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2019-05-27
European Chronic Disease Alliance (ECDA);
A joint paper by the European Chronic Disease Alliance (ECDA), the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) and the NCD Alliance calls for the creation of an EU Strategic Framework for the Prevention of NCDs towards 2030.Indeed, with epidemic levels of NCDs undermining people's well-being, healthcare systems, and Europe's economic and social prosperity, they consider that preventing chronic diseases should be a main priority for the European Commission.Therefore, the paper proposes principles, priorities and actions for such an EU strategic framework, setting out a roadmap for policy-makers to make change happen.
More information and the summary: https://epha.org/joint-paper-i-towards-an-eu-strategic-framework-for-the-prevention-of-ncds/
2019-05-23
Rockefeller Archive Center;
The Rockefeller Archive Centre (RAC) is a very rich source of information on the history of family planning and population control in Fiji in the 1960s and early 1970s. The RAC holds files relating to a multitude of organisations great and small that looked to Rockefeller-funded organisations such as the Population Council for advice and/or financial support. Therefore, it is a great resource for analysing the work of voluntary associations, such as the Fiji Family Planning Association (FFPA), which do not always have their own centralised archive, and provide information on discussions beyond the official publications of intergovernmental development organisations such as the South Pacific Commission (SPC). Through these files, it was possible to trace the evolution of the debate around the promotion of family planning in Fiji. In the 1950s, colonial officials in Fiji were preoccupied with demographic disparities between the two largest ethnic groups in Fiji – Fijians and Indo-Fijians. The Population Council files consulted demonstrate that in the 1960s and early 1970s the rationale for introducing family planning in Fiji changed to addressing total population in line with international ideas of demographic transition theory and the need for global population control, although this did not lead to a total departure from colonial thinking. Beyond the files on family planning, the RAC also holds information on other maternal and child health programmes that further demonstrate the uneasy interface between colonial and international health after the Second World War.
2019-04-08
Social Science Research Council (SSRC);
This brief provides key policy messages based on a large-scale longitudinal study from 2008 to 2016 in twelve communes in three Vietnamese provinces by the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (VASS) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).
The project's objective was to understand household health practices and health-seeking behavior in Viet Nam, especially among economically and socially disadvantaged groups.
Key findings highlight the main areas where donors and the government will need to focus in the coming years in order to improve and reduce disparities in health outcomes.
These recommendations include:
Increasing the use and effectiveness of commune health centers (CHCs)
Improving antenatal care and utilization
Helping CHCs implement preventive health care and essential disease control programs
2019-04-01
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
This paper looks at some of the most important impacts of the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the US government since August of 2017. It finds that most of the impact of these sanctions has not been on the government but on the civilian population.
The sanctions reduced the public's caloric intake, increased disease and mortality (for both adults and infants), and displaced millions of Venezuelans who fled the country as a result of the worsening economic depression and hyperinflation. They exacerbated Venezuela's economic crisis and made it nearly impossible to stabilize the economy, contributing further to excess deaths. All of these impacts disproportionately harmed the poorest and most vulnerable Venezuelans.
Even more severe and destructive than the broad economic sanctions of August 2017 were the sanctions imposed by executive order on January 28, 2019 and subsequent executive orders this year; and the recognition of a parallel government, which as shown below, created a whole new set of financial and trade sanctions that are even more constricting than the executive orders themselves.
We find that the sanctions have inflicted, and increasingly inflict, very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths from 2017–2018; and that these sanctions would fit the definition of collective punishment of the civilian population as described in both the Geneva and Hague international conventions, to which the US is a signatory. They are also illegal under international law and treaties which the US has signed, and would appear to violate US law as well.
2019-04-01
PolicyLink;
People of color in the United States experience poorer health and more premature, preventable mortality than their White counterparts. Although health care companies prioritize achieving health equity, their efforts often focus on disparities caused by poverty, education, and disability without explicitly addressing how structural racism significantly raises the risk of poor health for people of color. Corporate diversity and inclusion efforts, while helpful, are not sufficient to counter biases in clinical practice or access to health care. By better serving communities of color, health care companies can deliver better outcomes and strengthen their own economic performance.
A follow-up to The Competitive Advantage of Racial Equity, developed in partnership with PolicyLink, this report focuses on actions taken by companies in the health care sector to create business value by addressing the unique challenges faced by communities of color. The companies featured in this report—ProMedica, Kaiser Permanente, Cigna, and UnitedHealth Group—have adopted several business strategies that improve health outcomes for people of color and create a competitive advantage through reduced costs, avoided readmissions, and greater member satisfaction.
2019-03-20
Community Food Advocates;
Community Food Advocates has just completed a new report of the first year of the Universal School Lunch program, with a deep dive into how the program has worked in high schools - where the students have been the hardest to reach. We visited high schools in all five boroughs, totaling 132 high schools in 54 buildings. We met with school administrators, cafeteria staff and students.
