Ministry of Health Library

Health Improvement and Innovation Digest

Issue 198 - 29 August 2019

Welcome to the fortnightly Health Improvement and Innovation Digest (formerly the HIIRC digest). The Digest has links to key evidence of interest, with access to new content arranged by topic.

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We'd like to introduce you to another newsletter that the Ministry of Health Library prepares.  The Grey Matter newsletter provides monthly access to a selection of recent NGO, Think Tank, and International Government reports related to health. Information is arranged by topic, allowing readers to quickly find their areas of interest.  If you'd like to subscribe to Grey Matter, email library@health.govt.nz.

Article access

For articles that aren't open access, contact your DHB library, or organisational or local library for assistance in accessing the full text. If your organisation has a subscription, you may be able to use the icon under full text links in PubMed to access the full article.

Quality Improvement (New Zealand)

Point-of-care ultrasound for FAST and AAA in rural New Zealand: quality and impact on patient care
Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) has the potential to improve access to diagnostic imaging for rural communities. This article, published in Rural and Remote Health, evaluates the sensitivity and specificity, impact on patient care, quality and safety of two common POCUS examinations - focused assessment with sonography in trauma (FAST) and aortic aneurysm (AAA) - in the rural context.

Quality Improvement (International)

Spread tools: a systematic review of components, uptake, and effectiveness of quality improvement toolkits
The objective of this article, published in Implementation Science, was to conduct a systematic review of toolkit evaluations intended to spread interventions to improve healthcare quality. It aimed to determine the components, uptake, and effectiveness of publicly available toolkits.

A scoping review to assess the impact of public education campaigns to affect behavior change pertaining to antimicrobial resistance
This scoping review, published in the American Journal of Infection Control, sought to identify research-supporting use of public educational antimicrobial resistance campaigns, and their efficacy toward informing positive antimicrobial resistance behaviours to inform current debate.

Effectiveness of double checking to reduce medication administration errors: a systematic review
Double checking medication administration in hospitals is often standard practice, particularly for high-risk drugs, yet its effectiveness in reducing medication administration errors (MAEs) and improving patient outcomes remains unclear. This systematic review, published in BMJ Quality & Safety, evaluated the evidence of the effectiveness of double checking to reduce MAEs.

Hospital Productivity (New Zealand)

Optimising in-patient stays for surgical patients—an analysis utilising the Red and Green Bed Days management system
Red and Green Bed Days is a hospital management system designed to identify delays during in-patient stays. This study, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, quantified days when no activity occurred to progress a patient towards discharge.

Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes (International)

Health, not weight loss, focused programmes versus conventional weight loss programmes for cardiovascular risk factors: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Obesity is a cardiovascular disease risk factor. Conventional weight loss (CWL) programmes focus on weight loss, however ‘health, not weight loss, focused’ (HNWL) programmes concentrate on improved health and well-being, irrespective of weight loss. The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis, published in Systematic Reviews, was to compare the effects of HNWL with CWL programmes on cardiovascular disease risk factors.

eHealth interventions for people with chronic kidney disease
This Cochrane Review aims to evaluate the benefits and harms of using eHealth interventions to change health behaviours in people with chronic kidney disease.

Primary Mental Health (New Zealand)

MoodJumper: An Exploration of Game Interface Preferences in Users With/Out Mood Disorder
Mental health conditions pose a major challenge to healthcare providers and society at large. The World Health Organization predicts that by 2030 mental illnesses will be the leading disease burden globally. Mental health services are struggling to meet the needs of users and arguably fail to reach large proportions of those in need. According to New Zealand Mental Health Foundation, one in five will experience a serious mood disorder, including depression, at some time in their life. Games for Health including those supporting mental health have recently gained a lot of attention. However, game interface preferences for users with a history of mental health conditions have not been systematically studied, making it difficult to determine what game features may attract and further engage users affected by mental health conditions. This study, published in Frontiers in Public Health, presents MoodJumper, a prototype Android mobile game, which enables players to jump to the top of the level by steering the avatar from platform to platform, gradually gaining height and collecting coins on the way up.

Māori aged 15 to 17 less isolated than their peers - Findings from Mental Health and Wellbeing Survey
A new analysis by the Health Promotion Agency/Te Hiringa Hauora (HPA) has found that Māori aged 15 to 17 were significantly less isolated than non-Māori aged 15 to 17. This is against current thinking that over the entire population, Māori were more likely to report being isolated or lonely than non-Māori, that isolation is felt disproportionately by the young, and that isolation decreases over time.

Association between experience of racial discrimination and hazardous alcohol use among Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand
The aim of this study, published in Addiction, was to test whether there is a positive association between experience of racial discrimination and hazardous alcohol use among New Zealand Māori and whether racial discrimination mediates hazardous alcohol use in this group.

