JMIR Public Health and Surveillance

By 2015, the emergence and dissemination of multidrug-resistant in the Greater Mekong Subregion threatened regional and global malaria control efforts. In response, Greater Mekong Subregion countries committed to malaria elimination by 2030, with strengthened surveillance as a strategic pillar. In 2017, Cambodia introduced an elimination-oriented digital Malaria Information System (MIS). Its health center app enables real-time, geo-located, case-based malaria reporting across primary health centers, and is fully integrated with the MIS.

Although motorcycle-based food delivery workers face a significant risk of accidents, previous research has primarily focused on traffic accidents, neglecting the multidimensional nature of safety, which includes perceived accident risk, near-miss experiences, and accident-related anxiety.

Aortic pathologies in general and acute aortic syndromes in particular are persistent public health concerns worldwide. Continuous efforts to monitor and update incidence rates are necessary for guided public health interventions and health care policy adaptation.

Men who have sex with men (MSM) are at high risk of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, and HPV testing can facilitate early detection and timely intervention. However, evidence on the willingness to undergo different HPV testing modalities among MSM remains limited. The information-motivation-behavioral skills model provides a theoretical framework for understanding factors associated with the willingness to undergo HPV testing.

China accounts for more than 40% of new global cases and deaths from esophageal cancer, and has a relatively high rate of past-year alcohol use, reaching up to 27%. The incidence and risk factors of esophageal cancer exhibit marked age-related variation; however, the impact of alcohol consumption on the risk of esophageal cancer across different age groups remains poorly understood.

Stroke remains a leading cause of death and disability in China. Despite the nationwide poverty alleviation being achieved by 2020, residents of poverty-alleviated counties continue to experience poorer health outcomes. There is a critical knowledge gap regarding the evolving spatiotemporal patterns of stroke burden in this large postpoverty population.

The triglyceride-glucose (TyG) index, a simple marker of insulin resistance, is associated with chronic kidney disease and end-stage kidney disease (ESKD). However, its association with ESKD in young adults remains unexplored.

Long-term surveillance of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) survivors is increasingly important, but patients who survive a second OHCA are rarely characterized because of the scarcity of such cases. The nationwide claims-based health data provide an opportunity to identify this uncommon survivor population and evaluate postdischarge outcomes at the population level. Understanding the prognosis and care needs of second-time OHCA survivors may help inform postarrest surveillance, risk stratification, and long-term care planning.

Across Africa, substantial investment has built national health information systems (HISs), including the surveillance platforms, reporting tools, and digital infrastructure through which health data flow. However, the health informatics capacity needed to sustain those systems remains fragile: trained health informaticians leave for better-resourced organizations, platforms fall into disrepair when donor funding ends, and data systems multiply without connecting. Health informatics is the discipline that designs, governs, and sustains HISs; the two are inseparable, and investment that builds one while neglecting the other cannot produce durable results. This viewpoint, grounded in the authors’ direct implementation experience across sub-Saharan Africa and informed by published literature, argues that the cause is a structurally misaligned investment logic: resources concentrate on training health informaticians while the institutional, governance, and infrastructure conditions that determine whether those informaticians can perform are chronically underfunded. We propose that sustainable health informatics capacity requires a functioning HIS ecosystem and that this ecosystem rests on four interdependent pillars: (1) workforce development beyond training; (2) institutional strengthening; (3) governance and data standards; and (4) interoperable infrastructure, including the national HIS platforms, such as the District Health Information Software 2, through which health informatics practice operates. The pillars are interdependent: weakness in any one undermines the others in specific, predictable ways. The framework makes 3 contributions beyond existing World Health Organization (WHO) and Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention frameworks: it shows how weakness in one pillar actively undermines the others; it focuses specifically on health informatics and national HISs as the primary investment domain rather than as components of a broader digital health agenda; and it treats the enabling environment, specifically civil service structures, domestic financing, data sovereignty, and artificial intelligence governance, as core investment requirements rather than background conditions. Drawing on illustrative experiences from Ethiopia, Kenya, and Sierra Leone, we show how health informatics capacity succeeds or fails depending on the strength of all 4 conditions. A practical readiness checklist and audience-specific policy recommendations are provided for national health ministries, national public health institutes, regional bodies, and development partners.

Ensuring affordable and quality primary health care for urban populations remains a persistent challenge in resource-constrained countries such as Bangladesh. The country’s fragmented and pluralistic urban health system exacerbates these challenges, making it particularly difficult to deliver primary health care to urban residents. In Bangladesh, the Aalo Clinic has been piloted to provide essential health services to low-income urban residents, including slum dwellers.

In South Korea, where plain packaging has not been adopted, tobacco packaging continues to function as a key marketing tool for the tobacco industry, using texts, colors, and imagery to attract consumers. Among these, flavor cues are especially important as they enhance product appeal. Cigarette sticks also serve marketing functions through design features such as colors and capsule indicators.

Sudden death due to cardiorespiratory arrest has a high mortality rate and often occurs outside hospital settings. Prompt initiation of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) by bystanders, along with the use of an automated external defibrillator (AED), has been shown to double survival rates. Given the challenges of ensuring timely emergency response in rural areas, implementing basic CPR training programs can help improve survival outcomes.