This is the first part of a IH Blog series on Universal Health Coverage.
Blog I- An Overview Of Universal Health Coverage
By Martha Smee MPH (c) MMS (c) and Dr. Heather F. McClintock PhD MSPH MSW
You can learn a lot about a country and its leaders from how much they value their population’s health, particularly the health of the most vulnerable citizens. Health is the basis upon which social well-being, economic development, and environmental prosperity are sustainably built. Universal health coverage (UHC) is one way that governments can show that they value their citizens’ health, providing all individuals the opportunity to thrive, both in physical and mental health and all other areas of life. Globally, there has been growing interest around the idea of UHC, especially since the turn of the 21st century. In 2000, the United Nations (UN) released their Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Several MDGs were health-oriented, emphasizing the importance of maternal and child health and controlling communicable diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria. The UN made explicit reference to the need for UHC in their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were released in 2015. UN SDG 3.8 states: “Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.” The aim is to achieve this by 2030.
Let’s back up for a moment. What is UHC? There are many definitions. This one from the World Health Organization (WHO) succinctly encompasses the central concepts: “All people having access to the full range of quality health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship.” Two main tenets stand out in this definition. First is full accessibility to all peoples. This includes every stage of disease, including prevention, and every part of the body, including mental health. Almost 1 billion people suffer from mental illness, and many do not receive needed care. Among those living with mental illness in low-income countries, 75% do not receive treatment. In countries coping with conflict and violence, the prevalence of mental illness is even higher. We can no longer ignore the impact that mental health conditions have on all aspects of society. The second important tenet is no financial hardship. Approximately 90 million people across the world go into poverty due to medical expenses every year. That is simply not acceptable. UHC has expanded since SDG 3.8’s introduction, with the greatest strides being made on the African continent. However, 30% of the world still cannot access essential health services.
There are some key components to consider in moving forward on the path towards achieving UHC. First, reaching this goal will require a multisectoral approach. Population health is essential to the success of all sectors. Without health, businesses lose human resources and customers; teachers cannot teach and students cannot learn; farmers struggle to feed the world. With a goal as lofty as UHC, we need all the buy-in we can get. We must tap into the personal interests of different sectors, making them realize their role as a stakeholder in population health including community grassroots activists and partisan governmental leaders. This means engaging key stakeholders across the continuum of health prevention to treatment and incentivizing involvement in ways that can elicit much needed changes. Using this approach could be especially impactful in developing countries with young populations and huge potential for economic growth. Second, primary care and public health are key. Primary care, and to an even greater extent, public health bring the most value to a health system. As famous Philadelphian Benjamin Franklin once said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Chronic illness costs the U.S. over $3.5 trillion every year. Compared to being reactive, placing an emphasis on primary and secondary prevention at all social-ecological levels saves money and saves lives. More and more low- and middle-income countries are moving through an epidemiological transition and feeling the impact of chronic disease on their populations, making it clear that the principles of prevention have a place in countries across the globe. Third, start at home. UHC is not going to look the same in every country or even every community. Countries must use the strengths of existing systems and improve upon them, all while listening to what citizens want. In the U.S., a majority of citizens believe that the government should be responsible for providing UHC. The U.S. may avoid undertaking UHC policy development, but individual states have taken initiative. California is currently on track to become the first state to offer UHC to all low-income residents, even if they are undocumented. Overall, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Countries of all incomes, cultures, and circumstances have achieved UHC and can be a blueprint; Turkey, Iran, and Mexico are great examples for low- and middle-income countries that have made notable strides towards UNC.
Martha Smee is a current student in Arcadia University’s Dual Master of Public Health/Master of Medical Science in Physician Assistant Program. As an MPH student, her capstone research explored the relationship between state Medicaid policy and mental health outcomes. She completed an internship at the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Culinary Literacy Center where she assisted with curriculum development and program facilitation to promote literacy through food, cooking, and community-building. Her public health interests include health policy, access to mental health services, and environmental health. After graduating, she plans to continue practicing evidence-based public health as a primary care provider in the Philadelphia area.
Dr. Heather F. McClintock PhD MSPH MSW
Dr. McClintock is an IH Section Member and Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health, College of Health Sciences at Arcadia University. She earned her Master of Science in Public Health from the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. McClintock received her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania with a focus on health behavior and promotion. Her research broadly focuses on the prevention, treatment, and management of chronic disease and disability globally. Recent research aims to understand and reduce the burden of intimate partner violence in Sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to completing her doctorate she served as a Program Officer at the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants and a Senior Project Manager in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Pennsylvania. At the University of Pennsylvania she led several research initiatives that involved improving patient compliance and access to quality healthcare services including the Spectrum of Depression in Later Life Study and Integrating Management for Depression and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Study.
April 28, 2023: The Health Policy Institute of Ohio has released the latest edition of its biennial Health Value Dashboard, which found that Ohio ranks 44 on heath value compared to other states and D.C. (as displayed in the graphic above).That means that Ohioans are living less healthy lives and spending more on health care than people in most other states.The Dashboard is designed for policymakers and other public- and private-sector leaders to examine Ohio’s performance relative to other states, track change over time and identify and explore health disparities and inequities in Ohio. The report also highlights evidence-informed strategies that can be implemented to improve Ohio’s performance.With more than 100 data metrics, the report can be a valuable tool as Ohio’s leaders continue to develop the state’s biennial budget over the next two months.In the fifth edition of the Dashboard, HPIO identified three specific areas of strengths on which Ohio can build to create opportunities for improved health value in the state.
April 28, 2023: The Biden administration on Thursday rolled out proposals to set national standards for care in Medicaid and children’s health care plans, amid upheaval for millions of Americans’ coverage in both programs (Source: “Biden officials propose slate of Medicaid transparency changes,” Stat News, April 27). A pair of draft rules released by federal health officials Thursday would require Medicaid plans to book enrollees for appointments within two weeks. The rules would also require states to track and report the quality of care patients receive, to share provider payment rates and to oversee these changes through “secret shopper” surveys. However, while the agency proposed a slew of reporting requirements, the changes did not come with clear penalties or incentives for improving wait time and care. The draft plans come as states reassess Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollment in the wake of the Covid-19 emergency. Congress allowed states to begin removing people from Medicaid rolls this month, ending a pandemic freeze that saw Medicaid coverage balloon with more than 20 million new enrollees. An estimated 18 million people could lose coverage in the next year, according to a KFF survey of state Medicaid programs.
MAy 29, 2023: The Seventy-sixth World Health Assembly is being held in Geneva, Switzerland, on 21–30 May 2023. The theme of this year’s Health Assembly is: WHO at 75: Saving lives, driving health for all.Proceedings will be webcast live from this web page. Simultaneous interpretation is available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
Co-Hosted by the Department of Bioethics, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University and the Program in Medical Humanities, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. Registration is now open for the 2023 Health Humanities Consortium Annual Conference! The conference will be held in Cleveland, Ohio at the Health Education Campus from Thursday March 16th through Sunday March 19th, co-hosted by Case Western Reserve University Department of Bioethics and the Program in Medical Humanities at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. This year’s conference theme is “Mobilizing Selves, Transforming Structures.” Please note that all decisions on submissions to the conference were emailed in early December. The conference website (https://hhc2023.vfairs.com/) includes the preliminary agenda for the conference and some basic information about the local venue (more will follow). Participants may attend in-person or virtually.
February 6, 2023: Cancer figures provide stark evidence of the gap between the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and non-Indigenous people in Australia. The difference is confronting – and it’s increasing over time. Cancer is the leading broad cause of death for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, accounting for 3,612 deaths (23% of deaths). Indigenous Australians are 14% more likely to be diagnosed with cancer. They are 20% less likely to survive at least five years beyond diagnosis. While the likelihood of dying from cancer in the general population declined by 10% from 2010 to 2019, it increased by 12% for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. These figures highlight major challenges for the federal government’s stated aim to close the life expectancy gap in a generation. But data will also be critical to meeting this goal.
Health data can include information about health-care services, health status and behaviours, medications and genetic data, in addition to demographic information like age, education and neighbourhood. These facts and statistics are valuable because they offer insights and information about population health and well-being. However, they can also be sensitive, and there are legitimate public concerns about how these data are used, and by whom. The term “social licence” describes uses of health data that have public support. Studies performed in Canada, the United Kingdom and internationally have all found public support and social licence for uses of health data that produce public benefits. However, this support is conditional. Public concerns related to privacy, commercial motives, equity and fairness must be addressed.
