Congratulations to Dr Kate Freire for leading the team who has been undertaking the scoping review for our project with the World Health Organization Disability team. Here are some of the results presented at our meeting with the WHO tonight
Identification and Selection of Studies
The search strategy identified 10,027 records for screening after duplicates had been removed and 361 records from NGO website searches and citation screening of included reports. Title and abstract screening resulted 9,082 records being excluded and the full texts of 1306 reports were subsequently obtained for review. Thus, 62 reports from 59 studies were included in the review.
Characteristics of Studies
The majority of the records (n = 54, 87%) were papers, with n = 8 (13%) theses. The majority of records n = 36 (61%) were from the later half of the review period (2011-2025). Twenty-one countries provided the healthcare settings for the children (United Kingdom n = 16, Canada n = 7, Brazil n = 5, Australia n = 4, Denmark n = 4, United States n = 4, Ireland n = 3, Türkiye n = 2, China n = 1, India n = 1, Iran n = 1, Israel n = 1, Mauritania n = 1, Norway n = 1, Pakistan n = 1, Portugal n = 1, Singapore n = 1, South Africa n = 1, South Korea n = 1, Spain n = 1, Sweden n = 1). In addition, one study included children from three countries: United States, Canada and Australia (Ahlawat et al., 2024).
