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Table 4 Suggested actions in further research, policy and practice

From: The socioeconomic impact of tuberculosis on children and adolescents: a scoping review and conceptual framework

This review suggests that:

 1. More studies are required to evaluate the broader socioeconomic impacts of TB on children, adolescents and family units across different settings, with the comparison of effects according to different age groups both in the short- and the long-term;

 2. There is a need for standardisation of age groups as well as outcomes (including income measurement) to allow for comparison of outcomes for different age categories globally, alongside the disaggregation of all studies in terms of affected age groups to allow for responsive mitigation strategies, for example analysing groups 0 < 5, 5 < 10, 10 < 14 and 14 < 19 separately;

 3. Onward studies could adopt prospective designs to best capture the long-term socioeconomic consequences of TB, during childhood and adolescence, and to better ascertain whether effects are permanent or reversible over time. This may allow social protection strategies to be implemented to mitigate the potential life-course impact of TB on children and adolescents

 4. Future studies will have to be designed to clearly distinguish between the direct and indirect effects of TB on children and adolescents. Nonetheless, our review suggests that TB affects the whole family as a unit with different consequences among all its members. This complexity should be considered when designing strategies and policies to mitigate the short- and long-term consequences of TB

 5. More formative research and consideration of treatment strategies that minimize the risks of exacerbating poverty during anti-TB treatment and post-TB-impacts, while carefully weighing their potential burden to households, with household support strategies that may include social protection; and

 6. Further research should be conducted on how different social protection programmes (in-kind, cash transfer, or cash + approaches) impact the short- or long-term consequences of TB as well as how existing programmes could become more sensitive toward people with TB and how child-sensitive social protection could better support families and people with TB better