The Humanitarian Health Evidence Review

The evidence review of contextual factors was led by Vera Sistenich and colleagues at Harvard University. For quality assurance, a secondary peer reviewer corroborated paper screening and data extraction.

Data was screened per the following five stages:

Stage One: electronic database search using terms provided outlined in section 3.2.3 and in Appendices 1-7; number of results to be recorded and downloaded into an Endnote file (one per contextual factor), and duplicates removed.
Stage Two: title and abstract review to remove studies not meeting the inclusion criteria (see above).
Stage Three: manuscript/report review to remove studies that do not meet inclusion criteria.
Stage Four: review of references (taken from papers reviewed in Stage Three)
Stage Five: final paper selection, data extraction, and quality assessment.

Data was extracted based on specific research points noted below and input into a standardised Excel data extraction form:

• study authors/agency, year
• study country
• study population type (refugee, internally displaced, entrapped population, host population)
• humanitarian crises type (armed conflict or natural disaster)
• humanitarian crises stage (i.e., preparedness, acute crises, stabilised, early recovery)
• type of public health interventions
• main aspect(s) of contextual factor influencing impact of health intervention
• interventions influenced by contextual factor
• character of contextual factor influence
• study design
• stratification (by age and/or gender)
• use of recognised guidelines for public health intervention
• quality of the evidence on specific interventions
• change in quantity of evidence over time
• change in quality of evidence over time
• research strengths from the literature
• research gaps from the literature