Interventions to reduce anaemia in low- and middle-income countries: An evidence gap map

Table of Contents

• Summary 5
• List of figures and tables 8
• Acronyms 9
• 1. Background 10
• 1.1 Anaemia is a global concern that disproportionately affects women and children 10
• 1.2 Anaemia is a complex public health challenge 11
• 1.3 Rationale for the EGM: decisionmakers need to know what works, for whom, and at what cost 11
• 1.4 What is an EGM? 12
• 1.5 Objectives of the EGM 13
• 2. The theoretical framework guiding our conceptualization of intervening to address anaemia 13
• 2.1 What interventions and outcomes did we include? 15
• 3. Our methods for developing the anaemia EGM 16
• 3.1 Inclusion criteria for studies in the EGM 16
• 3.2 How we searched for evidence 17
• 3.3 How we screened and extracted study characteristics 17
• 4. What we found 18
• 4.1 Search results 18
• 4.2 Evidence on the effectiveness of anaemia interventions has been growing steadily over the last decade 20
• 4.3 Over 70% of IEs evaluate direct causes of anaemia 20
• 4.4 Evidence is clustered in Africa (n = 661) and South-East Asia (n = 659) but is absent in several countries with high anaemia prevalence 23
• 4.5 More than half of the IEs evaluated impacts on an adult population 25
• 4.6 The majority of the IEs were RCTs 27
• 4.7 Systematic review appraisal and findings 28
• 4.7.1 Most SRs considered interventions that address the direct causes of anaemia (n = 53) 28
• 4.7.2 Existing systematic reviews are typically of low confidence 30
• 4.7.3 Main findings of high/medium confidence SRs 30
• 4.7.4 Large synthesis gaps are concentrated in the direct causes domain 31
• 4.8 Most studies do not report program implementation or funding agencies 32
• 5. Conclusions 33
• 5.1 Limitations: deviations from the published protocol 34
• 5.2 Implications for policymakers 34
• 5.3 Implications for future research 35
• 5.3.1 Primary research 35
• 5.3.2 Implications from high/medium confidence SRs 36
• Methodological implications 36
• Programming implications 37
• 5.3.3 Synthesis research 37
• Online appendixes 39
• Online appendix A: Interpreting and using EGMs 39
• Online appendix B: Deviations from protocol 39
• Online appendix C: Search methods 39
• Online appendix D: Lists of records 39
• Online appendix E: High-level summary of high/medium confidence SRs 39
• Online appendix E: References 39
• References 40