May 29, 2023: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between serum ferritin level and prognosis in sepsis. It also explored the potential prognostic value of serum ferritin for predicting outcomes in sepsis based on a large public database. Sepsis patients in MIMIC-IV database were included. Different models including crude model (adjusted for none), model I (adjusted for age and gender) and model II (adjusted for all potential confounders) were performed. Smooth fitting curves were constructed for exploring the relationships between serum ferritin and mortalities of 28-day, 90-day, 180-day and 1-year. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was utilized for assessing the predictive value of serum ferritin. 1947 sepsis patients were included. The mortalities of 28-day, 90-day, 180-day and 1-year were 20.18% (n = 393), 28.35% (n = 552), 30.30% (n = 590) and 31.54% (n = 614), respectively. In Model II (adjusted for all potential confounders), for every 1000 ng/ml increment in serum ferritin, the values of OR in mortalities of in 28-day, 90-day, 180-day and 1-year were 1.13 (95% CI 1.07–1.19, P < 0.0001), 1.15 (95% CI 1.09–1.21, P < 0.0001), 1.16 (95% CI 1.10–1.22, P < 0.0001) and 1.17 (95% CI 1.10–1.23, P < 0.0001), respectively. The relationships between serum ferritin level and outcomes were non-linear. The areas under the ROC curve (AUC) of ferritin for predicting mortalities of 28-day, 90-day, 180-day and 1-year were 0.597 (95% CI 0.563–0.629), 0.593 (95% CI 0.564–0.621), 0.595 (95% CI 0.567–0.623) and 0.592 (95% CI 0.564–0.620), respectively. The non-linear relationships between serum ferritin and clinical outcomes in sepsis were found. Serum ferritin had a predictive value for short-term and long-term outcomes in sepsis.
May 29, 2023: This study aims to quantify whether age and sex groups in Austrian regions are equally affected by the rise of type 2 diabetes. Population-wide medical claims data was obtained for citizens in Austria aged above 50 year, who received antihyperglycemic treatments or underwent HbA1c monitoring between 2012 and 2017. Diabetes incidence was measured using an epidemiological diabetes progression model accounting for patients who discontinued antihyperglycemic therapy; the erratic group. Out of 746,184 patients, 268,680 (140,960 females) discontinued their treatment and/or monitoring for at least one year. Without adjusting for such erratic patients, incidence rates increase from 2013 to 2017 (females: from 0·5% to 1·1%, males: 0·5% to 1·2%), whereas they decrease in all groups after adjustments (females: − 0·3% to − 0·5%, males: − 0·4% to − 0·5%). Higher mortality was observed in the erratic group compared to patients on continued antihyperglycemic therapy (mean difference 12% and 14% for females and males, respectively). In summary, incidence strongly depends on age, sex and place of residency. One out of three patients with diabetes in Austria discontinued antihyperglycemic treatment or glycemic monitoring for at least one year. This newly identified subgroup raises concern regarding adherence and continuous monitoring of diabetes care and demands further evaluation.
May 29, 2023: MILAN (AP) — A body was retrieved early Monday in a northern Italian lake by police divers, raising to four the final death toll in the capsizing of a tourist boat a day earlier during a sudden, violent storm that included a whirlwind. Two bodies had been recovered by firefighter divers on Sunday evening, while the fourth victim had died shortly after being rescued following the capsizing of the houseboat, which the owners used as a tour vessel to take visitors around Lake Maggiore, police said.
May 29, 2023: FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Eight months ago, chef Michael Cellura had a restaurant job and had just moved into a fancy new camper home on Fort Myers Beach. Now, after Hurricane Ian swept all that away, he lives in his older Infiniti sedan with a 15-year-old long-haired chihuahua named Ginger. Like hundreds of others, Cellura was left homeless after the Category 5 hurricane blasted the barrier island last September with ferocious winds and storm surge as high as 15 feet (4 meters). Like many, he’s struggled to navigate insurance payouts, understand federal and state assistance bureaucracy and simply find a place to shower.
May 25, 2023: AcuPebble Ox100 builds on an older Acurable device, AcuPebble SA100, that received 510(k) clearance in the summer of 2021. Like the older device, AcuPebble Ox100 features a sensor that the patient sticks to their neck to record respiratory and heart sounds. The acoustic signals are processed and analyzed by algorithms to detect sleep apnea. The new device combines the neck sensor with an oximetry sensor that the patient wears on their finger to record blood oxygen levels. While the AcuPebble SA100 clearance said the device is “not intended as a substitute for full polysomnography,” the FDA notification for the new product lacks that caveat. Esther Rodriguez-Villegas, inventor of the AcuPebble technology and founder and co-CEO of Acurable, said in a statement that the company has “already had a lot of interest from U.S. clinicians, who believe it can be transformational [for patients].
May 25, 2023: Medtronic, with a warning letter recently lifted from its U.S. diabetes business, aims to bring new products to market. The company plans to integrate its new insulin dosing algorithm, which is used in the 780G pump, with EOFlow’s pump. “We’ve never lost faith in our technology,” Medtronic CEO Geoff Martha said on a Thursday earnings call, adding that “the patch segment is a good segment and we look forward to having multiple options.” EOFlow’s technology currently is authorized in Europe, South Korea, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates, with a smartphone application that allows users to monitor and control the patch directly from their phone.
May 26, 2023: A United Nations fundraiser for aid operations in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa has fallen short as donor countries pledged only a third of the $7 billion sought. The UN warned against a “catastrophe” in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, which it described as the epicentre of the world’s worst climate emergencies. Donor countries have pledged a total of $2.4 billion for 2023, but only $0.8 billion in new financial support was announced at this week’s event. The US will provide nearly two-thirds of the money, followed at some distance by the European Commission, Germany and the UK. The money raised at a pledging conference this week will help humanitarian agencies provide food, water, healthcare and protection services to over 30 million people across the three countries.
May 25, 2023: The United Nations climate body has cast doubt over technologies that aim to suck carbon pollution from the atmosphere, calling them “unproven” and potentially risky. In a briefing note, unnamed authors from the UN’s climate body (UNFCCC) said these removal activities are “technologically and economically unproven, especially at scale, and pose unknown environmental and social risks”. It concludes they are therefore not suitable for offsetting carbon emissions under the upcoming UN’s global scheme. The UN assessment has angered the growing industry, which is seeing billions of dollars of investment from governments and corporations.
May 24, 2023: Increasing physical activity levels, especially among people at higher risk for cardiovascular disease, can greatly improve heart health and could help reduce racial disparities in heart disease, according to a new science report. The scientific statement from the American Heart Association, published Wednesday in the journal Circulation, highlights the need to remove barriers to physical activity among groups at higher risk for cardiovascular disease, including adults who are older, female, Black, have depression, disabilities or lower socioeconomic status, or live in rural areas. Physical activity levels are often lower in these groups and increasing levels could help lower cardiovascular risks, the report found. It looked at individual and community-level physical activity and provided suggestions for how to increase it. “Helping everybody improve their heart health is important,” statement writing committee chair Gerald J. Jerome said in a news release. Jerome is a professor in the department of kinesiology at Towson University in Maryland.
May 17, 2023: Like many people of South Asian ancestry, Anjana Srivastava can offer a long list of family members who’ve had heart disease. “My grandfathers. My dad. My father-in-law. My brothers,” she recalled. “My grandmother died from it. I don’t think I even know a single family where someone doesn’t have heart disease.” That’s one reason Srivastava, who grew up in India but lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, signed up to be part of the first large, long-term U.S. study of heart health in South Asian Americans more than a decade ago. That study is MASALA – the Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America. Launched in 2010, it has uncovered important details about heart health in the fast-growing group. The study is in the midst of collecting a third round of health data from its original participants even as it expands to capture a broader slice of the community. As Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is celebrated in May, the 100th scientific paper will be generated by the study.
May 21, 2023: WEST WENDOVER, Nev. — In April, Mark Lee Dickson arrived in this 4,500-person city that hugs the Utah-Nevada border to pitch an ordinance banning abortion. Dickson is the director of the anti-abortion group Right to Life of East Texas and founder of another organization that has spent the last few years traveling the United States trying to convince local governments to pass abortion bans. “Sixty-five cities and two counties across the United States” have passed similar restrictions, he told members of the West Wendover City Council during a mid-April meeting. The majority are in Texas, but recent successes in other states have buoyed Dickson and his group. “We’re doing this in Virginia and Illinois and Montana and other places as well,” he said.
May 18, 2023: Medical students say strict abortion laws are driving them away from pursuing careers as doctors in states where the procedure is banned. The finding comes from a survey of third- and fourth-year medical students, conducted from August through October of last year — just after the June 2022 Supreme Court Dobbs decision that overturned Roe V. Wade, which for nearly 50 years granted the right to an abortion across the U.S. The reluctance to be a medical resident — young doctors who train in hospitals or clinics after graduating medical school — in states with abortion bans could further strain health care shortages in many parts of the country. The survey results reflect the feelings of future obstetricians and gynecologists as well as doctors who plan to go into other specialties, such as surgery or internal medicine, said Ariana Traub, a third-year medical student at Emory University School of Medicine, who conducted the survey.
May 29, 2023: Hunger is set to worsen in 18 “hotspots” worldwide including Sudan, where fighting is putting people at risk of starvation, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) warned in a report published on Monday. Additionally, a likely El Niño – a naturally occurring climatic phenomenon that has a warming effect on ocean surface temperatures in the central and east Pacific – is also raising fears of climate extremes in vulnerable nations. Against ‘business-as-usual’ The report calls for urgent humanitarian action to save lives and livelihoods, and to prevent starvation and death. “Business-as-usual pathways are no longer an option in today’s risk landscape if we want to achieve global food security for all, ensuring that no one is left behind,” said Dongyu Qu, the FAO Director-General. He underlined the need for immediate interventions in the agricultural sector “to pull people from the brink of hunger, help them rebuild their lives, and provide long-term solutions to address the root causes of food insecurity.”
