.117804

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2026.117804

Keywords: health inequality, Global Burden of Disease, reproductive-age population, DALY, socio-demographic index, slope index of inequality, concentration index, sex differences, non-communicable diseases, injuries, HIV/AIDS, health equity

The researchers, led by a team from the Department of Pediatrics at The Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University in Changsha, China, focused on four core metrics: prevalence, incidence, deaths, and disability-adjusted life years, or DALYs. DALYs combine years of life lost with years lived in disability, offering a composite measure of how much disease steals from a young life. Across both regions, the news was largely encouraging. Death rates from chronic kidney disease fell sharply, with the average annual percentage change in DALYs dropping by 2.43 percent per year in South-East Asia and 2.87 percent per year in the Western Pacific. Incidence rates also declined modestly, from 27.93 to 26.72 per 100,000 in South-East Asia and from 24.34 to 20.92 per 100,000 in the Western Pacific.

Yet the picture is far from uniformly bright. Prevalence, the proportion of young people living with the disease at any given time, moved in opposite directions in the two regions. In South-East Asia, prevalence climbed from 785.2 to 920.36 per 100,000, while in the Western Pacific it fell from 559.62 to 475.41 per 100,000. The authors suggest this divergence may partly reflect improved detection and awareness in South-East Asia following historically limited screening, alongside better survival as disease management has improved. In the Western Pacific, more established healthcare systems may be more effectively preventing and managing the condition and its risk factors. The researchers caution, however, that differences in data quality and reporting practices could also shape these observed trends.

Age tells a story of two very different burdens. Children under five had the highest incidence rates, at 53.97 per 100,000 in South-East Asia and 49.29 per 100,000 in the Western Pacific, reflecting the prominence of congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract, the leading cause of pediatric kidney disease worldwide. But adolescents aged 15 to 19 carried the heaviest overall weight, with prevalence reaching 2,630.63 per 100,000 in South-East Asia and 1,445.9 per 100,000 in the Western Pacific, alongside the highest death and DALY rates of any age group. Notably, while incidence fell among the youngest children, it rose in every other age bracket, with the steepest climb among adolescents, at an average annual increase of 0.74 percent in South-East Asia and 1.06 percent in the Western Pacific.

Sex differences added another layer of complexity. Males consistently experienced higher death and DALY rates than females in both regions, with death rates of 0.79 per 100,000 in South-East Asia and 0.51 per 100,000 in the Western Pacific for males, compared with 0.55 and 0.42 respectively for females. DALY rates followed the same pattern, at 73.25 versus 52.65 per 100,000 in South-East Asia and 44.64 versus 38.69 per 100,000 in the Western Pacific. The researchers note that males tend to experience faster kidney function decline, which may push them toward more advanced stages of disease. However, they also point out that much of the evidence on sex disparities comes from adult populations, and the biological and epidemiological differences between children and adults mean these findings require validation through pediatric-specific research.

Perhaps the most sobering finding concerns geography and wealth. The 42 countries and territories studied were grouped by Socio-demographic Index, a composite measure incorporating fertility rates, disposable income, and educational attainment, ranging from 0.41 in Papua New Guinea to 0.88 in the Republic of Korea. In high-SDI countries, the burden of kidney disease deaths and DALYs fell consistently as development increased. But among countries with low and low-middle SDI, incidence actually rose with rising SDI, while death and DALY rates showed little change. Japan and the Republic of Korea recorded the lowest disease burden, while several Pacific Island nations, despite being classified as middle- or high-SDI, exhibited disproportionately high rates.

The Pacific Island pattern demands particular attention. Palau, Micronesia, and Guam recorded the highest incidence rates, while Niue, Tokelau, and Fiji had the highest death rates. Palau saw the largest increase in incidence, with an average annual percentage change of 1.16, and Niue the largest increase in deaths, at 0.63. The authors point to the ecological fragility of island nations, their heavy dependence on marine ecosystems, and their heightened vulnerability to climate change. Growing epidemiological evidence links high-temperature exposure to increased kidney-related morbidity and mortality, with repeated heat exposure leading to dehydration and potential renal damage. Environmental pollution and constrained medical systems may compound these pressures.

