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2019-09-26
Social IMPACT Research Center;
Millions of people in Illinois experience poverty or are living on the brink. That societal position keeps opportunities out of reach and nearly guarantees worse outcomes in every quality of life domain—making ALL of us worse off. The poverty rate for the United States was 11.8% in 2018, a decline of 0.5 percentage points from 2017. There were 38.1 million people in poverty nationwide. In 2018, 1.5 million Illinoisans were in poverty—a rate of 12.1%. Additionally, 2.0 million Illinoisans are near poor and economically insecure with incomes between 100% and 199% of the federal poverty threshold. This year marks the first time that the U.S.poverty rate is below pre-recession levels; Illinois lags behind this trend,with its poverty rate just returning to pre-recession levels.
2019-09-19
CLTS Knowledge Hub;
This issue of Frontiers of CLTS explores current thinking and practice on the topic of tackling slippage of open defecation free (ODF) status. It looks at how slippage is defined and identified, and at different patterns of slippage that are seen after ODF is declared. Although a considerable amount has been written on how to establish strong Community-Led Total sanitation (CLTS) programmes that prevent slippage from happening, this issue looks at how to reverse slippage that has already taken place. Note however, that at a certain level, strategies used to reverse slippage and those used in advance to set a programme up for success to prevent slippage occurring overlap.
From the literature, there is little documented evidence on how slippage can be reversed; evidence and guidance tend to focus on prevention. This review begins to address this gap. Implementers are encouraged to use the proposed patterns of slippage framework and slippage factors section to understand the type and extent of slippage experienced, then use the examples in the section on tackling slippage to identify potential slippage responses.
In addition to a review of current literature, in depth interviews were carried out with key informants at global, regional and country level. Key informants were selected purposively to identify experiences and innovations in tackling slippage from across the sector.
Issue 14, September 2019
2019-09-18
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration;
CRED' Capacity Building and Training Programme enables people, communities and organizations to strengthen their capabilities to develop, implement and maintain effective health sector services. The programme also provides guidance and support on preventing and responding to disasters, conflicts and other humanitarian emergencies.
The Centre develops, implements and evaluates training materials and courses to help international agencies, national governments, non-governmental organizations, research institutes and schools of public health strengthen their technical capacity in emergency public health management.
CRED strives to improve disaster management capacities through institutional and community capacity-building, information and data management, and partnerships. In addition, the Centre provides training in public health, epidemiology, natural disaster management and complex emergency intervention.
2019-09-01
World Bank Group;
Safely managed sanitation is a focus of the SDGs and central to stunting reduction and early childhood survival, both identified by the World Bank's Human Capital Index as critical for humans to develop their full potential. In 2015, 4.5 billion people lacked access to safely managed sanitation. This paper finds that hundreds of millions more people are exposed to significant health risks due to unsafely managed sanitation. This report explores the challenges of fecal sludge management (FSM) in densely populated rural areas and it presents some typical current practices, examples of financially sustainable FSM services, and global innovations in waste management with potential replicability for FSM. Its aim is to promote dialogue on how to move from the Millennium Development Goals' approach to rural sanitation—effectively, building toilets—to the Sustainable Development Goals' approach: safely managed sanitation systems. The paper concludes that the sanitation service chain spans both private and public goods, and market mechanisms are not always adequate to mitigate the safety risks. Public funding will be needed to cover the affordability gap and address safely managed sanitation, requiring a clear and long-term commitment and support from government. The case is similar to that for networked sanitation: without public support, improving the safety of existing FSM services is likely to decrease profit margins and potentially render businesses unviable.
