Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most common birth defect and affects approximately 8 out of every 1,000 infants born each year. Despite antenatal screening and at least one examination before discharge infants with critical CHD (CCHD) are routinely not detected before discharge from the newborn nursery. Newborn screening for CCHD using pulse oximetry is widely endorsed however until recent efforts, CCHD screening programs had only been implemented at the individual hospital level. The purpose of this paper is to describe the implementation of CCHD screening across the entire Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The Health Authority-Abu Dhabi (HAAD), in collaboration with Children's National Medical Center (Children's National), successfully implemented CCHD screening at the emirate level using a "train-the-trainer," two-tiered approach, starting with two pilot hospitals then rolling the program out to all birthing facilities. In the first year, CCHD screening was added as a mandatory test to the HAAD Newborn Screening Standard, has been implemented in most birthing facilities, and occurs for the majority of infants (86 %) in Abu Dhabi. This led to the identification of ten newborns with CCHD. Based on the successful identification and mitigation of barriers to implementation, the approach may be adapted for similar programs in other populations.

Background The COVID-19 pandemic began to affect the world in early 2020. As a preventive measure, schools in the UAE adopted remote learning. This study aimed to assess the effects of the lockdown and remote learning on the health-related behaviours of school students in the UAE. Methods A cross-sectional study using an online survey comprising 33 questions related to physical activity, eating, sleeping and screen time was answered by the students’ parents. Chi-square tests, paired Student’s t tests and frequency tables were used for analysis. Results A total of 27,754 responses were received: 46.3% of the parents indicated a significant decrease in physical activity; 44.6% indicated an increase in unhealthy snack consumption; and 51.9% indicated decreased food ordering from restaurants. The percentage of students who slept more than 9 hours and those who slept less than 6 hours increased. Screen time increased significantly for both educational and entertainment purposes (P value < 0.0001). Conclusion The study showed changes in the lifestyle and health-related behaviours of school students as indicated by their parents. Risk factors such as a lack of physical activity, increased food consumption, sleeping and screen time were directly affected. Therefore, it is important to further investigate these changes and their effects to help design targeted health education programs and promotion campaigns.