Examining the Intersection between Gender, Community Health Workers, and Vector Control Policies: A Text Mining Literature Review

Abstract

Gender intersects with healthcare systems; this is equally true for arboviral vector control efforts. However, there is as yet no comprehensive analysis as to how vector control is gendered. Hence, our objective is to provide the first thematic scoping and spatial distribution of the literature on gender, community health workers, and vector control. The authors use a systematic review approach to collect the academic literature on gender, community health workers, and vector control in Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed (7,367 articles). After applying the exclusion criteria, 2,812 articles were analyzed using machine learning techniques: text mining and quantitative text analysis. The authors use topic modeling to assess the thematic scope of the literature and analyze the spatial distribution of themes. Our results show that the literature’s spatial scope is strongly represented by the global south as research was conducted mainly in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, places with greater incidence of vector-borne disease and with health systems, which incorporate community healthcare workers. However, there are significant spatial heterogeneities in where and how research is conducted. The topic analysis reveals that the literature predominantly considers issues of sex (e.g., pregnancy) and gender as it relates motherhood. Gendered considerations occur upon implementation of vector control policies, rather than being mainstreamed into their development and delivery. There is a need to deepen the analysis to allow for gendered aspects to be understood beyond binary sex differences and/or reproductive health.