The causes behind pediatric kidney disease also shifted over the study period. CKD of unknown etiology accounted for the largest share of the burden in both regions, a category the authors acknowledge limits the usefulness of cause-specific interventions. Prevalence of CKD due to type 1 diabetes mellitus rose steadily in both regions, while incidence of CKD due to hypertension showed an increasing trend, particularly in South-East Asia. Death and DALY rates from all causes declined. The researchers note that GBD 2021 lacks data on CKD caused by type 2 diabetes and hypertension in children under 15, and that congenital anomalies and hereditary kidney diseases are not distinguished in detail, constraining etiological interpretation.

The study’s authors argue that their findings underscore the need for age- and gender-specific interventions, with particular attention to low-SDI countries and Pacific Island nations. They recommend routine kidney disease screening for children and adolescents with risk factors, strengthened primary healthcare capacity, early-life risk factor management, and improved access to timely referral and treatment services. Kidney replacement therapy, including dialysis and transplantation, remains constrained in many low- and middle-income settings by limited availability and high out-of-pocket costs, in stark contrast to the widespread access seen in high-income countries.

While the overall trajectory across Asia-Pacific offers grounds for cautious optimism, the analysis makes clear that progress has not been shared equally. Adolescents, males, Pacific Islanders, and children in the poorest countries continue to face disproportionate risks, and the researchers emphasize that targeted public health strategies, improved early screening, and enhanced access to pediatric kidney care in high-burden regions will be essential to closing these persistent gaps.

Subject of Research: Chronic kidney disease burden among children and adolescents in the South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions, 1990 to 2021

Article Title: Burden of chronic kidney disease among children and adolescents in the South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions, 1990 to 2021

Article References: Yang, Y., Xu, Y., Xue, X., Zhao, M., & He, Q. (2026). Burden of chronic kidney disease among children and adolescents in the South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions, 1990 to 2021. International Journal of Public Health, 71, Article 1609313. https://doi.org/10.3389/ijph.2026.1609313

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/ijph.2026.1609313

Keywords: chronic kidney disease, children, adolescents, Global Burden of Disease, South-East Asia, Western Pacific, Pacific Island countries, public health, health inequality, Socio-demographic Index, Burden, chronic

The study, led by Vincent Mougin of the Karolinska Institutet together with collaborators including researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, harnessed the extraordinary statistical infrastructure of the Swedish state. By linking the Total Population Register, the National Patient Register, the Cause of Death Register and the LISA labour market database, the team assembled a cohort of nearly 6.85 million unique individuals diagnosed between 2001 and 2023, contributing more than 196 million person-years of observation. That scale, and the near-complete population coverage of Scandinavian registers, allowed something no previous study had achieved: a harmonised, like-for-like comparison of income-related survival gaps across the entire spectrum of non-communicable disease.

The technical approach was as important as the scale. Rather than comparing raw survival rates — which would be hopelessly confounded, since low-income Swedes tend to be older, and differ in sex distribution and era of diagnosis — the researchers used flexible parametric survival models with regression standardisation. Restricted cubic splines captured the shape of the baseline hazard over time without forcing the data into proportional hazards assumptions, and standardisation produced marginal survival curves: estimates of what survival would look like if everyone in a cohort shared the same income level while keeping their actual age, sex and diagnosis year. Income itself was defined carefully, using five-year lagged, consumption-equivalised household disposable income ranked into quartiles within sex and birth-year strata, a technique designed to strip out short-term income shocks caused by illness itself.

The headline finding is stark in its uniformity. After standardisation, individuals in the bottom income quartile had lower ten-year survival than those in the top quartile for all 100 disease categories, and the confidence interval for the difference excluded zero in every case. For 37 conditions, the absolute gap exceeded ten percentage points. The largest per-person disparities clustered around smoking- and alcohol-related diseases: ten-year survival for other pharynx cancer was 34.2 percent among the poorest versus 58.2 percent among the richest — a 24-point chasm in a country where chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy are free at the point of use. Larynx cancer, lip and oral cavity cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, endocarditis and aortic aneurysm all showed gaps of more than 14 percentage points.

