Multiple well-considered but siloed initiatives and programmes exist in Australia to support ear and hearing screening and assessment for Indigenous children. However, the lack of coordination of these programmes leads to inefficiencies in resource allocation and disrupts opportunities to implement a cost-effective, efficient, and easily navigable system of care. Indigenous children experience high prevalence rates of middle ear disease, as well as earlier onset, increased severity and longer infections compared with non-Indigenous children. The aims of this study are to: (1) Understand current ear and hearing screening programmes in three New South Wales communities and evaluate their strengths and limitations, (2) Strengthen, implement and evaluate ear and hearing screening programmes and (3) Identify the barriers and facilitators for scaling strengthened ear and hearing screening programmes nationally and the importance and feasibility of each factor.

A series of desktop searches and co-design workshops will be completed to achieve aim (1) and (2) and the results will be mapped into work-as-done and work-as-imagined using the Functional Resonance Analysis Method. Strengthened screening programmes will be implemented in communities using the criteria from national and international guidance documents and the Practical, Robust, Implementation and Sustainability Model and evaluated. Finally, workshops will be conducted with key stakeholders to identify the barriers and facilitators for scaling strengthened ear and hearing screening programmes nationally and the importance and feasibility of each factor.

This project has received ethics approval from the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council Human Research Ethics Committee (Ref: 2350/24). Results will be disseminated to the community through the CEOs of the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations as well as published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at conferences. The findings from data collected will be used to inform the co-production of an enhanced system for ear and hearing care.

In recent decades, differences in the risk factors, presentations, management strategies and outcomes of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) between the sexes have emerged. Several systematic reviews and meta-analyses (SMRAs) on this specific topic have been conducted, and an overall assessment of the information available on the subject is needed. The protocol details our proposed methodology for conducting an umbrella review (systematic review of SRMAs) on sex differences related to AMI treatment.

An umbrella review will be conducted following the guidelines of the Joanna Briggs Institute. Papers published from database inception until November 25th, 2024, were searched in Ovid Medline, Embase, APA PsycInfo, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Epistemonikos and Scopus using controlled vocabulary and text words expressing sex differences AND myocardial infarction. An updated search will be conducted near the end of the umbrella review process to ensure that not recently published SMRAs are missed. No language restrictions will be applied in the database searches, but only SRMAs reported in English will be eligible for inclusion. The inclusion criteria include SMRAs reporting sex differences in outcomes related to AMI treatment among adults. All review steps will be conducted independently by two reviewers. Data will be extracted using a recommended standardised data extraction form. A critical appraisal checklist will be used to assess the risk of bias within the included SMRAs. The findings will be summarised through narrative synthesis using text and tables.

Ethics approval is not required, as this review will use publicly available data. The results will be disseminated as a peer-reviewed journal article and through national/international conferences.

PROSPERO, CRD42024561159.