May 28, 2023: Fatoumatta Fatty’s commute on an old, malfunctioning wheelchair takes up to two hours during rainy season in The Gambia, but she is happy joining her co-workers at a sanitary pad production centre, where she takes pride in making products that help women overcome “period poverty” across the country. Period poverty, or the inability to afford menstrual products, is a serious issue especially in developing countries, an issue menstruating girls and women grapple with monthly and a spotlight topic on Menstrual Hygiene Day, observed annually on 28 May. “I’m happy to come work here because I meet and work with other people,” said Ms. Fatty, who operates a special machine to install snaps on each pad. “This place gives me joy because I can forget about my disability while working here.” The sturdy, long-lasting pads she produces help women like her with a mobility impairment, who have trouble going to the restroom. After working there for a year, Ms. Fatty hopes to continue. While her disabilities bring many challenges and she struggled to make ends meet for a long time, her life has become better since she joined the project.
February 27, 2023: More than half of U.S. hospitals are nonprofit, meaning they receive generous tax exemptions in exchange for benefiting their communities. Many aren’t fulfilling that mission. Some nonprofits have billed patients who should have qualified for charity care, racking up billions of dollars in charges. Some have aggressively collected on medical debt through legal action or reports to credit agencies. Others have exploited poor communities by maintaining a token presence there to qualify for federal subsidies that benefit the needy, only to expand in rich communities. At least one institution has explicitly set up care pathways that prioritize the elite at the expense of the general public. At the same time, many hospitals — both nonprofit and for-profit — have failed to meet their workers’ expectations. Throughout the pandemic, staff members had to proactively organize for key protections — tests, masks, and vaccines — while flooded with patients. Nurses nationwide have accused hospitals of placing financial interests before safety in adopting imbalanced staffing ratios. All this while many institutions fail to pay their employees a living wage.
May 29, 2023: Inova Health System in Falls Church, Virginia, has announced a $75 million gift from Dwight C. and Martha Schar in support of cardiovascular care across the northern Virginia region. The gift will expand and rename Inova Schar Heart and Vascular, providing support for efforts to grow specialty services; focus on research, outreach, prevention, and early diagnosis; recruit and retain talent; and promote health equity. In addition, it will enable the system to build multidisciplinary team-based programs in advanced heart failure and lung disease care, minimally invasive cardiac surgery and interventions, vascular medicine and surgery, women’s heart health, and wellness and prevention. Longtime supporters of Inova, the Schars have committed more than $126 million since 1993, including a $50 million gift in 2015 to establish the Inova Schar Cancer Institute. “Countless lives will be transformed by this remarkable gift as it allows Inova to push the boundaries of medical research, innovation, and patient care,” said Inova Health System president and CEO J. Stephen Jones. “We are grateful for this generous donation by Dwight and Martha Schar. It will have a lasting impact on heart health and will accelerate the trajectory of our mission to provide world-class health care to everyone, in every community we have the privilege to serve—one heartbeat at a time.
April 7, 2023: The Health Policy Institute of Ohio has released an action guide that highlights policy options for improving housing, one of the social drivers of infant mortality in Ohio. HPIO recently produced the Social Drivers of Infant Mortality: Recommendations for Action and Accountability in Ohio report as an update to the 2017 A New Approach to Reduce Infant Mortality and Achieve Equity report. The action guide takes a closer look at the housing recommendations in the Action and Accountability report and provides state and local health stakeholders with additional information and tools to support next steps. Despite the efforts of many in both the public and private sectors, progress in reducing infant mortality since 2011 has been minimal and uneven (as illustrated in the graphic above), and Ohio’s infant mortality rate remains higher than most other states. Infant mortality prevention efforts have largely focused on public health and healthcare interventions for pregnant women, such as safe sleep education and prenatal care access. While these efforts have likely contributed to the overall reduction in infant mortality, healthcare services alone are not enough to close gaps in birth outcomes in Ohio.
April 22, 2023: The man bringing artificial intelligence to the masses through the viral chatbot ChatGPT wants to revolutionize mental health care and addiction treatment with psychedelic drugs. Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, is chairman of a start-up that aims to tap into the promise that psychedelic drugs have shown in clinical trials — and make them broadly available for people who suffer from mental health and drug-use disorders. The firm, Journey Colab, is partnering with a luxury rehab clinic, All Points North, to shepherd drugs like MDMA and psilocybin through late-stage trials and design a model for administering them to patients. Jeeshan Chowdhury, Journey’s CEO, says such drugs are powerful tools, comparing them to performing complex surgeries. “Surgery is done in a safe environment in specialized facilities by highly experienced teams,” he said. “We aim to demonstrate that rehab centers … are the safest place for these interventions.”
Welcome to Healthcare IT News’ coverage of the 2023 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition, scheduled for April 17-21 in Chicago. Our editors, reporters and video producers will be reporting on everything you need to know from the event – bringing you news, features, podcasts and more about information and technology, healthcare trends, policy announcements, education sessions, keynote speeches and much more. Be sure to refresh this page often for our pre-conference, onsite and post-conference coverage of HIMSS23!
The European Public Health Association (EUPHA) and the European Public health Conference (EPH) are pleased to invite you to the 16th EPH conference. Chair of the Conference is Anthony Staines.
The National Network of Public Health Institutes (NNPHI) is proud to announce its Annual Conference is headed to Washington, DC, May 9-11, 2023. Since 2001, the NNPHI Annual Conference is the only national meeting that supports and highlights the work of the nation’s public health institutes. NNPHI members lead conference programming that explores fresh concepts and strategies for supporting healthy communities at the local, state, and federal levels. We invite you to join the diverse array of conference participants for the 2023 conference, which will include representatives from established and emerging public health institutes; public health training centers; federal, state and local health agencies; national partners and trade organizations; local, state, and national foundations; and community organizations.
February 6, 2023: Cancer figures provide stark evidence of the gap between the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and non-Indigenous people in Australia. The difference is confronting – and it’s increasing over time. Cancer is the leading broad cause of death for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, accounting for 3,612 deaths (23% of deaths). Indigenous Australians are 14% more likely to be diagnosed with cancer. They are 20% less likely to survive at least five years beyond diagnosis. While the likelihood of dying from cancer in the general population declined by 10% from 2010 to 2019, it increased by 12% for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. These figures highlight major challenges for the federal government’s stated aim to close the life expectancy gap in a generation. But data will also be critical to meeting this goal.
January 22, 2023: Health data can include information about health-care services, health status and behaviours, medications and genetic data, in addition to demographic information like age, education and neighbourhood. These facts and statistics are valuable because they offer insights and information about population health and well-being. However, they can also be sensitive, and there are legitimate public concerns about how these data are used, and by whom. The term “social licence” describes uses of health data that have public support. Studies performed in Canada, the United Kingdom and internationally have all found public support and social licence for uses of health data that produce public benefits. However, this support is conditional. Public concerns related to privacy, commercial motives, equity and fairness must be addressed.
April 20, 2023: Universal Influenza Candidate Vaccine Performs Well in Phase 1 Trial mRNA Version of NIAID Vaccine Begins Similar Testing. Scientists at NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center (VRC) report in two new studies that an experimental influenza vaccine, designed to elicit immunity against a broad range of influenza viruses, performed well in a small trial of volunteers. In fact, the vaccine has advanced to a second trial led by scientists at Duke University through NIAID’s Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers (CIVICs). In a phase 1 clinical trial of 52 volunteers, the vaccine developed by the VRC – known as H1ssF (influenza H1 hemagglutinin stabilized stem ferritin nanoparticle vaccine) – was safe, well-tolerated, and induced broad antibody responses that target the hemagglutinin stem. The two new studies assessing the nanoparticle vaccine published April 19 in Science Translational Medicine.
April 20, 2023: Over 200 international participants working with the mRNA Technology Transfer Programme met in Cape Town this week for their first face-to-face meeting. Joined by World Health Organization (WHO) Director General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Dr. Joe Phaahla, Minister of Health and Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr. Ebrahim Patel of South Africa together with high-level officials from funding countries, this unique meeting reviewed the progress since WHO and Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) launched it in June 2021. “I am delighted to be here in Cape Town with our partners to support a sustainable model for mRNA technology transfer to give low- and middle-income countries equitable access to vaccines and other lifesaving health products,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “I am immensely proud of the achievement of all those involved in this project; in less than two years we have shown that when we work collaboratively, we succeed collectively.” The meeting participants include biomanufacturing partners from 15 countries in the Programme, leading experts, industry, civil society representatives, and funders. During the five-day meeting, participants will share progress and discuss critical enablers for the sustainability of the Programme such as intellectual property issues and regulatory aspects, as well as the science of mRNA technologies and key applications relevant to LMICs in other disease areas such as HIV and tuberculosis.