One especially striking pattern emerged in diseases with intermediate prognoses. For conditions where overall ten-year survival hovered between roughly 40 and 60 percent — a group dominated by cardiovascular disease — income acted almost as a switch. Ten years after an ischaemic heart disease diagnosis, the researchers note, a Swede in the top income quartile is more likely to be alive than dead, while someone in the bottom quartile is more likely to be dead than alive. The same grim arithmetic holds for hypertensive heart disease, ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke, aortic aneurysm, prostate cancer and several others. The authors suggest this may reflect a mix of statistical floor and ceiling effects — survival differences are mechanically compressed where nearly everyone lives or nearly everyone dies — alongside the fact that these intermediate conditions are precisely where treatment quality, adherence and risk-factor management tip outcomes.

To express the gaps in a clinically intuitive metric, the team calculated ten-year restricted mean survival time, effectively the average number of years lived within a decade of diagnosis. Low-income patients with other pharynx cancer lost 1.90 years compared with high-income patients, larynx cancer patients 1.46 years, and COPD patients just over a year. But when the researchers scaled these per-person differences up to the population level, the picture inverted. Rare head and neck cancers, despite their enormous individual gaps, contributed relatively little to the national total because so few people are diagnosed. Instead, the greatest absolute burden came from humdrum, highly prevalent conditions: hypertension alone accounted for roughly 352,000 person-years of survival lost among low-income patients, with atrial fibrillation, stroke, heart failure and urinary tract infections close behind. In total, about 6.2 million person-years of survival were lost within ten years of diagnosis — the difference between what low- and middle-income patients actually experienced and a counterfactual in which they had enjoyed high-income survival trajectories.

Perhaps the most methodologically sophisticated part of the study tackled a deceptively simple question: are these gaps just the familiar income gradient in life expectancy showing through, or does income specifically change what happens after you are diagnosed? The researchers matched each diagnosed patient to five disease-free controls sharing the same birth year, sex and income quartile, then compared survival loss relative to those controls across income groups. For 73 of the 100 disease categories, the poorest patients lost significantly more survival time to their disease than the richest — a difference that persisted after netting out background mortality. This extends a logic familiar from deprivation-stratified relative survival analyses in cancer epidemiology, but applies it across cardiovascular, respiratory, neurological and mental health conditions, suggesting the pattern is not a cancer quirk but a general feature of illness in an unequal society.

Why does income still matter so much in a welfare state? The observational design cannot pin down mechanisms, but the authors sketch two non-exclusive pathways. First, lower income may worsen the course of disease after onset — through later presentation, differences in treatment, adherence to medication, management of comorbidities, and the practical costs of being ill, such as prescription charges, travel and lost earnings. Second, low-income patients may simply enter the register later, at a more advanced stage of disease, since cohort entry here marks first recorded specialist care rather than true disease onset. The breadth of the findings, spanning fast-moving cancers where early detection is everything and slow chronic diseases where long-term management dominates, suggests no single mechanism suffices. Upstream forces compound the problem: smoking and alcohol harm concentrate among the poor, financial insecurity feeds chronic stress, cheaper processed diets and low-control work add cardiovascular risk, and disadvantages accumulate within the same people across a lifetime.

The authors caution that their estimates are probably conservative. Older people living on modest pensions may be misclassified as low-income despite secure circumstances, diluting the measured association, and Sweden’s comparatively low inequality and strong safety nets likely mean the gaps would be wider in countries with higher out-of-pocket costs. Still, income inequality in Sweden has risen faster than in most OECD countries in recent decades, and the life expectancy gap between rich and poor has widened in parallel. For policymakers, the study offers a triage map: intervening on prevalent cardiovascular conditions such as hypertension and ischaemic heart disease would deliver the largest absolute reductions in survival inequality, while focused prevention and early detection for smoking- and alcohol-related cancers — including HPV-driven pharyngeal tumours — would benefit each affected person most. More broadly, the findings are a reminder that universal coverage removes the price tag on a hospital bed but not the many other ways that money buys health.

