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Vaccine hesitancy is a long-standing issue among both the general population and health communicators. This study aims to ascertain the inclination and the reasons for vaccine hesitancy by conducting content analysis and sentiment analysis of the perspectives expressed in comments on videos related to vaccine hesitancy uploaded from India on YouTube.

The assessment of the sentiments of the vaccine-hesitant population is done using Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner sentiment analysis module implemented with Python’s NLTK library to automatically determine the sentiments of the comments. Manual content analysis was performed on 60.09% viewer comments randomly selected from the total comments in 238 videos on vaccine hesitancy originated from India and labelled each comment with labels “Anti”, “Pro”, “Confused”, “Not Applicable” and “Unrelated” labels.

The study found “Mistrust-Government policies”, “Fear-health related consequences”, “Mistrust-Scientific research”, “Vaccine effectiveness and efficacy” and “Misinformation/myths” as the top five determinants for vaccine hesitancy, whereas “Religious beliefs”, “Fear-Economic consequences”, “Side Effects- short-term” and “Fear-mode of administration” found to be the lesser cited reasons for vaccine hesitancy. However, the study also investigates changes in the inclination of Indian commenters towards vaccine hesitancy and revolving issues over time.

Public health policymakers and health communicators may find the study useful in determining vaccine hesitancy factors in India.

The originality of this study lies in its approach. To date, no sentiment analysis has been conducted on the content released on YouTube by Indian content creators regarding pro- and anti-vaccination videos. This inquiry seeks to fill this research gap.

This chapter discusses various aspects of family planning initiatives on a global scale, with a specific focus on their influence in Asian contexts, including Bangladesh. This chapter examines the diverse range of family planning programs and policies implemented worldwide, in Asia and Bangladesh considering cultural factors that significantly shape family planning decisions. By highlighting the unique approaches and challenges faced in different regions, it provides valuable insights into the evolving landscape of family planning efforts and their impact on population dynamics.

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) aims to assist expectant mothers in low-income households. It might address the insufficient prenatal and postnatal healthcare services in rural areas of low-income nations, including Bangladesh. However, the effectiveness of such intervention is rarely investigated in rural Bangladesh. The study aims to explore the impact of CCT on certain health outcomes of expectant mothers in southwestern rural Bangladesh.

The study applied the quasi-experimental Propensity Score Matching method to assess the effectiveness of CCT in health outcomes of expectant mothers. The authors also deployed logistic regression to explore the predictors of three health issues – blood pressure, hemoglobin adequacy and morning sickness.

The Average Treatment Effect shows that the CCT program significantly improves maternal health by lowering the extent of blood pressure and morning sickness and enhancing the hemoglobin adequacy of the CCT recipient women compared to the non-recipient. The result reveals that CCT beneficiary status as well as the education and immunization are positively and significantly associated with normal blood pressure and hemoglobin adequacy. CCT is also a negative predictor of morning sickness. The study recommends to expand the coverage of the CCT program and also emphasize on the improvement of education, training and immunization for rural pregnant women.

To assist in scaling purchasing power and nutritious food for poor pregnant and lactating mothers in low-income households, “Nobojatra” project initiated the CCTs in the southwest region of Bangladesh. Yet, the impact of such cash transfers on their health outcomes is rarely explored in the context of Bangladesh. This study provides evidence regarding the effectiveness of cash transfers to pregnant women of low-income households in rural Bangladesh.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-08-2022-0512

This paper aims to understand the maternal health vulnerabilities of migrant women in slums and explore their challenges during and after childbirth.

The study used a qualitative approach, including in-depth interviews through purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Thematic analysis was used for analysing data. The consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative studies (COREQ)-32 items were followed for reporting this study.

The study found that migrant women were highly susceptible to adverse birthing outcomes due to risks involved in birthing, lack of care and hygiene, lack of skilled care in dealing with complicated pregnancies and exposure to domestic and obstetric violence.

The study intends to highlight the narratives of female migrants’ birthing and maternal health challenges. The entire process of childbirth in slums with consequences can result in maternal and infant morbidities and mortalities.

This study aims to deepen the understanding of the challenges and implications entailed by deploying mobile clinics in conflict zones to reach populations affected by violence and cut off from health-care services.

This research combines an integrated literature review and an instrumental case study. The literature review comprises two targeted reviews to provide insights: one on conflict zones and one on mobile clinics. The case study describes the process and challenges faced throughout a mobile clinic deployment during and after the Iraq War. The data was gathered using mixed methods over a two-year period (2017–2018).

Armed conflicts directly impact the populations’ health and access to health care. Mobile clinic deployments are often used and recommended to provide health-care access to vulnerable populations cut off from health-care services. However, there is a dearth of peer-reviewed literature documenting decision support tools for mobile clinic deployments.

This study highlights the gaps in the literature and provides direction for future research to support the development of valuable insights and decision support tools for practitioners.

Pakistan ranks third globally in terms of newborn deaths occuring within the first 24 hours of life. With a neonatal mortality rate of 42.0%, it carries the highest burden compared to neighboring countries such as Bangladesh (17%), India (22.7%) and Afghanistan (37%). While there has been a decline in neonatal mortality rates in Pakistan, the pace of this decline is slower than that of other countries in the region. Hence, it is crucial to conduct a comprehensive examination of the risk factors contributing to neonatal mortality in Pakistan over an extended period. This study aims to analyze the trends and determinants of neonatal mortality in Pakistan over three decades, providing valuable insights into this persistent issue.

