Week 1 (Intro) Flashcards
Health
a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity (WHO)
Global health
-addressing health issues that transcend national boundaries and require global cooperation, emphasizing health equity among nations and populations worldwide
-Targets global systems, challenges, and disparities, focusing on high-, middle-, and low-income countries
-Inherently interdisciplinary, integrating public health, medicine, economics, political science, and other disciplines
Public health
-Utilizing evidence to inform decision-making, focusing on populations rather than individuals
-promoting social justice
-preventing poor health rather than just curing illness
-maintaining a somewhat narrow scope on specific communities
-includes areas like disease prevention
-health promotion, policy development
-addressing social determinants of health
International health
-traditionally focuses on health issues in low- and middle-income countries (LMCs)
-Involves partnerships between high-income and low-income countries, focusing on issues like tropical diseases, maternal and child health, and health system strengthening in LMCs
-Can sometimes reflect more hierarchical model, with high-income countries providing expertise/resources to lower-income nations (colonial health missions)
Differences between global, public, and international health
Global:
-Focus: global issues and health equity
-Approach: collaborative, interdisciplinary
-Scope: transnational
-Examples: climate change, global pandemics, maternal mortality
Public:
-Focus: health within community/nation
-Approach: preventative, community-centered
-Scope: national/local focus
-Examples: flu vaccination in MO, national campaigns for smoking cessation
International:
-Focus: health in LMCs
-Approach: resource transfer, aid-based
-Scope: cross-border, in LMCs
-Examples: malaria control, vaccination campaigns
Similarities between global, public, and international health
-Work at population level and focus on preventative rather than curative measures
-Emphasize role of systems/structures in shaping health patterns (social determinants of health)
-Primarily try to address health disparities in underserved, low resource populations
-Consider health a “public good”, shared focus on health equity
-Draw from multiple disciplines, such as medicine, social sciences, and policy/collaborative across sectors
-All connected
Progression of global health
- Colonial/tropical medicine: largely concerned with keeping white colonists alive in the tropics
- International health: privileged people from high-income countries trying to help people in low-income countries
- Recent/current global health: researchers from rich countries leading research programs in low-income areas
- Emerging field of global health: work increasingly led by researchers from low-income and middle-income countries
What to avoid in global health training
-perpetuate colonial practices
-undermine local talent
-practice medicine without license,
-engage in voluntourism
-try to ‘fix’ issues you don’t understand, go overseas without pre-departure training
-do research without supervision (and ethics review)
-conduct parachute research
-put yourself in dangerous situations
-make promises you cannot keep
Globalization
-interconnected world information, goods, and pathogens can be transmitted faster than ever before
Common issues with global health interventions
-Fixation on novel and dramatic risks like Ebola rather than “boring: and expected threats like deadly diarrheal diseases
-Successful on-going interventions often quickly lead to a lack of public support for continued funding (vaccines, tuberculosis control)
-Donor countries are often a bit arrogant with their aid, not listening to local experts about implementation challenges
Morbidity
-state of poor health, proportion of illness in a population
Mortality rate
-frequency of occurrence of death among a defined population during a specified time interval, incidence of deaths in a population
(death rate)
How to measure global health
morbidity and mortality rates
Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY)
-Mortality doesn’t give full picture of disease burden, does not capture the experiences of those who live with a disease for years
-DALY= years of life lost because of premature mortality (YLLs) + years of healthy life lost due to disability (YLDs)
Multidiscplinary
-involves multiple disciplines working side by side, each addressing an issue from its own perspective
Interdisciplinary
-involves collaboration between disciplines to integrate knowledge and methods, creating new insights or solution
Transdisciplinary
-goes beyond disciplines, involving stakeholders (communities, policymakers) and integrating knowledge from both academic and non-academic sources
Outdated terms
-“First” vs “Third” world: considered derogatory and degraded, others those not living in high-income countries (different world)
-“Developed” vs “Developing”: implies hierarchy and end goal, begs question ‘when is country developed’, ignores population histories and variation
Current terms
-low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) vs high-income countries typically used, along with “low-resource”