Subject of Research: Income-related survival disparities across 100 disease categories in Sweden

Article Title: Income-related differences in survival across disease categories in Sweden: a retrospective population-based register study

Article References: Mougin, V., Gray, A., Naghavi, M., Allebeck, P., Kinge, J. M., Wool, E. E., Weaver, N. D., Murray, C. J., & Agardh, E. E. (2026). Income-related differences in survival across disease categories in Sweden: a retrospective population-based register study. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, 71, Article 101896. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2026.101896

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.lanepe.2026.101896

Keywords: health inequality, survival analysis, Sweden, income, non-communicable diseases, cardiovascular disease, cancer, COPD, universal healthcare, register study, life expectancy, epidemiology

The headline numbers tell a story of genuine progress. In 1990, roughly 30,700 women of reproductive age were diagnosed with TBL cancer globally; by 2021 that figure had risen to about 45,900. Yet when adjusted for the age structure of the population, the incidence rate actually fell, from 2.73 cases per 100,000 women to 2.23 per 100,000—an estimated annual percentage change of −0.81 percent. Mortality tells a similar tale. Deaths rose in absolute terms, from about 26,100 to nearly 34,900 over the three decades, but the age-standardised death rate dropped from 2.32 to 1.70 per 100,000, an annual decline of 1.21 percent. The DALY rate, which combines years of life lost with years lived in disability, fell from 111.8 to 81.8 per 100,000 over the same period.

What makes these trends particularly striking is their shape. Rather than declining steadily, all three indicators followed a rise-then-fall trajectory. Incidence peaked in 2001, mortality in 2000 and DALYs in 1996, with the steepest declines occurring between 2010 and 2016. The researchers attribute this pattern to the long lag between smoking exposure and cancer development. Male smoking rates began falling immediately after the Second World War, while female rates rose after the war and only started to decline in the late 1960s. That delay pushed the peak of the lung cancer epidemic in women well behind that of men, and the timing of the observed peak in reproductive-age women fits this historical fingerprint precisely.

Beneath the averages, the biology of lung cancer in women is markedly different from that in men, and the study’s authors argue this has been underappreciated. Women who smoke face roughly three times the lung cancer risk of men who smoke at equivalent exposure, with higher levels of DNA adducts in lung tissue and a greater propensity for p53 and K-RAS mutations. The mechanism involves estrogen: the hormone can synergise directly with tobacco carcinogens such as benzo[a]pyrene, and estrogen receptor alpha upregulates the expression of CYP1A1 and CYP1B1, enzymes that metabolically activate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in cigarette smoke. CYP1A1 expression in the lungs of female smokers can be nearly four times higher than in male smokers. Compounding this, women have comparatively weaker DNA repair capacity, allowing mutations to accumulate more readily.

Smoking, however, is only part of the picture for this population. Globally, about one-third of households still rely on biomass or coal for cooking, heating and lighting, and women of reproductive age bear the brunt of that exposure because they are typically responsible for preparing meals. In China, where fewer than 5 percent of women smoke, as many as 81.65 percent of female lung cancer cases are attributed to risk factors other than tobacco, with outdoor air pollution and indoor burning of solid fuels considered major contributors. A systematic review and meta-analysis cited in the study found that the lung cancer risk associated with solid fuel use is significantly higher among women, with an odds ratio of 1.81 compared with 1.16 for men. Exposure assessments in India have shown that women aged 15 to 40 who cook with solid fuels register the highest 24-hour average exposure concentrations of any household group.

The geographic distribution of the burden is profoundly uneven. Among the 21 GBD regions, East Asia recorded the highest incidence and mortality rates in 2021, at 4.75 and 3.39 cases per 100,000 respectively, a situation the researchers link to rapid economic development, lifestyle changes, high secondhand smoke exposure despite low female smoking rates, and indoor air pollution from cooking fumes and solid fuels. At the country level, Greenland had the highest incidence rate at 7.94 per 100,000, while Monaco recorded the highest mortality rate at 7.65 per 100,000. Nigeria had the lowest rates for both measures. China, by virtue of its enormous population, led the world in absolute case numbers, deaths and DALYs in both 1990 and 2021.