2019-08-19
Rockefeller Archive Center;
Since the 1990s, there has been considerable research on the histories of the environment and of medicine in India. These studies address wide-ranging issues such as environmental change since pre-colonial times, changing livelihoods, contestations and negotiations between 'Western' and 'Indian' medical practices, the treatment of epidemics, women's health, British colonial medical policies and the history of medical institutions. However, there has been much less research on health and disease among India's Adivasi or 'tribal' population. Similarly, there have been few studies which explore the interaction of environment, health and medical history of people living in the margins. My research project seeks to address this lacuna and investigates the relationship between environmental change, emerging diseases, and health practices in eastern and central India. Specifically, it concentrates on the Chotanagpur Division and Santal Pargana districts which formed part of the Bengal Presidency under British colonial rule, and which today are incorporated within the Indian state of Jharkhand. Taking a long-term view, the project explores the fluid connection between landscape and health in pre-modern Adivasi society and analyses the interface between indigenous cultural beliefs and the state's medical intervention in colonial and post-colonial India.
2019-07-10
Rockefeller Archive Center;
This report examines the activities carried out by the Regional Office of Río de la Plata and Andean Region of the Rockefeller Foundation to upgrade the training of public health professionals and staff from 1941 to 1949. According to the Rockefeller Foundation, special skills and training were essential to address the challenges posed by the eradication of epidemics and pandemics, necessary public works to enhance public health. The regional office was based in Argentina, Chile, Perú, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay.
2019-07-02
Rockefeller Archive Center;
This essay charts the career of the entomologist and popular author Marston Bates (1906-1974) within the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) between 1935 and 1952. Today, Bates is best remembered as a science communicator. Publishing over a dozen books on natural history and the environment, he helped bring ecological ideas to broader public audiences during the 1950s and 1960s. Not simply a popularizer of contemporary scientific concepts, Bates stood out for his critical commentary on the environmental problems of economic development, conservation, and global population growth, as well as the need for more integrative, cross-disciplinary approaches to understanding humans in nature. Long before becoming a public intellectual, however, he worked for the RF as a mosquito specialist, serving as director of International Health Division malaria and yellow fever laboratories in Albania, Egypt, and Colombia during the 1930s and 1940s. Bates' mid-career shift from researching mosquito ecology to writing about human ecology may seem to be a sudden left turn. A closer look at the archival record reveals the pivotal role played by the Rockefeller Foundation in shaping Bates' career trajectory and ideas about the environment. Furthermore, placing Bates' work in the context of his time with the RF reveals connections between twentieth-century U.S. environmental thought and international health projects.
2019-07-01
Open Society Foundations;
To improve the health and well-being of communities oppressed by racism and white supremacy, advocates for justice need to challenge some deeply held cultural assumptions, values, and practices.
This prerogative raises a series of questions: How can we disrupt the narratives that perpetuate racism and white privilege? What counternarratives and stories need to be told to shift cultural consciousness? What kinds of alliances, infrastructure, and institutions are necessary?
During a two-day convening, health practitioners, race theorists, academics, activists, community organizers, and cultural and media strategists met to examine these questions, reflect, learn, and share ideas.
This convening report summary seeks to spark wider conversations—particularly in this fraught political moment—and mobilize people and resources in an effort to advance narratives that promote racial justice and expand our understanding of health, human rights, and the public good.
2019-06-13
Rockefeller Archive Center;
For the first time in 1943—at the height of the Japanese occupation of the Indonesian archipelago—Soekarno expressed the relationship between medicine and nation-building. He had foreseen, in the not-too-distant future when the country would proclaim its independence from colonial rule, that physicians would have a unique niche in Indonesian society —as advocates of the largely illiterate Indonesian masses. He envisioned that a physician would not only treat the sick, but also educate the public about preventative health measures such that Indonesia would become a strong and healthy nation. Eleven years later, President Ramon Magsaysay of the Philippines asserted in his first State of the Nation Address that no nation could go ahead if crippled by disease. These two vignettes attest to the centrality of public health in nation-building in postcolonial Indonesia and the Philippines.
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.
2019-04-30
Urban Indian Health Institute;
This brief examines the health outcomes, structural barriers, and the action steps to break these barriers and achieve health equity for AI/AN.
