Background: Hypertension, itself being a major chronic condition, is one of the most significant risk factors for premature cardiovascular diseases and mortality. Hypertension is responsible for 13% of global deaths and threequarters of the world's hypertensive population reside in low-and middle-income countries. Bangladesh is one of those countries that experiencing an epidemiological transition from communicable to non-communicable diseases, a nutritional transition from a traditional diet to process and fast food, and an increase in a sedentary lifestyle, resulting in increased hypertension prevalence. We carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis to identify existing research on hypertension prevalence in Bangladesh, summarize findings and assess its temporal change. Methods: We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE and PubMed and relevant references to identify studies on the prevalence of hypertension in Bangladesh. We used Random-effects meta-analysis to pool the prevalence estimates and performed subgroup analyses. We assessed heterogeneity, a trend in prevalence of hypertension and publication bias in selected studies. Results: Our search initially identified 735 articles and after removing duplicates, reviewing titles and abstracts, and screening full texts, 53 studies were finally selected. The studies comprised 305,432 subjects and reported overall, gender-specific, geographical location specific and criteria specific prevalence of hypertension. We identified the range of hypertension prevalence is from 1.10% to 75.0% and the overall weighted pooled prevalence of hypertension is 20.0%. An extremely high heterogeneity (I 2 = 99.53%; Cochran Q-statistic p < 0.001) was observed in the prevalence of hypertension. Consequently, we performed subgroup analysis based on gender, age group and geographical location of the study participants, the cutoff level used to define hypertension, and the types of hypertension reported and presented our findings accordingly. An overall increasing trend of hypertension prevalence is also observed. Conclusions: The prevalence of hypertension is high and rising in Bangladesh. Strategies targeting prevention are required to mitigate a further increase in the prevalence and reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with it.

Primary healthcare access is one of the crucial factors that ensures the health and well-being of a population. Immigrant/racialised communities encounter a myriad of barriers to accessing primary healthcare. As global migration continues to grow, the development and practice of effective strategies for research and policy regarding primary care access are warranted. Many studies have attempted to identify the barriers to primary care access and recommend solutions. However, top-down approaches where the researchers and policy-makers ‘prescribe’ solutions are more common than community-engaged approaches where community members and researchers work hand-in-hand in community-engaged research to identify the problems, codevelop solutions and recommend policy changes. In this article, we reflect on a comprehensive community-engaged research approach that we undertook to identify the barriers to equitable primary care access among a South Asian (Bangladeshi) immigrant community in Canada. This article summarised the experience of our programme of research and describes our understanding of community-engaged research among an immigrant/racialised community that meaningfully interacts with the community. In employing the principles of community-based participatory research, integrated knowledge translation and human centred design, we reflect on the comprehensive community-engaged research approach we undertook. We believe that our reflections can be useful to academics while conducting community-engaged research on relevant issues across other immigrant/racialised communities.

Aim The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, impacted the flow of life and resulted in an immeasurable amount of socio-economic damage. However, not all of this damage is attributable to the disease itself; much of it has occurred due to the prevailing misinformation around COVID-19. This rapid integrative review will draw on knowledge from the literature about misinformation during previous abrupt large-scale infectious disease outbreaks to enable policymakers, governments and health institutions to proactively mitigate the spread and effect of misinformation. Subject and methods For this rapid integrative review, we systematically searched MEDLINE and Google Scholar and extracted the literature on misinformation during abrupt large-scale infectious disease outbreaks since 2000. We screened articles using predetermined inclusion criteria. We followed an updated methodology for integrated reviews and adjusted it for our rapid review approach. Results We found widespread misinformation in all aspects of large-scale infectious disease outbreaks since 2000, including prevention, treatment, risk factor, transmission mode, complications and vaccines. Conspiracy theories also prevailed, particularly involving vaccines. Misinformation most frequently has been reported regarding Ebola, and women and youth are particularly vulnerable to misinformation. A lack of scientific knowledge by individuals and a lack of trust in the government increased the consumption of misinformation, which is disseminated quickly by the unregulated media, particularly social media. Conclusion This review identified the nature and pattern of misinformation during large-scale infectious disease outbreaks, which could potentially be used to address misinformation during the ongoing COVID-19 or any future pandemic.

Introduction: Understanding barriers in primary health care access faced by Canadian immigrants, especially among women, is important for developing mitigation strategies. The aim of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of perceived challenges and unmet primary health care access needs of Bangladeshi immigrant women in Canada. Methods: In this qualitative study, we conducted 7 focus groups among a sample of 42 first-generation immigrant women on their experiences in primary health care access in their preferred language, Bangla. Descriptive analysis was used for their socio-demographic characteristics and inductive thematic analysis was applied to the qualitative data. Results: The hurdles reported included long wait time at emergency service points, frustration from slow treatment process, economic losses resulting from absence at work, communication gap between physicians and immigrant patients, and transportation problem to go to the health care centers. No access to medical records for walk-in doctors, lack of urgent care, and lack of knowledge about Canadian health care systems are a few of other barriers emerged from the focus group discussions. Conclusions: The community perception about lack of primary health care resources is quite prevalent and is considered as one of the most important barriers by the grassroots community members.

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