February 15, 2023: Authorities lifted evacuation orders about a week after a train derailment that resulted in a toxic chemical spill, giving residents of East Palestine, Ohio, the green light to return to their homes and telling them that the air was safe to breathe and the water supply untainted. But for the nearly 5,000 inhabitants of this small village on the border with Pennsylvania, those assurances have done little to allay their fears of a long-term environmental and health disaster after 38 cars of a Norfolk Southern Railroad train, some carrying hazardous chemicals, derailed Feb. 3 near their city, sending flames high into the night sky. Five of the derailed cars carried vinyl chloride, a highly volatile, colorless gas used to make polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, a type of plastic. The gas is a known human carcinogen and has been linked to an increased risk of a rare form of liver cancer called hepatic angiosarcoma. Fearing a major explosion, crews performed a controlled release of the toxic chemicals from those five cars. As a result, East Palestine residents are concerned about hazardous gases that may be lingering in the air. “I would be concerned about its immediate effects more than its long-term effects,” said Carl D. Hoff, a professor of chemistry in the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences. “Almost all organochlorine compounds are toxic. Even after decomposition, it may leave residues that are longer lasting but less dramatic in their danger. The monomeric compound is a real hazard but should diminish with time in my view.” He cited a published Environmental Protection Agency report that indicates that vinyl chloride will rapidly exchange with soil and water and air and be destroyed by sunlight with a half-life of a day and a half. Still, monitoring of the water and soil in the area will be critical, according to Naresh Kumar, a professor of environmental health at the Miller School of Medicine. “And I am sure that is something they will do for weeks and potentially months in the future,” he said. For some animals in the area, the derailment, which is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, might have already had a deadly impact. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources, for example, has reported that the chemical spill has killed about 3,500 small fish across seven and a half miles of streams. What’s more, a resident who lives 10 miles from East Palestine reported to a local TV station that her five hens and rooster had perished.
April 19, 2023: People who use home- and community-based services (HCBS) are at heightened risk of serious illness or death from exposure to COVID-19 and disproportionately likely to need hospital or nursing facility care if HCBS are unavailable. However, during the pandemic, there were fewer workers available and willing to provide services and extra safety precautions were required to prevent COVID-19 infection. Recognizing those challenges, the federal government provided states with new authorities to maintain access to HCBS during the public health emergency (PHE). The PHE has been in place since 2020 and will end on May 11, 2023. This policy watch explores the potential implications of ending the PHE for Medicaid HCBS programs, including new or continued workforce challenges and potential reductions in patients’ access to care. In 2020, an estimated 6 million people used HCBS according to CBO estimates. HCBS are provided in peoples’ homes and other non-institutional settings. They include medical and supportive services that assist people with the activities of daily living (such as eating, bathing, and dressing) and instrumental activities of daily living (such as preparing meals, managing medications, and housekeeping). They are provided to people who need such services because of aging, chronic illness, or disability and may include personal care, adult daycare, home health aide services, transportation, and supported employment. Medicare generally does not cover HCBS and in 2020, Medicaid spent $162 billion on HCBS—a majority of the $245 billion in total HCBS spending. Although all states offer some HCBS through Medicaid, most services are optional for states, and states may cover different services for different types of Medicaid enrollees. To be eligible for Medicaid HCBS, individuals must have limited financial resources and significant functional impairments. https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/ending-the-public-health-emergency-for-medicaid-home-and-community-based-services/
TECHNOLOGY
April 19, 2023: Intuitive Surgical, the market leader in robotic surgery, reported double-digit sales growth and a 26% increase in da Vinci procedures in the first quarter as hospital backlogs eased. The company had 312 da Vinci system placements in the period, about the same number as a year earlier. While Intuitive hasn’t accelerated growth, it has boosted its install base. With 12% more systems in place than the year-earlier quarter, Intuitive posted growth across multiple measures, CEO Gary Guthart told investors on a conference call on Tuesday. “Use of our products grew strongly in the first quarter versus a year ago, helped by positive surgical trends and strong execution by our team,” he said. “New capital installs were likewise strong as customers built their da Vinci and Ion system capacity to meet demand. Some manufacturing and supply challenges this quarter negatively impacted our product margins. This is an opportunity for sharper execution going forward.”
April 18, 2023: High-risk medical devices that undergo post-approval modifications are more likely to be recalled from the U.S. market, according to an analysis published in JAMA Network Open. The study linked the use of supplements to modify devices with premarket approval (PMA) to a 28% increased risk of any recall and a 32% increased risk of Class I recall. While the retrospective study cannot show supplements cause recalls, the authors of the paper see the findings as evidence that improved post-marketing surveillance systems may be needed to mitigate risks to patient safety.
April 14, 2023: China and Brazil announced this Friday a new collaborative effort to eliminate deforestation and control illegal trade causing forest loss. In a joint statement, the countries said they “intend to engage collaboratively in support of eliminating global illegal logging and deforestation through effectively enforcing their respective laws on banning illegal imports and exports”. Brazilian President Lula da Silva met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during a visit to China, in a bid to strengthen ties. China is Brazil’s largest trading partner and a major importer of commodities such as soy and crude petroleum. Both countries added they will cooperate with satellite information, “which will enable enhanced monitoring”. China and Brazil share the CBERS satellite program, which made its first launch back in 2001.
April 17, 2023: The G7 group of big, wealthy countries has failed to agree a date by which they will stop making electricity with coal. At the G7 environment ministers meeting in the Japanese city of Sapporo, the United Kingdom and Canada wanted to “set a 2030 date for completing the goal of an accelerated phase out of domestic unabated coal power generation”. France accepted this but they were opposed by Japan, the United States and the European Union, according to an annotated draft seen by Climate Home. In the final 36-page communique, environment ministers said they would prioritise “concrete and timely steps towards the goal of accelerating the phase-out of domestic unabated coal power generation”. But they stopped short of setting a specific deadline. At the end of the summit, Canada’s environment minister Steven Guilbeault said that “phasing out coal-fired electricity generation by 2030 has never been more urgent”.
Patients in the US belonging to racial or ethnic minority groups often receive medical care in different hospitals than White patients, which contributes to health care disparities. We explored whether ambulance transport destinations contribute to this phenomenon. Using a national emergency medical services research data set for calendar year 2020, we made within–ZIP code comparisons of the transport destinations for White patients and non-White patients transported by ambulance from emergency scenes. We used the dissimilarity index to measure transport destination discordances and decided a priori that a more than 5 percent difference in transport destinations (that is, dissimilarity index >0.05) would be practically meaningful. We found meaningful differences in the destination hospitals for White and non-White patients transported by ambulance from locations in the same ZIP code. The median ZIP code dissimilarity index was 0.08, 64 percent of ZIP codes had a dissimilarity index above 0.05, and 61 percent of patients were transported from ZIP codes with a dissimilarity index above 0.05. Forty-one percent of ZIP codes had a dissimilarity index above 0.10, and one-third of the patients were transported from those ZIP codes. These data indicate that ambulance transport destinations contribute to discordances in where White and non-White patients receive medical care.
Algorithms are currently used to assist in a wide array of health care decisions. Despite the general utility of these health care algorithms, there is growing recognition that they may lead to unintended racially discriminatory practices, raising concerns about the potential for algorithmic bias. An intuitive precaution against such bias is to remove race and ethnicity information as an input to health care algorithms, mimicking the idea of “race-blind” decisions. However, we argue that this approach is misguided. Knowledge, not ignorance, of race and ethnicity is necessary to combat algorithmic bias. When race and ethnicity are observed, many methodological approaches can be used to enforce equitable algorithmic performance. When race and ethnicity information is unavailable, which is often the case, imputing them can expand opportunities to not only identify and assess algorithmic bias but also combat it in both clinical and nonclinical settings. A valid imputation method, such as Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding, can be applied to standard data collected by public and private payers and provider entities. We describe two applications in which imputation of race and ethnicity can help mitigate potential algorithmic biases: equitable disease screening algorithms using machine learning and equitable pay-for-performance incentives.
April 19, 2023: Exercise during pregnancy has been associated with a reduced risk of gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. According to recommendations from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a healthy pregnant woman should exercise at moderate intensity for at least 150 minutes a week. In the United States, about 1% of pregnancies result in complications due to cardiovascular disease (CVD), which could lead to maternal mortality and morbidity. Thus, it is important to understand the effect of moderate-intensity exercise in pregnant women with underlying cardiac conditions. https://www.news-medical.net/news/20230419/The-effect-of-moderate-intensity-exercise-in-pregnant-women-with-cardiovascular-disease.aspx
April 19, 2023: In a recent study published in the Particle and Fibre Toxicology Journal, researchers explored the impact of exposure to ultrafine particles during pregnancy on the risk of influenza infection. Identifying interactions between infectious agents and air pollution is crucial, particularly for safeguarding vulnerable populations. The susceptibility of pregnant women to influenza and air pollution exposure is a matter of concern, but the relationship between the two is not fully understood. Exposure to ultrafine particles (UFPs) in mothers can cause distinct immune responses in the lungs. In the present study, researchers hypothesized that exposure to UFP during pregnancy could result in abnormal immune responses to influenza, which could increase the severity of the infection. In the study, pregnant mice were exposed to either UFPs or filtered air (FA) equivalent to a 24-hour average of 25 µg/m3 during gestational days (GD) 0.5 to 13.5. The study involved inoculating dams with either heat-inactivated (HI) control virus or live Influenza A/Puerto Rico/8/1934 (PR8) virus and evaluating them three days after infection. The viral titer of PR8 was measured in the lung using a 50% tissue culture infectious dose (TCID50) assay and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to determine its infectivity. A semi-quantitative scoring system was used to evaluate pulmonary histopathology three days after infection. The study examined T cell responses in maternal lung samples from different exposure groups, specifically T1, T2, T17, and CD8+cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) lineages.
