Thank You to Our Readers and Contributors

This issue marks the final issue in the first volume of the Canadian Journal of Health Technologies. CADTH would like to thank all of our contributors, readers, and subscribers for engaging with our work over the past 12 months. Accepted abstracts from the annual CADTH Symposium have been published for the first time in a special supplement to the journal, making the conference proceedings more available to the scientific community and other stakeholders. CADTH encourages readers to submit comments and ideas for future issues of the Canadian Journal of Health Technologies to help us advance our role as an effective communication channel for health technology assessment, implementation science, and knowledge mobilization in Canada.

Editorial to the Supplementary Special Issue on COVID-19 Law: breadth, depth and future implications

Editorial introduction by the Chief Editor to this special supplement on COVID-19 law.

Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2021

This publication presents the latest key statistics on development issues for the economies of Asia and the Pacific. It sets out the region’s current status in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals, and provides economic, financial, social, and environmental indicators for the 49 regional members of the Asian Development Bank. It covers global value chains and also highlights initiatives of national statistics offices to provide timely data for planning and policymaking. A special supplement, Capturing the Digital Economy, sets out a framework for measuring the importance of the digital economy in national and global production processes.

Capturing the Digital Economy—A Proposed Measurement Framework and Its Applications: A Special Supplement to Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2021

This publication sets out a framework for measuring the importance of the digital economy in national and global production processes. Amid the growing interest in the digitalization of socioeconomic activities, there is a lack of consensus on an established framework to estimate the digital economy. This report proposes a definition of the core digital economy and an input-output analytical framework to measure it. Applying this framework to selected economies and years, it finds that the digital economy and digitally dependent industries contribute a significant portion of gross domestic product. It examines key digital economy phenomena and trends in relation to sectoral links, temporal price changes, jobs, global value chains, the COVID-19 pandemic, and Industry 4.0.

The Ohio COVID-19 Survey: Preliminary Findings and Their Use During the Pandemic

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created exceptional health and economic uncertainty for Ohioans in 2020. In the spring of 2020, the state commissioned the Ohio COVID-19 Survey (OCS) to ask residential Ohio adults about how the pandemic was affecting them. The purpose of this research is to provide state leadership with real-time information about the effects of the pandemic and concurrent recession on Ohio households.Methods: The OCS is a special supplement to the Ohio Medicaid Assessment Survey (OMAS), a stratified random digit dial, cell phone and landline telephone survey. This study includes data collected weekly between April 20, 2020, and August 24, 2020. We conducted descriptive time-series analysis of the survey data and provided updates to the state's COVID-19 Response Team throughout the survey period.Results: Preliminary findings from the OCS reflect 3 themes among respondents: 1) elevated levels of concern over health and household economics; 2) disproportionate effects that exacerbate existing inequities; and 3) majority adjustment to "new normal" and acceptance of public health guidelines .Conclusion: Preliminary findings indicate that groups that were struggling before the pandemic have faced the biggest challenges with regard to health and household economics since it began. Data from the OCS enabled us to provide real-time analysis to state leadership regarding Ohioans' experience during the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Further analysis and integration of additional data will allow us to provide deeper insights as Ohio seeks to move into recovery.

Journal of the International Society for Comparative Physical Education and Sport (ISCPES) Volume 42, Special Supplement 2020

A mere two years ago International Sports Studies was celebrating its fortieth anniversary. At that time, at the beginning of 2018, your editor was able to reflect on the journey of our professional association – the International Society for Comparative Physical Education and Sport (ISCPES). It started with a small, cohesive, and optimistic group of physical education scholars from Europe and North America interested in working across boundaries and exploring new international horizons. The group that met in Borovets in 2017 on the eve of the society’s fortieth anniversary, represented a wider range of origins. They were also more circumspect, tempered by their experience in what had become, four decades later, a very much more complex competitive and fragmented professional environment. Such a comparison seems almost to have reflected a common journey, from the hope and optimism of youth to entry into the challenges and responsibilities of mid adulthood. Yet from the perspective of contemporary history, these last four decades seem generally to be viewed as having been a time of unbroken human progress. Certainly, this is a defensible view when we use technological and economic progress as the criterion. The nation of Indonesia provides an excellent example of progress by these measures.

A Guidebook on Mapping Poverty through Data Integration and Artificial Intelligence

The “leave no one behind” principle of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development requires appropriate indicators to be estimated for different segments of a country’s population. The Asian Development Bank, in collaboration with the Philippine Statistics Authority, the National Statistical Office of Thailand, and the World Data Lab, conducted a feasibility study that aimed to enhance the granularity, cost-effectiveness, and compilation of high-quality poverty statistics in the Philippines and Thailand. This accompanying guide to the Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2020 special supplement is based on the study, capitalizing on satellite imagery, geospatial data, and powerful machine-learning algorithms to augment conventional data collection and sample survey techniques.

EDITORIAL: The Many Challenges to the Field of Pediatric Pulmonology Posed by Pediatric Pulmonary Hypertension and the Path Forward

Pulmonary hypertension represents an increasingly important group of pediatric patients which commonly come to the attention, if not the primary care of pediatric pulmonologists around the world. There have been major advances in diagnosis and therapy over the past 25 years. To address potential gaps in knowledge, the authors were invited by the Editor of Pediatric Pulmonology to organize a series of manuscripts in a special supplement of the journal. Our authors include pulmonologists, pharmacists, intensivists, mid-level practitioners, neonatologists and cardiologists. We believe that this issue will be of great interest to most of the readership community that the Journal addresses.