Stratifying the data by the Socio-Demographic Index—a composite measure of income, education and fertility—exposes a stark divergence. Only in low-SDI and lower-middle-SDI regions did incidence and mortality rates continue to rise between 1990 and 2021, while high-SDI regions saw accelerating declines from around 2010 onward. South Asia recorded the fastest-growing rates across all indicators, with an incidence EAPC of 1.53 percent, whereas high-income North America showed the steepest declines, at −2.83 percent for incidence and −3.22 percent for mortality. The researchers describe lower-middle-SDI regions as being in an

Subject of Research: Global burden and trends of trachea, bronchus and lung cancer in women of reproductive age from 1990 to 2021 with projections to 2035

Article Title: Trachea, bronchus, and lung cancer in women of reproductive age: global burden trends from 1990 to 2021 and forecasts to 2035

Article References: Chen, S., Rao, Y., Chen, Y., Yang, Q., Wu, G., Hu, F., Gao, Y., Pu, H., & Fu, J. (2026). Trachea, bronchus, and lung cancer in women of reproductive age: global burden trends from 1990 to 2021 and forecasts to 2035. Frontiers in Global Women's Health, 7, Article 1695260. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgwh.2026.1695260

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fgwh.2026.1695260

Keywords: lung cancer, women's health, Global Burden of Disease, reproductive age, health inequality, tobacco control, air pollution, DALYs, Bayesian modelling, socio-demographic index, epidemiology, cancer projections

The maternal continuum of care is a concept that public health specialists use to describe an unbroken chain of services surrounding pregnancy and birth. It begins with antenatal care, the series of clinical visits during pregnancy in which complications such as anemia, hypertension, and infections can be detected and managed. It continues with skilled birth attendance, meaning delivery assisted by a trained health professional equipped to handle emergencies like obstructed labor and hemorrhage. It ends with postnatal care, the critical follow-up period in which both mother and newborn are monitored during the hours and weeks after birth, when the risk of fatal complications is at its highest. When any link in this chain is broken, the protective effect of the whole sequence collapses. Decades of evidence have shown that women who complete the continuum face dramatically lower risks of maternal and neonatal death than those who drop out along the way.

Despite these well-established benefits, coverage of the continuum remains low in Ethiopia, and the new study confirms that what coverage does exist is unevenly distributed. The research team, led by Atsedemariam Mengie Mekonnen of the University of Gondar, analyzed a weighted sample of 996 young women drawn from the 2019 mini survey, a nationally representative cross-sectional dataset designed to track health indicators between full survey rounds. Focusing on women aged 15 to 24 is significant because adolescent and young adult mothers face some of the highest risks of obstetric complications, particularly in settings where early marriage and early pregnancy remain common.

To quantify inequality, the researchers used the concentration index, a standard measure in health economics that summarizes how a health outcome is distributed across the socioeconomic spectrum, from poorest to richest. The index ranges from negative values, indicating concentration among the poor, to positive values, indicating concentration among the wealthy. The team also plotted concentration curves, which visually compare the actual distribution of care against a line of perfect equality. The results were stark. The normalized concentration index for maternal continuum of care coverage was 0.388, a strongly positive value that was statistically significant at p less than 0.001. In practical terms, this means that complete maternal care in Ethiopia is heavily concentrated among young women from wealthier households, while those at the bottom of the economic ladder are far less likely to receive even the basic sequence of services that could save their lives.

But measuring the size of the gap is only half the analytical challenge. The more difficult question is what causes it, and that is where the Wagstaff decomposition method comes in. Developed by health economist Adam Wagstaff, this technique breaks the concentration index down into additive contributions from individual explanatory variables. Each factor’s contribution depends on two things: how strongly it is associated with the health outcome, and how unequally that factor itself is distributed across wealth groups. By multiplying and summing these components, researchers can attribute specific shares of the overall inequality to education, residence, region, and other characteristics. It is essentially an accounting exercise for injustice, converting a single summary statistic into a detailed map of its drivers.