In its resolution 72/233, the General Assembly proclaimed the Third United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (2018–2027). It also considered that the theme of the Third Decade, to be reviewed at its seventy-third sessions, should be “Accelerating global actions for a world without poverty”, in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The core of the present report consists of an inter-agency, system-wide plan of action for poverty eradication to coordinate the efforts of the United Nations system, as well as recommendations concerning how to make the Third Decade effective. As the international community embarks on the Third Decade for the Eradication of Poverty, an estimated 783 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013, compared with 1.867 billion people in 1990. Economic growth across developing countries has been remarkable since 2000, with faster growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita than advanced countries. This economic growth has fuelled poverty reduction and improvements in living standards. Achievements have also been recorded in such areas as job creation, gender equality, education and health care, social protection measures, agriculture and rural development, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. To eradicate poverty by 2030, given current rates of population growth, it will be necessary to reduce by about 110 million every year the number of people living on less than $1.90 a day. The United Nations system plays an important role in meeting that global challenge. The present section highlights priority areas of the response of the United Nations system as an integral component of global action for the effective implementation of the 2030 Agenda. While the support of the United Nations system is necessary, it will have the most impact when countries put in place the right integrated policies to fight poverty at the local, national and regional levels, supported by an enabling international environment, as recognized in relevant resolutions adopted by Member States.
October 5, 2022—The world is unlikely to meet the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 absent history-defying rates of economic growth over the remainder of this decade, according to a new World Bank study. The study finds that COVID-19 dealt the biggest setback to global poverty-reduction efforts since 1990 and the war in Ukraine threatens to make matters worse. The Bank’s latest Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report provides the first comprehensive look at the global landscape of poverty in the aftermath of the extraordinary series of shocks to the global economy over the past few years. It estimates that the pandemic pushed about 70 million people into extreme poverty in 2020, the largest one-year increase since global poverty monitoring began in 1990. As a result, an estimated 719 million people subsisted on less than $2.15 a day by the end of 2020.
February 27, 2023; More than half of U.S. hospitals are nonprofit, meaning they receive generous tax exemptions in exchange for benefiting their communities. Many aren’t fulfilling that mission. Some nonprofits have billed patients who should have qualified for charity care, racking up billions of dollars in charges. Some have aggressively collected on medical debt through legal action or reports to credit agencies. Others have exploited poor communities by maintaining a token presence there to qualify for federal subsidies that benefit the needy, only to expand in rich communities. At least one institution has explicitly set up care pathways that prioritize the elite at the expense of the general public. At the same time, many hospitals — both nonprofit and for-profit — have failed to meet their workers’ expectations. Throughout the pandemic, staff members had to proactively organize for key protections — tests, masks, and vaccines — while flooded with patients. Nurses nationwide have accused hospitals of placing financial interests before safety in adopting imbalanced staffing ratios. All this while many institutions fail to pay their employees a living wage.
December 21, 2022: Nikiesha Barnett had knee surgery in 2006 and took unpaid leave from her job as a Georgia hospital coordinator while she was recovering. When Barnett wasn’t able to keep up with the payments for the surgery, she ended up owing about $4,500. That debt lingered for almost 14 years until one day in 2020, she received a letter from a nonprofit telling her the debt had been relieved. RIP Medical Debt, a national nonprofit, had bought her debt and forgiven it. Barrett says when she was in debt, she felt too guilty about what she owed to go to the doctor. Now that concern has been wiped away. Barnett is one of the millions of Americans who’ve had medical debt paid by nonprofits that receive increased support from a wide variety of grantmakers and donors, including MacKenzie Scott. Scott gave RIP Medical Debt $30 million in November after awarding the organization $50 million in 2020. That support has fueled RIP Medical Debt’s far-reaching debt relief. The nonprofit has cleared more than $7 billion of debt since it was founded in 2014 and helped more than 4 million families.
March 27, 2023: Recently, the Utah House of Representatives passed a bill that would have allowed pregnant women to use the high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane. The Utah Senate rejected this bill. HOV lanes are intended to reduce traffic congestion and help the environment. They have no further ambition. Bills like this are really attempts to imbue a fetus with rights and interests to make an anti-abortion claim. Reasonable people would no more favor a solitary pregnant woman in an HOV lane than to expect that same woman buy two tickets for the movies. An attempt at a similar argument is underway in South Carolina, but instead of a traffic citation, the stakes are significantly higher. Members of the South Carolina State House are advancing House Bill (HB) 3549, known as the “South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023.” This bill aims not only to abolish abortion in the state, but also to make abortion a homicide in some circumstances. The bill seems to rest on the idea that personhood begins at the moment of conception. Based on this, the bill makes a further claim about equal protection and the due process owed to all people.
MARCH 28, 2023: The federal government’s recent repeal of its special licensing requirement for providers to prescribe buprenorphine for the treatment of opioid use disorder (the Drug Addiction Treatment Act of 2000/X-waiver) is a long-awaited and welcome decision that has the potential to expand access to this effective and life-saving medication. At the same time, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 included a provision requiring all providers who are registered to prescribe controlled substances with the Drug Enforcement Administration—such as physicians, dentists, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants—to complete a one-time, eight-hour training on screening for and treatment of substance use disorder as a condition of receiving or renewing their registration. The act stipulates a range of organizations that can provide the training. The importance of an addiction care training mandate for health providers cannot be overstated. For more than a century, substance use disorders have been stigmatized and primarily treated outside of mainstream medicine, largely by providers without advanced clinical training. This sidelining of addiction care from standard health practice has contributed to the longstanding stigma associated with substance use disorder and the people who suffer from it and has created a norm of substandard care for a significant segment of the population. https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/incorporating-prevention-into-mandated-substance-use-training-health-care-providers
January 13, 2023: CLEVELAND — If they do their work well — they’re the ones we don’t see. We’re talking about public health employees. “Sanitarians, environmental health specialists out there enforcing restaurant safety, helping with any kind of health code violations, people who are in our factories making sure the air quality is safe,” said David Margolius, director of the Cleveland Department of Public Health. Not to mention nurses who do vaccines, those who maintain safety in barbershops and tattoo parlors, help with addiction services and lead in housing. Now a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is now giving those essential workers a leg up. A partnership between the Cleveland Department of Public Health and Case Western Reserve University means the award will help pay tuition for free classes, all the way up to a free masters degree in public health for more than 50 practitioners. https://www.news5cleveland.com/lifestyle/health-and-fitness/federal-grant-to-be-used-to-invest-in-public-health-workforce-in-cleveland
FEBRUARY 16, 2023: the U.S. Department of Education (Department) is announcing awards of more than $188 million across 170 grantees in over 30 states to increase access to school-based mental health services and to strengthen the pipeline of mental health professionals in high-needs districts. With funding provided by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), these investments help advance the President’s Mental Health Strategy, which directly implements his Unity Agenda priority to tackle the mental health crisis in our school communities. These grants will enable communities to hire approximately 5,400 school-based mental health professionals and train an estimated 5,500 more to build a diverse pipeline of mental health providers in schools. These investments will begin the important work of broadening access to critical mental health supports by increasing the number of health care providers in schools. These funds also will help with strengthening the pipeline of certified mental health providers who are ready to work in schools with the greatest needs. These competitive grants are the first in a series of awards the Department will make over several years and constitute the largest investment in school-based mental health this country has ever made. Even before the pandemic, the wellbeing of many students was unmet due to insufficient access to high-quality mental health care. For years, schools have struggled to meet the recommended ratios for school-based mental health professionals, and this is especially true in schools with more underserved students. Now, the mental health crisis facing students has reached a critical point with more than one in three high school students reported experiencing poor mental health during the height of the pandemic. Research shows that children and young people learn more, report feeling safer, and develop more trusting relationships with their peers and teachers when their social and emotional needs are met with certified and accessible mental health professionals. https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-announces-more-188-million-bipartisan-safer-communities-act-support-mental-health-and-student-wellness
HISTORICAL, REPORTS, DOCUMENTS, DATA & INDEXES
The Supplement on Aging (SOA) is a collaborative effort of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and the National Institute on Aging External (NIA). The study was conducted by NCHS as a supplement to the 1984 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). The sample is comprised of 16,148 NHIS participants 55 years of age and over and is nationally representative of the 1984 U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population in that age group. Data were obtained through personal interviews in the household, collected by U.S. Census Bureau interviewers. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/lsoa/soa1.htm