The study focused on neonatal mortality as the response variable, which is defined as the death of a live-born child within 28 days of birth. Neonates who passed away during this period were categorized as “cases,” while those who survived beyond a specific timeframe were referred to as “noncases.” To conduct a pooled analysis of neonatal mortality, birth records of 39,976 children born in the five years preceding the survey were extracted from four waves (1990–2018) of the Pakistan Demographic and Household Survey. The relationship between risk factors and the response variable was examined using the Cox Proportional Hazard Model. Neonatal mortality rates were calculated through the direct method using the “syncmrates” package in Stata 15.

During the extended period in Pakistan, several critical protective factors against neonatal mortality were identified, including a large family size, improved toilet facilities, middle-aged and educated mothers, female children, singleton live births, large size at birth and longer birth intervals. These factors were found to reduce the risk of neonatal mortality significantly.

This study makes the first attempt to analyze the trends and patterns of potential risk factors associated with neonatal mortality in Pakistan. By examining a large dataset spanning several years, the study provides valuable insights into the factors influencing neonatal mortality.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2022-0604

A shared set of moral standards, ethical principles and behavioral norms of social structure can be referred to as culture. Many health problems are strongly influenced by one’s cultural background. The purpose of the paper is to examine the scientific explanation of indigenous norms and practice of health healing.

This qualitative study considered in-person interviews to know the Tribals’ indigenous healing practice in Bangladesh. A focus group discussion with five tribal students was conducted to form a baseline on Tribals’ norms, rituals and information-sharing behavior. Around 35 tribal students were interviewed to find out their healing practices, norms and rituals on health issues. All these practicing indigenous knowledge were documented instantly. Peer-reviewed scientific papers from renowned databases were searched to have scientific evidence on each case. All the studies having negative or positive evidence were mentioned with each case.

The findings showed more indigenous knowledge with scientific disagreements on health aspects among the Tribals’ health practice in Bangladesh. However, the positive impact of such knowledge is not negligible. Therefore, showcasing the scientific tribals’ indigenous knowledge to a global audience is a strong recommendation.

Health and health care-seeking behavior among the tribal population in Bangladesh is not a new area of research, few studies have focused on the context, reasons and choices in patterns of health care-seeking behavior; obstacles and challenges faced in accessing health-care provision in the tribal areas in the country. However, research attempts to show the relationship between ecological knowledge and scientific indication is new in nature.

Automatically extracting stance information from natural language texts is a significant research problem with various applications, particularly after the recent explosion of data on the internet via platforms like social media sites. Stance detection system helps determine whether the author agree, against or has a neutral opinion with the given target. Most of the research in stance detection focuses on the English language, while few research was conducted on the Arabic language.

This paper aimed to address stance detection on Arabic tweets by building and comparing different stance detection models using four transformers, namely: Araelectra, MARBERT, AraBERT and Qarib. Using different weights for these transformers, the authors performed extensive experiments fine-tuning the task of stance detection Arabic tweets with the four different transformers.

The results showed that the AraBERT model learned better than the other three models with a 70% F1 score followed by the Qarib model with a 68% F1 score.

A limitation of this study is the imbalanced dataset and the limited availability of annotated datasets of SD in Arabic.

Provide comprehensive overview of the current resources for stance detection in the literature, including datasets and machine learning methods used. Therefore, the authors examined the models to analyze and comprehend the obtained findings in order to make recommendations for the best performance models for the stance detection task.

This study aims to estimate the magnitude of undernutrition and its associated factors [especially child health interventions at Child Welfare Clinics (CWCs)] among children in Techiman Municipality, Ghana.

A facility-based analytical cross-sectional design involving 403 mothers/caregivers with children. Simple random sampling was used to sample study sites and participants. Child health interventions were assessed by adapting items used in the Ghana Demographics and Health Survey. Weight and length of children were measured and used to calculate anthropometric z-scores based on World Health Organization guidelines. Test for associations was performed using bivariate analysis and multivariate logistic regression. Statistical significance was considered at p < 0.05.

The magnitudes of stunting, wasting and underweight were 20.6% [95% confidence interval (CI): 17–25], 11.4% (95% CI: 9–15), and 9.7% (95% CI: 7–13) respectively. Children aged 12–17 months [odds ratio (OR) = 3.1; CI: 1.3–7.5], male children (OR = 5.2; CI: 2.7–10.0) and children attending CWC 19–22 times (OR = 28.8; CI: 6.6–125) had increased odds of stunting. Additionally, belonging to households with one child under 5 (OR = 2.7; CI: 1.4–5.1) and using borehole/well water (OR = 2.7; CI: 1.4–5.3) were associated with increased odds of stunting. Similarly, being a female (OR = 3.5; CI: 1.6–8.0) and using borehole/well water (OR = 2.1; CI: 1.0–4.2) were associated with increased odds of underweight.

The magnitude of malnutrition, specifically stunting and wasting, exceeds the threshold for public health significance. CWC attendance frequency, age and sex of the child, number of children under five years old in households and water source were significantly associated with undernutrition.