The decomposition revealed a constellation of contributing factors. Maternal age, household wealth quintile, women’s educational attainment, religion, the timing of the first antenatal care visit, parity, or the number of previous births, mode of delivery, region, and place of residence all made statistically significant contributions to the wealth-related inequality in continuum coverage. This list tells a coherent story. Wealth itself matters directly, because richer families can afford transport to clinics, fees for services, and the opportunity costs of time spent seeking care. But wealth also operates indirectly through education: women with formal schooling are more likely to understand the value of antenatal visits, to recognize danger signs during pregnancy, and to negotiate autonomy in decisions about where to deliver. Geography compounds both effects, since rural women face longer distances to facilities and health systems in some regions are far weaker than in others.

The timing of antenatal care initiation deserves particular attention. International guidelines recommend that women begin antenatal visits in the first trimester of pregnancy, because early contact allows screening and preventive interventions to start when they can do the most good. The study found that when a young woman first entered antenatal care significantly contributed to the overall inequality, suggesting that wealthier women not only use more services but start them earlier, compounding their advantage across the entire continuum. Similarly, mode of delivery appeared in the decomposition, reflecting the fact that cesarean sections, which require surgical capacity and are more accessible to better-off women, automatically connect a mother to skilled attendance and often to postnatal follow-up, while women delivering at home without professional help may never enter the formal care system at all.

The authors conclude that maternal continuum of care utilization in Ethiopia is disproportionately concentrated among women of higher socioeconomic status, and that women from poorer households, rural areas, and those with no formal education experience substantially lower coverage across the entire pathway. The pattern they describe is not unique to Ethiopia. Across sub-Saharan Africa, studies using comparable methods have repeatedly found pro-rich inequality in skilled birth attendance and postnatal care, and Ethiopia’s own maternal mortality ratio remains among the highest in the world. Young mothers sit at the intersection of several vulnerabilities: they are biologically more susceptible to complications such as obstructed labor and eclampsia, they often have less decision-making power within households, and they are less likely to have completed their education before becoming pregnant. When poverty is layered on top of youth, the barriers multiply.

What makes this study methodologically valuable is that it moves beyond description toward explanation. A simple comparison of coverage rates between rich and poor tells policymakers that a problem exists; the Wagstaff decomposition tells them where to aim. If education and residence account for large shares of the inequality, then interventions such as expanding girls’ schooling, deploying community health workers in rural areas, and removing user fees for maternal services can be prioritized and their expected equity impact estimated in advance. Ethiopia has made notable progress in expanding rural health infrastructure through its health extension program, but these findings suggest that the poorest and least educated young women are still not being reached at the scale required.

The findings land at a consequential moment. Maternal health sits at the heart of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which call for reducing the global maternal mortality ratio and achieving universal coverage of reproductive health services. For a country like Ethiopia, where a large share of the population is under 25, the reproductive choices and health outcomes of young women will shape demographic and economic trajectories for decades. The study’s authors argue that efforts to improve equity should focus on reducing financial barriers and strengthening rural health services, with particular attention to disadvantaged populations. The statistical message is unambiguous: in Ethiopia today, the chance that a young woman will move safely through pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period depends heavily on the contents of her family’s wallet. Closing that gap, the researchers suggest, is not merely a matter of building more clinics, but of dismantling the socioeconomic and educational barriers that determine who walks through their doors.

Subject of Research: Wealth-based socioeconomic inequality in maternal continuum of care coverage among young women in Ethiopia

Article Title: Wealth-based inequality in maternal continuum of care coverage among 15–24 aged women in Ethiopia using Wagstaff decomposition: EMDHS 2019

Article References: Mekonnen, A. M., Wubshet, F. S., Dinku, S. M., Getu, R. E., Gebeyehu, H. M., & Nigatu, S. G. (2026). Wealth-based inequality in maternal continuum of care coverage among 15–24 aged women in Ethiopia using Wagstaff decomposition: EMDHS 2019. BMC Health Services Research. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-026-15845-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12913-026-15845-9

Keywords: Ethiopia, maternal health, continuum of care, health inequality, Wagstaff decomposition, concentration index, antenatal care, skilled birth attendance, postnatal care, EMDHS 2019, young women, health equity