In the United States there are an estimated 35-43 million people with physical and mental disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which was signed into law in July 1990, is one of the catalysts prompting legal and policy reforms in the area of disability. However, policy-relevant data on disability needed to understand its many aspects and impacts is either very limited or nonexistent, particularly on a national level. In an effort to meet some of these data needs, four Federal offices (Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Health and Human Services; Office of Supplemental Security Income, Social Security Administration (SSA); Office of Disability, SSA; and Bureau of Maternal and Child Health, Health Resources Administration) planned several national surveys about various aspects of disability in the early 1990’s. Because many of their interests overlapped, these agencies decided to merge their efforts into developing one survey to be included with the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) for 2 consecutive years. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis/nhis_disability.htm
RESEARCH
This research explored experiences across three cognitive function groups (no impairment, mild impairment, and dementia) with respect to shielding (either self-isolating or staying at home), COVID-19 infection, and access to health/care services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Analyses were conducted using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) COVID-19 sub-study collected in 2020. We report bivariate estimates across our outcomes of interest by cognitive function group along with multivariate regression results adjusting for demographic, socioeconomic, geographic, and health characteristics. Rates of shielding were high across all cognitive function groups and three measured time points (April, June/July, and Nov/Dec 2020), ranging from 74.6% (95% confidence interval 72.9–76.2) for no impairment in Nov/Dec to 96.7% (92.0–98.7) for dementia in April (bivariate analysis). 44.1% (33.5–55.3) of those with dementia experienced disruption in access to community health services by June/July compared to 34.9% (33.2–36.7) for no impairment. A higher proportion of those with mild impairment reported hospital-based cancellations in June/July (23.1% (20.1–26.4)) and Nov/Dec (16.3% (13.4–19.7)) than those with no impairment (18.0% (16.6–19.4) and 11.7% (10.6–12.9)). Multivariate adjusted models found that those with dementia were 2.4 (1.1–5.0) times more likely than those with no impairment to be shielding in June/July. All other multivariate analyses found no statistically significant differences between cognitive function groups. People with dementia were more likely than people with no impairment to be shielding early in the pandemic, but importantly they were no more likely to experience disruption to services or hospital treatment. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-31241-3
Through spatial–temporal scanning statistics, the spatial–temporal dynamic distribution of pulmonary tuberculosis incidence in 31 provinces and autonomous regions of China from 2008 to 2018 is obtained, and the related factors of spatial–temporal aggregation of tuberculosis in China are analyzed to provide strong scientific basis and data support for the prevention and control of pulmonary tuberculosis. This is a retrospective study, using spatial epidemiological methods to reveal the spatial–temporal clustering distribution characteristics of China’s tuberculosis epidemic from 2008 to 2018, in which cases data comes from the China Center for Disease Control and prevention. Office Excel is used for general statistical description, and the single factor correlation analysis adopts χ2 Test (or trend χ2 Inspection). Retrospective discrete Poisson distribution space time scanning statistics of SaTScan 9.6 software are used to analyze the space time dynamic distribution of tuberculosis incidence in 31 provinces, cities and autonomous regions in China from 2008 to 2018. ArcGIS 10.2 software is used to visualize the results. The global spatial autocorrelation analysis adopts Moran’s I of ArcGIS Map(Monte Carlo randomization simulation times of 999) is used to analyze high-risk areas, low-risk areas and high-low risk areas. From 2008 to 2018, 10,295,212 cases of pulmonary tuberculosis were reported in China, with an average annual incidence rate of 69.29/100,000 (95% CI: (69.29 ± 9.16)/100,000). The annual GDP (gross domestic product) of each province and city showed an upward trend year by year, and the number of annual medical institutions in each province and city showed a sharp increase in 2009, and then tended to be stable; From 2008 to 2018, the national spatiotemporal scanning statistics scanned a total of 6 clusters, including 23 provinces and cities. The national high-low spatiotemporal scanning statistics of the number of pulmonary tuberculosis cases scanned a total of 2 high-risk and low-risk clusters. The high-risk cluster included 8 provinces and cities, and the low-risk cluster included 12 provinces and cities. The global autocorrelation Moran’s I index of the incidence rate of pulmonary tuberculosis in all provinces and cities was greater than the expected value (E (I) = −0.0333); The correlation analysis between the average annual GDP and the number of pulmonary tuberculosis cases in each province and city from 2008 to 2018 was statistically significant. From 2008 to 2018, the spatial and temporal scanning and statistical scanning areas of tuberculosis incidence in China were mainly concentrated in the northwest and southern regions of China. There is an obvious positive spatial correlation between the annual GDP distribution of each province and city, and the aggregation degree of the development level of each province and city is increasing year by year. There is a correlation between the average annual GDP of each province and the number of tuberculosis cases in the cluster area. There is no correlation between the number of medical institutions set up in each province and city and the number of pulmonary tuberculosis cases. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-31430-0
DISEASES & DISASTERS
March 27, 2023: Officials in Rolling Fork on Monday mobilized volunteers, organized logistics and opened a mobile hospital in the impoverished small town in western Mississippi clobbered by a ferocious tornado three days ago. Some 26 people were killed in the powerful twister that ripped through the area and town of 1,900 on Friday night, destroying many of the community’s 400 homes, snapping tree trunks like twigs and tossing cars aside like toys. “A disaster of this magnitude in a town this small and everything close together, people here are still in shock,” said Brad Bradford, a spokesperson for the emergency management agency in Sharkey County. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/mississippi-town-mobilizes-volunteers-opens-mobile-hospital-after-tornado-kills-2023-03-27/
March 23, 2023: One of the strongest earthquakes in the history of Canada’s Alberta was likely caused by the underground disposal of wastewater by the oil industry, researchers at Stanford University and University of Alberta suggested in a study. The new findings contradict a preliminary statement from the Alberta Energy Regulator that said the earthquake was a natural event. “We are aware of the study, and we are continuing to investigate these events … due to the nature of seismic monitoring, any information should be considered preliminary until the investigation is complete,” the Alberta Energy Regulator said in an emailed statement. The study, published on Thursday, found that the injection of wastewater from oil sands operations in the area increased pressure in a fault area and likely triggered the earthquake. “The oil and natural gas industry takes induced seismicity very seriously. Protecting the public, workers and infrastructure is a priority. We are currently reviewing the Stanford study,” said Jay Averill, spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) in an emailed statement. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/oil-gas-activity-may-have-caused-alberta-earthquake-2022-study-2023-03-23/
TECHNOLOGY
March 28, 2023: Developed by a Carle Illinois College of Medicine (CI MED) student, an emergent technology platform known as LAMP (Learn, Assess, Manage, Prevent) is showing promise in taking modern psychiatric care to the next level, beyond clinics or hospitals. The LAMP Platform aggregates patient data from mobile and wearable technologies, as well as a slew of mental and physical health-oriented applications. Also in the mix are cognitive games, such as those ingrained in the LAMP system itself. The machine-learning algorithms of the system then comb through the data to track an individual’s mental wellness over time. Indeed, the platform was the brainchild of first-year student—and, more importantly, lead architect—Aditya Vaidyam, who was helped by a Harvard-based team. “This kind of clinical model can really change the depth of care delivered to individual patients, but also allow a psychiatric care team to work with many more patients, too,” said Vaidyam. “It’s a healthcare delivery and resource allocation puzzle that we’re trying to solve with this model, and the end goal is increased access to quality care. Better care for more people.” LAMP, still a free, open-source program, has been readily accepted by the U.S. research community, and has already made its fair share of international forays as well. Vaidyam indicated that the broad range of data collected will be leveraged to get a handle on “what clinical care in psychiatry looks like for the next decade and beyond.” While the system is fully compliant with the often-stringent health information standards of the U.S., the level of variation in commercially available mental health apps and the resulting data-sharing woes of users prompted Vaidyam and the team to sculpt out a convenient database fitted with a peer-based systematic review-like rating model to help decision making. https://thehealthcaretechnologyreport.com/genies-lamp-game-changing-platform-for-psychiatric-care-arrives-from-ci-med-student-and-harvard-team/
March 24, 2023: According to a policy update recently published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service, a wider range of patients will have access to continuous glucose monitors. This sooner-than-expected announcement, which could effectively double the market for the devices, caught the likes of Abbott Laboratories and Dexcom off-guard. They, along with many other medtech makers, were eyeing a mid-2023 coverage change, and now the policy is expected to take effect on April 16. Dexcom, for its part, is projecting that this will help accelerate commercial efforts to the point of adding at least another 5,000 patients right after the switch. The company’s top brass estimate that the larger swath of potential device users could bring in roughly 1% of revenue for the year to the tune of 12,000 total added patients. The broader language used in the new guidelines includes individuals with non-insulin treated diabetes as well as a history of recurrent level-2 or at least one level-3 hypoglycemic event. An earlier draft called for simply covering daily insulin takers or those dealing with problematic hypoglycemia. Commercial insurers might end up offering broader coverage thanks to the looser language featured in the policy update. https://thehealthcaretechnologyreport.com/more-type-2-diabetes-patients-to-get-glucose-monitors-with-updated-medicare-policy/
CLIMATE CHANGE & ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH
MARCH 28, 2023: Our sea levels will remain elevated for thousands of years. Scientists around the world agreed on that in last week’s U.N. report about climate change, which found it is “unavoidable for centuries to millennia due to continuing deep ocean warming and ice sheet melt, and sea levels will remain elevated for thousands of years.” One of the problems with sea level rise is that it happens slowly, a tiny bit each year, making it a threat that people have an easy time ignoring. We do that at our own peril, according to Mark Merrifield, director of the Scripps Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation. “Over time, it is just undeniable. The measurements all say the same thing. The glaciers are melting and the ice sheets,” Merrifield said while standing on the Scripps Pier, a hub of scientific activity on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. Thirty percent of Americans live in a community near a coastline. And while those people don’t have the power to unilaterally solve the underlying problem of climate change, some communities are now grappling with how to adapt to sea level rise by constructing new defenses, restoring natural defenses, or just moving out of the way. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-sea-levels-rising-communities-adapting/
March 28, 2023: Plastics are responsible for wide-ranging health impacts including cancers, lung disease and birth defects, according to the first analysis of the health hazards of plastics across their entire life cycle – from extraction for manufacturing, through to dumping into landfill and oceans. Led by the Boston College Global Observatory on Planetary Health in partnership with Australia’s Minderoo Foundation and the Centre Scientifique de Monaco, the review found “current patterns of plastic production, use, and disposal are not sustainable and are responsible for significant harms to human health … as well as for deep societal injustices”. “The main driver of these worsening harms is an almost exponential and still accelerating increase in global plastic production,” the analysis, published in the medical journal Annals of Global Health, found. “Plastics’ harms are further magnified by low rates of recovery and recycling and by the long persistence of plastic waste in the environment.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/29/plastics-cause-wide-ranging-health-issues-from-cancer-to-birth-defects-landmark-study-finds
December 19, 2022: When acknowledging the impact racism can have on health, it is important to remember that less than a century ago racist ideas were given legitimacy by scientific and medical communities in Western countries. While Charles Darwin is held up as a symbol of rationality and scientific progress, it is important to note that his theory of evolution by natural selection in the Origin of Species published in 1849, was appropriated by eugenicists. Eugenicists argued for the selective breeding of humans with the aim of improving the heritable traits in a population. Originally, these ideas claimed that people on low incomes had lower mental capabilities and morals, and that preventing these people from being able to reproduce would prevent these traits from being passed on, allegedly improving the human gene pool. These ideas were quickly applied to preexisting ideas of racial categories of humans, with impacts on the health of people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, which we are still seeing today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/why-racism-is-a-public-health-threat-expert-perspectives#The-long-history-of-racism-in-medicine
WOMEN, MATERNAL, NEONATAL & CHILDREN’S HEALTH
March 16, 2023: The U.S. maternal mortality rate increased to 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2021 from 23.8 in 2020, according to data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The maternal mortality rate for Black women was nearly three times the rate for white women. Mortality rates increased with maternal age, with the rate for women aged 40 and over nearly seven times higher than the rate for women under 25. AHA is committed to safeguarding mothers and babies by eliminating maternal mortality and reducing maternal morbidity. For more on members’ efforts, including case studies, podcasts, webinars and other resources, visit AHA’s Better Health for Mothers and Babies webpage. https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2023-03-16-cdc-us-maternal-mortality-rate-rose-2021
One of the last remaining major COVID relief programs — the expansion of SNAP benefits, aka food stamps — ends this month, pushing about 32 million Americans off a “hunger cliff.” Why it matters: Since 2020, massive expansions of funding for programs that serve low-income Americans have meaningfully lowered poverty rates for adults and children. That era is mostly ending. By the numbers: The SNAP emergency allotments kept 4.2 million people out of poverty, reducing poverty rates for children by 14% in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to a report published last year. The enhancements already ended in 18 states, affecting another 9 million, and advocates for the poor say they’ve seen more people in those places struggling to buy food — at a time when food prices are high, making every dollar count. “People are going to be hungrier,” said Elizabeth Lower-Basch, deputy executive director for the Center for Law and Social Policy. Federal grants to help with housing and childcare expenses are also expected to run out this year, and a provision to simplify Medicaid enrollment is ending. https://www.axios.com/2023/02/28/poverty-food-stamps-snap-covid-benefits
March 9, 2023: In the past 50 years, scientists have mapped the entire human genome and eradicated smallpox. Here in the United States, infant-mortality rates and deaths from heart disease have fallen by roughly 70 percent, and the average American has gained almost a decade of life. Climate change was recognized as an existential threat. The internet was invented. On the problem of poverty, though, there has been no real improvement — just a long stasis. As estimated by the federal government’s poverty line, 12.6 percent of the U.S. population was poor in 1970; two decades later, it was 13.5 percent; in 2010, it was 15.1 percent; and in 2019, it was 10.5 percent. To graph the share of Americans living in poverty over the past half-century amounts to drawing a line that resembles gently rolling hills. The line curves slightly up, then slightly down, then back up again over the years, staying steady through Democratic and Republican administrations, rising in recessions and falling in boom years. What accounts for this lack of progress? It cannot be chalked up to how the poor are counted: Different measures spit out the same embarrassing result. When the government began reporting the Supplemental Poverty Measure in 2011, designed to overcome many of the flaws of the Official Poverty Measure, including not accounting for regional differences in costs of living and government benefits, the United States officially gained three million more poor people. Possible reductions in poverty from counting aid like food stamps and tax benefits were more than offset by recognizing how low-income people were burdened by rising housing and health care costs.https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html
HUMANITARIAN, NONPROFITS, FOUNDATIONS & NGOS
March 20, 2023: With a few back-and-forth exchanges, the artificial intelligence chatbot can quickly summarise funding opportunities for local humanitarians, explain complex grant requirements, and even draft passable project proposals. This made me wonder: How else could this technology be used to build a more transparent and accessible humanitarian system? Decolonising aid is one of the humanitarian sector’s greatest challenges – it would be naive to think that the solution lies in the internet’s latest AI fixation. But ChatGPT’s potential as an equalising force in humanitarian action shouldn’t be dismissed. What ChatGPT does reasonably well – transmit, clarify, and simplify information – are precisely the areas where hyper-technical aid industry requirements for funding have failed and excluded grassroots humanitarians around the world. If we refuse to pay attention to this new technology, we may miss out on opportunities to harness it for change. Here are four simple ways local and international aid organisations can use ChatGPT to help balance the humanitarian playing field. https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2023/03/20/ways-chatgpt-could-help-humanitarian-field
March 20, 2023: An aid summit in Brussels this week circled around a familiar riddle for the cash-strapped humanitarian sector: Who has funding, who gets it, where does it go, and how does it get there. Staged by the European Commission’s humanitarian aid department, ECHO, the 20-21 March European Humanitarian Forum brought together aid workers, donors, and political players for public panels and behind-the-scenes meetings. It was the second edition of an event whose backers appear intent on making an annual affair. Here are three takeaways: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2023/03/24/three-takeaways-europes-emergency-aid-summit
February 2, 2023: Russia’s war in Ukraine has sparked a global health crisis – from the death, suffering and displacement of people in the country to the global food and fuel insecurity, and diminished donor funds to support other health issues.
February 22, 2023: A large and compelling body of evidence suggests that social circumstances—including income, education, food, housing, neighborhood conditions, and social connections—strongly influence health. Coupled with a public- and private-sector shift toward rewarding health outcomes over services delivered, this evidence based on the social determinants of health has led to discussion across the health care sector on the roles and responsibilities of health care delivery organizations, managed care organizations, and other health care stakeholders to identify and address adverse social conditions that directly influence patients’ health care access and health behaviors. In the 2019 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report and other recent publications, activities to identify and act on patient-level social circumstances collectively are described as “social needs care” or “social care.”
February 3, 2023: CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) – Ohio Department of Health Director Bruce Vanderhoff is hosting a press conference on COVID-19. Tanya R. Gure, an associate professor in the college of medicine at The Ohio State University, will be speaking during the conference as well.
The 41st Annual Healthcare Conference will take place on January 9-12, 2023 in San Francisco, CA. This premier conference is the largest and most informative healthcare investment symposium in the industry which connects global industry leaders, emerging fast-growth companies, innovative technology creators and members of the investment community.
January 11, 2023: Women’s health is in crisis. In many places, gynaecology waiting listsare rising or are even at record lengths. Even when a woman sees a specialist, there are terrifying accounts of what human rights body the Council of Europe defines as “gynaecological violence”. That includes not just performing diagnostic procedures without adequate pain control, but also a lack of compassion for the patient. Such reports are shocking, but perhaps not surprising when you consider how little some aspects of women’s medicine have changed in hundreds of years – and the unpleasant history they carry. Once a woman gets to her appointment with the specialist, a speculum is the usual way of seeing what’s happening inside the body. These devices go back to ancient Rome. They comprise two or three “bills” which need to be opened up inside the body to give the best view.
February 9,2023: A single oral dose of the antibiotic azithromycin can reduce the risk of postpartum sepsis and death among women who deliver vaginally by one-third, according to a large multi-country clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health. Only 1.6% of women in the study who received azithromycin during labor developed sepsis or died within six weeks after delivery, compared to 2.4% of those who received placebo. Azithromycin did not reduce the risk of stillbirth, newborn sepsis or newborn death. Results from the study, which enrolled more than 29,000 women in seven low- and middle-income countries, were published today in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s 43rd Annual Pregnancy Meeting, San Francisco.
