The COVID-19 vaccination is a crucial public health intervention for controlling the spread and severity of the SARS-CoV2 virus. COVID-19 vaccines have been developed in record time, but their deployment has varied across countries, owing to differences in health system capacity, demand for the vaccine, and purchasing power of countries. The aim of this rapid review is to summarize and synthesize experiences on COVID-19 vaccine service delivery and integration to inform future COVID-19 vaccination programming and contribute to the knowledge base for future pandemic management. A systematic search was conducted in PubMed, Scopus, and Global Index Medicus databases. Twenty-five studies were included in the analysis. Included studies spanned nine countries where COVID-19 vaccines were delivered through mass, mobile, and fixed-post vaccination service delivery models. There was limited evidence of integrating COVID-19 vaccines into routine services for pregnant women, people who inject drugs, and leveraging existing health programs to deliver COVID-19 vaccines to the general population. Common challenges reported were vaccine skepticism, lack of adequate health workers, and linguistic barriers to access. Partnerships with a variety of stakeholders and the involvement of volunteers were vital in overcoming barriers and contributed to the efficient functioning of COVID-19 vaccination programs.

The slow progress in malaria control efforts and increasing challenges have prompted a need to accelerate the research and development (R&D), launch and scaling of effective interventions for malaria elimination. This research, including desk research and key informant interviews, identified the following challenges along the end-to-end scale-up pathway of malaria interventions. Underinvestment in malaria R&D persists, and developers from low-resource settings are not commonly included in the R&D process. Unpredictable or unclear regulatory and policy pathways have been a hurdle. The private sector has not been fully engaged, which results in a less competitive market with few manufacturers, and consequently, a low supply of products. Persistent challenges also exist in the scaling of malaria interventions, such as the fragmentation of malaria programmes. Further efforts are needed to: (1) Strengthen coordination among stakeholders and especially the private sector to inform decisions and mobilise resources. (2) Increase engagement of national stakeholders, particularly those in low-income and middle-income countries, in planning for and implementing R&D, launching and scaling proven malaria interventions. (3) Use financial incentives and other market-shaping strategies to encourage R&D for innovative malaria products and improve existing interventions. (4) Streamline and improve transparency of WHO’s prequalification and guidelines processes to provide timely technical advice and strategies for different settings. (5) Increase effort to integrate malaria services into the broader primary healthcare system. (6) Generate evidence to inform policies on improving access to malaria interventions.

Policy makers and providers are under increasing pressure to find innovative approaches to achieving better health outcomes as efficiently as possible. Accountable care, which holds providers accountable for results rather than specific services, is emerging in many countries to support such care innovations. However, these reforms are challenging and complex to implement, requiring significant policy and delivery changes. Despite global interest, the evidence on how to implement accountable care successfully remains limited. To improve the evidence base and increase the likelihood of success, we applied a comprehensive framework for assessing accountable care implementation to three promising reforms outside the United States. The framework relates accountable care policy reforms to the competencies of health care organizations and their health policy environments to facilitate qualitative comparisons of innovations and factors that influence success. We present emerging lessons to guide future implement...

The African continent demonstrated decisive leadership throughout its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, leveraging lessons learned from previous outbreaks and acting quickly to limit the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We propose a framework to build on these successes that calls for greater collaboration between African leaders, and greater inclusion of African voices in the global health ecosystem.

Over the next decade, millions of deaths could be prevented by increasing access to vaccines in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that the research and development (R&D), launch and scale up timelines of vaccines can be drastically shortened. This study compares such timelines for eighteen vaccines and identifies lessons and implications for accelerating the R&D, launch and scale up process for other vaccine candidates. To replicate the rapid R&D process of the COVID-19 vaccines, future vaccine R&D should capitalise on public–private knowledge sharing partnerships to promote technology innovation, establish regional clinical trial centres and data sharing networks to optimise clinical trial efficiency, and create a funding mechanism to support research into novel vaccine platforms that may prove valuable to quickly developing vaccine candidates in future global health emergencies. To accelerate the launch timeline, future efforts to bring safe and efficacious vaccines to market should include LMICs in the decision-making processes of global procurement and delivery alliances to optimise launch in these countries, strengthen the WHO prequalification and Emergency Use Listing programs to ensure LMICs have a robust and transparent regulatory system to rely on, and invest in LMIC regulatory and manufacturing capacity to ensure these countries are vaccine self-sufficient. Lastly, efforts to accelerate scale up of vaccines should include the creation of regional pooled procurement mechanisms between LMICs to increase purchasing power among these countries and an open line of clear communication with the public regarding pertinent vaccine information to combat misinformation and vaccine hesitancy.

We present a method for calculating the dielectric constant and the dissipation factor for thin-film ferroelectric capacitors from scattering parameter measurements at multi-gigahertz frequencies. Physical measurement is discussed along with description of the model upon which the calculation is based. Experimental results for 0.5 micron films of PZT are reported up to 15 GHz. Direct measurement is compared with indirectly calculated values at the 100 MHz to 1.5 GHz range, showing excellent agreement.