Public health and internationalism

A new website had been created, based at Birkbeck, University of London: The Reluctant Internationalists: A History of Public Health and International Organisations, Movements and Experts in Twentieth Century Europe.  A central concern of The Reluctant Internationalists is the role played by debates about public health and (real or imagined) crises in the formation of …

New from the National Academies Press: Including Health in Global Frameworks for Development, Wealth, and Climate Change

From the NAP: Including Health in Global Frameworks for Development, Wealth, and Climate Change is the summary of a three-part public webinar convened by the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine and its  collaborative on Global Environmental Health and Sustainable Development. Presenters and participants discussed the role of health in …

Light-bulb moments for a nonprofit

From the New York Times: No baby should die or be disabled because a light bulb can’t be replaced. Yet during visits to hospitals in India and other countries, Krista Donaldson often saw lifesaving phototherapy systems, used to treat infant jaundice, languishing in dusty corners because of burned-out bulbs and other seemingly simple problems. Often, …

Inequality at the core of high health care spending: A view from the OECD

From the Health Affairs blog: It is commonly said that the US spends more than twice as much on health care as other developed countries, yet its outcomes are worse. The inference is that too much care is provided, to no good end. Such international comparisons are drawn from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and …

Lecture today: Global Water Issues and U.S.-Japan Cooperation

Kazunari Yoshimura will provide a general overview of global water issues and discuss the possibility of U.S.-Japan cooperation in terms of water treatment, water security, and disaster prevention. Mr. Yoshimura will also go into detail on waste water treatment technologies in both the United States and in Japan. He also will describe his experience as …

Mold toxins tied to AIDS epidemic

From the New York Times: Aflatoxins — poisons produced by fungi that grow on moldy peanuts and corn — may be worsening Africa’s AIDS epidemic by helping suppress the immune systems of newly infected people, a new study has found. The study, by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and published recently in …

Talking female circumcision out of existence

From the Fixes blog at the New York Times: Like every other girl of her era in her part of southern Ethiopia — and most girls in the country — Bogaletch Gebre was circumcised. In some regions girls are circumcised as infants, but in her zone it happened at puberty. It was around 1967, and …

Improving health, health systems, and health policy around the world

New from the National Academies Press: The roots of health literacy can be traced back to the national literacy movement in India under Gandhi and to aid groups working in Africa to promote education and health. The term health literacy was first used in 1974 and described as "health education meeting minimal standards for all …

Pollution leads to drop in life span in northern China

From the New York Times: Southern Chinese on average have lived at least five years longer than their northern counterparts in recent decades because of the destructive health effects of pollution from the widespread use of coal in the north, according to a study released Monday by a prominent American science journal. The study, which …

An investment strategy in the human interest

From the always interesting Fixes blog at the New York Times, a new idea for funding aid projects: You are a health official in Uganda, and you’re watching a crisis unfold. Your people have long suffered from epidemics of sleeping sickness, one of Africa’s biggest killers. There is no vaccine and the only treatment is …