February 3, 2023: A National Institutes of Health research group with extensive experience studying ebolavirus countermeasures has successfully developed a vaccine against Sudan virus (SUDV) based on the licensed Ebola virus (EBOV) vaccine. SUDV, identified in 1976, is one of the four viruses known to cause human Ebolavirus disease. The new vaccine, VSV-SUDV, completely protected cynomolgus macaques against a lethal SUDV challenge. The findings were published in the journal The Lancet Microbe.
February 15, 2023: Authorities lifted evacuation orders about a week after a train derailment that resulted in a toxic chemical spill, giving residents of East Palestine, Ohio, the green light to return to their homes and telling them that the air was safe to breathe and the water supply untainted. But for the nearly 5,000 inhabitants of this small village on the border with Pennsylvania, those assurances have done little to allay their fears of a long-term environmental and health disaster after 38 cars of a Norfolk Southern Railroad train, some carrying hazardous chemicals, derailed Feb. 3 near their city, sending flames high into the night sky.
February 7, 2023: As the world discusses how language model chatbot ChatGPT is changing the way information is created, the new episode of the “Global Health Matters” podcast addresses the question of how artificial intelligence and other technological tools can improve healthcare.
February 21, 2023: Spinal cord stimulation could enable stroke patients to move their limbs and hands, according to a small clinical trial. Writing in Nature Medicine, researchers describe the experience of the first two people treated in the clinical trial. The spinal implant improved strength, grip force and movement, and thereby enabled the participants to perform actions that were previously impossible. While Abbott, Boston Scientific, Medtronic and Nevro all already provide SCS devices for use in other indications, the researchers have founded a startup to advance the technology.
February 17, 2023: The European Parliament on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to delay implementation of the new Medical Device Regulation, or MDR. The 537-3 vote gives final approval to a plan, adopted by the European Commission in January, to extend deadlines for compliance with new rules for certifying medical devices. The new timeline depends on a device’s risk class and is being implemented to ensure patients have continued access to medical technologies, according to the Commission. Devices placed on the market under the current legal framework can remain on the market, it added.
February 22, 2023: Ahead of talks on a new plastics treaty, nations are split over whether to target reductions in the amount of plastic that is produced or just to try and stop it from polluting land and sea. In their submissions to talks taking place in Paris in May, the majority of European and African countries push for cuts to the supply of plastic while the US and Saudi Arabia focus instead on tackling plastic pollution. The European Union’s submission says: “While measures on the demand side are expected to indirectly impact the reduction of production levels, efforts and measures addressing supply are equally needed, to cope with increasing plastic waste generation.”
February 17, 2023: David Malpass is famously “not a scientist” and this week he announced he won’t be the president of the World Bank for much longer either. So the World Bank’s attempt to evolve into an organisation that can tackle the climate crisis will soon be led by someone who doesn’t struggle to accept that the climate crisis is happening. He’s promised to leave by June which means he may oversee the bank’s spring meeting in April. This week, he revealed the bank will propose then to change the equity-to-loan ratio of one of its arms from 20% to 19%. That will free up $4bn a year, much of which will be spent on climate programmes. But it’s a tweak, not a transformation.
February, 2023: Patients in the US belonging to racial or ethnic minority groups often receive medical care in different hospitals than White patients, which contributes to health care disparities. We explored whether ambulance transport destinations contribute to this phenomenon. Using a national emergency medical services research data set for calendar year 2020, we made within–ZIP code comparisons of the transport destinations for White patients and non-White patients transported by ambulance from emergency scenes. We used the dissimilarity index to measure transport destination discordances and decided a priori that a more than 5 percent difference in transport destinations (that is, dissimilarity index >0.05) would be practically meaningful. We found meaningful differences in the destination hospitals for White and non-White patients transported by ambulance from locations in the same ZIP code. The median ZIP code dissimilarity index was 0.08, 64 percent of ZIP codes had a dissimilarity index above 0.05, and 61 percent of patients were transported from ZIP codes with a dissimilarity index above 0.05. Forty-one percent of ZIP codes had a dissimilarity index above 0.10, and one-third of the patients were transported from those ZIP codes. These data indicate that ambulance transport destinations contribute to discordances in where White and non-White patients receive medical care.
February 22, 2023 – The medical industry is far from achieving racial health equity, according to a new report from Accenture. But it could be. The report, which outlines some of the stark racial health disparities still plaguing the US, also looks at the barriers keeping the nation from confronting its problems and a roadmap for mitigating these issues. Looking at race, specifically, because it is the most prominent predictor of health inequity, the researchers noted that outcomes still aren’t equitable for all. There are 3,400 more infant mortalities among Black babies than White, the report authors said, and an additional 9,200 Black cancer deaths each year, too.
January 27, 2023: States, territories, health facilities and tribal organizations can apply through March 27 for up to $525,000 million each for residential treatment programs to provide comprehensive services for pregnant and postpartum women with substance use disorders, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration announced this week. States and territories also can apply for up to $900,000 each to support family-based services for pregnant and postpartum women with opioid or other substance use disorders. The agency expects to award 22 grants for residential programs and six grants for family-based services. As reported last week, nonprofit hospitals and emergency departments, including free standing EDs and Rural Emergency Hospitals, also can apply through March 6 for up to $500,000 per year for up to three years to develop and implement alternatives to opioids for pain management in hospitals and ED settings.
January 19, 2023: Only 16% of pregnant people who reported drinking alcohol in 2017 or 2019 were advised by a health care provider to stop or reduce their alcohol use, although 80% were asked about alcohol use during their most recent health care visit, suggesting missed opportunities to reduce alcohol use during pregnancy, according to a survey released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey examined prevalence of alcohol screening and brief intervention, an evidence-based primary care tool shown to prevent or reduce alcohol consumption during pregnancy. There is no known safe amount, type or timing of alcohol use during pregnancy or while trying to become pregnant, the report notes.
January 14, 2023: Poverty is a global scourge especially in developing countries like Nigeria. The country has spent billions in poverty alleviation schemes over different administrations, all of which did not stop Nigeria from becoming the poverty capital of the world in 2018. With this undesirable status, this study set out to understand how poverty has been reported in three Nigerian newspapers: Leadership, the Punch, and Nigerian Tribune using content analysis, over 2 years from 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2020. The research was grounded on the Framing Theory. Findings revealed that poverty was underreported, stories included solutions to poverty in 92% of the reports, and most of the poverty stories and initiatives were referenced in the future (58%) compared to past (3%) or ongoing (39%) activities. The tone of the stories was mainly positive (64%). The frame analysis produced 22 frames, 14 were prevalent while seven were not. The dominant frame pattern from the analysis was the ‘empowerment’ frame, highlighting the various empowerment programs across federal and state agencies In Nigeria. Recommendations include more coverage of poverty stories by Nigerian newspapers and the need for government to be transparent with its poverty alleviation initiatives.
January 11, 2023: Poverty is one of Africa’s most intractable problems. Decades of deliberate and strategic socioeconomic policies have not yielded considerable concrete results to eradicate it. Upon succeeding the brutal colonial administration, the burgeoning African governments promised their citizens material well-being through socioeconomic development. A half century later the continent is perpetually witnessing a blatant betrayal of dreams. Just like the African governments that succeeded colonial governments, religious organizations continue to promise poverty eradication by divine means to their adherents, whose numbers keep exploding across the continent. The Pentecostal variant of African Christianity is particularly renowned for its promises of wealth, health, and prosperity through supernatural divine power: in the Bible, God has promised to deliver immense material goods to those who believe in Jesus Christ. The expediency of these promises to alleviate poverty and bring about social transformation is debatable. Some scholars argue that African Pentecostalism is an elaborately complex increase in religious activities devoid of social structural transformation, while others opine that it contributes positively to development. In asking whether African Pentecostal Christianity is a move toward or a distraction from development, this article broadly explores discourses on Pentecostalism and development in Africa. Arguably, in the endeavor to preach and live out the experiential power of the Holy Spirit, Pentecostal Christianity in Africa inadvertently plays a role in the broader ongoing development discourse. Although they do not view themselves as ‘religious’ or ‘religion’, Pentecostal churches’ attempts to make the teachings of Jesus Christ relevant to the mundane help individual believers cope with life’s stresses and vulnerabilities. However, it does not transform the social conditions that create problems for individuals. The liberating hope of African Pentecostal Christianity lies in theologically nuancing its discourses to meaningfully engage in global development discourses.
January 25, 2023: Nonprofit hospitals — which make up around half of hospitals in the United States — were founded to help the poor. But a Times investigation has revealed that many have deviated from those charitable roots, behaving like for-profit companies, sometimes to the detriment of the health of patients. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/podcasts/the-daily/nonprofit-hospitals-investigation.html
February 22, 2023: The pledge from Swiss biotech executive, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Ernesto Bertarelli will support plans to transform the outdoor courtyard of Building C into an expansive, skylighted atrium. The building is also the hub for the HMS Therapeutics Initiative, which aims to advance therapeutics research, accelerate translation of discoveries into medicines, and educate and train the inventors of future medicines.
IH CONNECT 