The Humanitarian Health Evidence Review

The systematic literature review for each health topic was conducted by one topic leader (see Annex 1 for further details). For quality assurance, a secondary peer reviewer corroborated study selection and data extraction at Stage Four.

Data were screened with the following five stages:

Stage One: electronic database search using terms; with results imported into reference management software, and duplicates removed.
Stage Two: title and abstract reviewed to remove studies not meeting the inclusion criteria (see above).
Stage Three: manuscript review to remove studies that did not meet inclusion criteria; paper selection.
Stage Four: review of references of selected papers (from Stage Three).
Stage Five: final paper selection, data extraction, and quality assessment.

Data was extracted based on the specific points noted below and input into a standardised Excel database:

• study authors or agency, year
• study country
• setting: urban or rural
• population type (refugee, internally displaced, entrapped population, host population)
• humanitarian crises type (armed conflict or natural disaster)
• health outcome(s) addressed by the public health intervention
• type(s) of public health intervention
• study design
• measurement outcomes (e.g. prevalence, odds, ratios etc)
• target age group: i) infants: under 6 months, ii) infants and young children: under two years, iii) children under five: 6 months – 59 months, iv) school age children: 6 years – 15 years, v) adolescents: 10 years – 19 years,* vi) adults: 20 years – 49 years, vii) elderly: 50+ years.
• 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