Primary Mental Health (International)

The effect of a clinical decision support system on prompting an intervention for risky alcohol use in a primary care smoking cessation program: a cluster randomized trial
Clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) may promote practitioner adherence to evidence-based guidelines. This study, published in Implementation Science, examined if the addition of a CDSS influenced practitioner delivery of a brief intervention with treatment-seeking smokers who were drinking above recommended alcohol consumption guidelines, compared with practitioners who do not receive a CDSS prompt.

Increased Immunisation (International)

Randomised controlled trial of a theory-based intervention to prompt front-line staff to take up the seasonal influenza vaccine
The objective of this study, published in BMJ Quality & Safety, was to evaluate the effectiveness of reminder letters informed by social normative theory (a type of ‘nudge theory’) on uptake of seasonal influenza vaccination by front-line hospital staff.

Better Help for smokers to Quit (International)

What components of smoking cessation care during pregnancy are implemented by health providers? A systematic review and meta-analysis
Pregnancy is an opportunity for health providers to support women to stop smoking. The objective of this systematic review, published in BMJ Open, was to identify the pooled prevalence for health providers in providing components of smoking cessation care to women who smoke during pregnancy.

Interventions to increase adherence to medications for tobacco dependence
The aim of this Cochrane Review was to assess the effectiveness of interventions aiming to increase adherence to medications for smoking cessation on medication adherence and smoking abstinence compared with a control group typically receiving standard care.

Weight Management (New Zealand)

Body size and weight, and the nutrition and activity behaviours of sexual and gender minority youth: findings and implications from New Zealand
The aim of this study, published in Public Health Nutrition, was to describe the body size and weight, and the nutrition and activity behaviours of sexual and gender minority (SGM) students and compare them with those of exclusively opposite-sex-attracted cisgender students. Male and female SGM students were also compared.

Weight Management (International)

Dietary Strategies for Weight Loss Maintenance
Weight regain after a successful weight loss intervention is very common. Most studies show that, on average, the weight loss attained during a weight loss intervention period is not or is not fully maintained during follow-up. This study, published in Nutrients, reviews what is currently known about dietary strategies for weight loss maintenance, focusing on nutrient composition by means of a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies and discuss other potential strategies that have not been studied so far.

Childhood Obesity (New Zealand)

Space-time analysis of unhealthy food advertising: New Zealand children's exposure and health policy options
Reducing children's exposure to unhealthy food advertising is an accepted strategy to end childhood obesity. This study, published in Health Promotion International, aimed to: measure children's space-time exposures to unhealthy food advertising in public outdoor spaces, using GPS and wearable cameras; and test effectiveness of banning options.

National policies to prevent obesity in early childhood: Using policy mapping to compare policy lessons for Australia with six developed countries.
Interventions for obesity prevention in early childhood (first 5 years of life) are likely to have a significant preventive health impact. This mapping review, published in Obesity Reviews, identified recommended policy options for the Australian Federal Government (AFG) by comparing countries (including New Zealand) with similar population, income, and language to Australia.

Improving low fruit and vegetable intake in children: Findings from a system dynamics, community group model building study
Many children globally do not meet government guidelines for daily fruit and vegetable intake, and in New Zealand, adherence to the vegetable intake recommendation is declining. This study, published in PLoS ONE, aimed to identify systemic barriers to children meeting fruit and vegetable (FV) guidelines and generate sustainable actions within a local community to improve children’s FV intake.

Oral Health (International)

Motivational interviewing effects on caries prevention in children differ by income: A randomized cluster trial
This study, published in Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, aimed to investigate the differential preventive effect of motivational interviewing (MI) on early childhood caries (ECC) according to socioeconomic variables, using a community‐based trial in a public healthcare setting.

Māori Innovation

Implementation effectiveness of health interventions for indigenous communities: a systematic review
Translating research into practice is an important issue for implementing health interventions effectively for Indigenous communities. He Pikinga Waiora (HPW) is a recent implementation framework that provides a strong foundation for designing and implementing health interventions in Indigenous communities for non-communicable diseases around community engagement, culture-centred approach, systems thinking and integrated knowledge translation. This study, published in Implementation Science, addresses the following research question: How are the elements of the HPW Implementation Framework reflected in studies involving the implementation of a non-communicable disease health intervention in an Indigenous community?

Health Equity (International)

Overcoming Barriers to Sustaining Health Equity Interventions: Insights from the National Institutes of Health Centers for Population Health and Health Disparities
The authors of this study, published in the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, conducted qualitative semi-structured telephone interviews with the directors of the 10 National Institutes of Health Centers for Population Health and Health Disparities (NIH/CPHHD) to identify factors that were associated with the sustainability of 19 interventions developed to address cancer disparities and 17 interventions developed to address cardiovascular disease disparities in the United States.

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