Our visits to high schools helped us identify practices that can promote the program and encourage students to eat school lunch. These findings form the basis of our recommendations to the Chancellor, the Office of Food and Nutrition Services and school administrators.
We are pleased to report that high school students' participation increased by 15.2% - with little public promotion of the program. And high schools with the new Food Court-style cafeteria redesign increased participation by 31%! That is why significantly expanding the number of schools with the cafeteria redesign model remains a high priority for the Lunch 4 Learning Campaign.
2019-03-08
Social Science Research Council (SSRC);
In 2007, a life-saving law in Viet Nam mandated that people riding motorbikes wear helmets. The result was a significant decrease in serious head injuries and road traffic deaths.
This report provides an update to the 2010 report on the results of the helmet law, and details a new effort to increase the number of children wearing helmets.
The change in Viet Nam is an example of the process of creating achievable policy and behavioral change, and this report offers a set of lessons learned that may be applicable to other public health issues.
2019-03-06
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
Patent monopolies on prescription drugs raise their price by one or two orders of magnitude above the free market price. In this way, they are equivalent to tariffs of several thousand percent or even tens of thousands of percent. Just as tariffs lead to economic distortions, and provide incentives for corruption, so do patent monopolies on prescription drugs. We continually see evidence of this as drug companies are routinely found to make payoffs to keep generics out of the market, promote their drugs for uses for which they are inappropriate, and conceal evidence they are less effective than claimed, or even harmful.
The enormous distortions from patent monopolies mean that there are large potential gains from working around them. This working paper discusses four mechanisms for getting drug prices closer to free market levels with actions at the state or local level or by private actors.
2019-02-06
Rockefeller Archive Center;
My research at the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) investigated the pivotal period from the 1920s to the 1940s when health practitioners and scientists in the Rockefeller Foundation were confident that they could alleviate, and probably eradicate, serious but little understood diseases such as yaws. During these decades, the IHD, and its predecessor before 1927, the International Health Bureau (IHB), embarked upon transferring the Foundation's early successes in public health from the southern United States, notably with hookworm and sanitation campaigns, to overseas. In 1916, the IHB had succeeded the International Health Commission (IHC), founded in 1913. The original mission of the IHC drove the IHB/IHD: the "promotion of public sanitation and the spread of knowledge of scientific medicine." Yaws became an add-on to that mission, although syphilis and its links to yaws in tropical countries never quite assumed the attention Turner demanded. But the diseases are entwined, often confused, and worthy of in-depth investigation. My research at RAC formed part of my wider project on the history of yaws and syphilis, but unlike Turner and Sawyer's principal focus on the Caribbean, I sought to concentrate on the vast Asia-Pacific region. My aim is to tackle this history longitudinally and across cultures to look at changing discourse, theories and practices regarding treatments for these diseases and socio-cultural perceptions, especially in relation to causation, symptoms and consequences. These significant diseases have had a huge global impact but have not been investigated together by historians. The Asia-Pacific region is rarely mentioned in publications on syphilis or yaws.
2019-02-01
Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.;
For more than 20 years, we have supported work to improve population and reproductive health in India. After making significant progress in this field, particularly in the areas of maternal health and rights, we are preparing to exit the population and reproductive health field in India and are supporting a concluding round of grantmaking focused on maternal health quality of care.
Through this four-year strategy, we aim to advance maternal health by supporting a shift in the field's focus from access to quality of maternal health care. To accomplish this goal, the strategy backs three main areas of work or sub strategies: strengthening the supply of quality maternal health services, building the demand for quality services through accountability mechanisms, and building an evidence base and support for maternal health quality of care. The strategy officially launched in June 2015. Our evaluation partner, Mathematica Policy Research, documented early progress of the strategy through March 2017. Building on earlier evaluations of the strategy, this document provides findings from the midline evaluation covering April 2017 to March 2018.
2019-01-31
Youth Research & Evaluation eXchange (YouthREX);
This report is designed for practitioners working with young people living with and affected by HIV in Ontario. As resource navigators and connectors to services and programs, youth workers play an important role in the wellbeing of youth. They are uniquely positioned to support young people living with and affected by HIV and break down stigma. This report offers youth workers recommendations for best practices at the individual, interpersonal, organizational, and community levels.
The report is organized into three main sections. The first sets the context, highlighting the demographics of youth living with HIV in Canada (specifically in Ontario) and the intersecting factors that contribute to the vulnerability of youth living with and affected by HIV, through a social determinants of health lens. The next section details frameworks, evidence-based interventions, and program features that support youth living with and affected by HIV. The final section outlines recommendations for best practices and strategies that can be adopted by youth workers and youth-serving organizations.
