In response to the high maternal mortality in Afghanistan, the government emphasised enhancing antenatal care (ANC) coverage to improve skilled birth attendance and reduce maternal mortality. This study aimed to explain how and why ANC interventions worked, for whom, and under what circumstances in Afghanistan between 2000 and 2024.

A rapid realist review was conducted to identify underlying programme theories and examine contextual factors and key mechanisms influencing ANC outcomes, with input from a panel of national experts. Data were extracted using context–mechanism–outcome (CMO) configurations to develop and refine theories for policy recommendations.

From 3502 papers, 1860 duplicates were removed, 63 were screened for full text and 25 were included in the final review. In total, 29 CMOs were inferred across nine interventions, classified at individual, interpersonal, community and institutional levels. We found that ANC interventions could work best by empowering women and healthcare workers (HCWs), involving husbands, hiring female community health workers (CHWs), ensuring regular contact with the same HCWs, endorsing health messages by the government, incentivising CHWs and designing and implementing interventions using participatory approaches. Interventions are less successful when there is a lack of community trust in service quality or HCW qualifications, low decision-making ability among women, discomfort during travel to health facilities, adherence to traditional practices and beliefs, hiring CHWs from outside the community, chronic stress and lack of support among HCWs and unrecognised incentives.

Our evidence synthesis can inform donors, policymakers and implementers on how to design more effective ANC interventions to achieve better health outcomes in Afghanistan. By emphasising intervention evaluation and ANC quality improvement, it highlights the importance of key social elements, such as cultural norms, power dynamics, relationships, beliefs and trust, which are likely to maximise impact. Community involvement is essential for designing and implementing effective and sustainable ANC interventions.

Effective young adults’ sexual health education is crucial for promoting informed decision-making and healthy behaviours. National and international guidelines provide a framework for developing and implementing effective programmes. However, these guidelines may vary in their content, focus and recommendations. This scoping review protocol details a plan to map the literature on national and international young adults’ sexual health education guidelines. The review will focus on identifying key dimensions and characteristics of these interventions.

Guideline selection will be conducted using the Population, Intervention, Professionals, Outcomes and Healthcare setting/context framework. A comprehensive three-stage search of academic databases, grey literature and citation tracking will be conducted to identify all relevant literature. Data extraction will be performed by two independent researchers using a standardised, piloted data charting form to ensure accuracy and minimise bias. The form will capture key guideline characteristics. The process will be iterative, allowing refinement of variables for comprehensive data capture. Findings will be synthesised and presented using diagrams, tables and a narrative summary to provide a clear overview of the existing literature.

Adhering to all relevant guidelines and regulations, this study will proceed under the approval of the Ethics Committee of Shahroud University of Medical Sciences, Semnan, Iran. This scoping review will identify and examine the dimensions and characteristics of national and international guidelines for young adults’ sexual health education. By analysing the dimensions and characteristics of these guidelines, this review will identify commonalities, differences and gaps in the current landscape. The findings will have significant implications for policymakers, educators and researchers engaged in the development and implementation of young adults’ sexual health programmes. The results will be disseminated through publication in a relevant peer-reviewed journal to inform future research and practice in this field.

Ethical code: IR.SHMU.REC.1403.085. URL: https://ethics.research.ac.ir/EthicsProposalView.php?id=494573.

Rare diseases (RD) are collectively common and often genetic. Families value and can benefit from precise molecular diagnoses. Prolonged diagnostic odysseys exacerbate the burden of RD on patients, families and the healthcare system. Genome sequencing (GS) is a near-comprehensive test for genetic RD, but existing care models—where consultation with a medical geneticist is a prerequisite for testing—predate GS and may limit access or delay diagnosis. Evidence is needed to guide the optimal positioning of GS in care pathways. While initiating GS prior to geneticist consultation has been trialled in acute care settings, there are no data to inform the utility of this approach in outpatient care, where most patients with RD seek genetics services. We aim to evaluate the diagnostic yield, time to diagnosis, clinical and personal utility and incremental cost-effectiveness of GS initiated at the time of referral triage (pre-geneticist evaluation) compared with standard of care.

200 paediatric patients referred to one of two large genetics centres in Ontario, Canada, for suspected genetic RD will be randomised into a 1:1 ratio to the intervention (GS first) or standard of care (geneticist first) arm. An unblinded, permuted block randomisation design will be used, stratified within each recruitment site by phenotype and prior genetic testing. The primary outcome measure is time to genetic diagnosis or to cessation of active follow-up. Survival analysis will be used to analyse time-to-event data. Additional measures will include patient-reported and family-reported measures of satisfaction, understanding and perceived test utility, clinician-reported measures of perceived test utility and management impact, and healthcare system utilisation and costs.

This study was approved by Clinical Trials Ontario. Results will be disseminated, at minimum, via peer-reviewed journals, professional conferences and internal reports to funding bodies. Efforts will be made to share aggregated study results with participants and their families.

NCT06935019.

While survival rates following neonatal surgery for congenital heart disease (CHD) have improved over the years, neurodevelopmental delays are still highly prevalent in these patients. After correcting for the CHD subtype, the severity of developmental impairment is dependent on multiple factors, including intraoperative brain injury, which is more frequent and more severe in those undergoing aortic arch repair with deep hypothermic circulatory arrest (DHCA). It is proposed that brain injury may be reduced if cooling is stopped at the point of electrocerebral inactivity (ECI) on electroencephalogram (EEG), but there is limited evidence to support this as few centres perform perioperative EEG routinely. This study aims to assess the feasibility of EEG monitoring during neonatal aortic arch repair and investigate the relationship between temperature and EEG to inform the design of a future clinical trial.

Single-centre prospective observational cohort study in a UK specialist children’s hospital, aiming to recruit 74 neonates (≤4 weeks corrected age) undergoing aortic arch repair with DHCA. EEG will be acquired at least 1–3 hours before surgery, and brain activity will be monitored continuously until 24 hours following admission to intensive care. Demographic, clinical, surgical and outcome variables will be collected. Feasibility will be measured by the number of patients recruited, data collection procedures, technically successful EEG recordings and adverse events. The main outcomes are the temperature at which ECI is achieved and its duration, EEG patterns at key perioperative steps and neurodevelopmental outcomes at 24 months postsurgery.

The study was approved by the Yorkshire and The Humber Sheffield National Health Service Research Ethics Committee (20/YH/0192) on 18 June 2020. Written informed consent will be obtained from the participant’s parent/guardian prior to surgery. Findings will be disseminated to the academic community through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at conferences. Parents/guardians will be informed of the results through a newsletter in conjunction with local charities.