Co-authored by Kristie Ebi, MPH, PhD, UW Professor in Global Health and Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences
While promising vaccines and experimental treatments are rapidly being added to our arsenal, they’re not much use if people are too afraid to seek care.
By Karin Huster, Clinical Instructor, UW Department of Global Health and field coordinator with Doctors Without Borders.
While significant progress has been made in improving the lives of women and girls over the past two decades, far too often addressing “women’s health” in low- and middle-income countries is still equated to improving their reproductive health. In reality, women’s health needs are diverse and span the entire spectrum of universal health care.
by Janelle Weaver
The combination of air pollution and HIV infection may have a greater detrimental impact on the cognitive abilities of school-aged children than exposure to either factor alone, according to an NIEHS-funded study. The findings, published in January 2018 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, also reveal an alarmingly high prevalence of air pollution exposure, regardless of HIV status, in children living in urban settings in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Scant resources force low- and middle-income countries to use cost-conscious innovations to improve access to and standards of mental health care, with mobile technology and task-shifting often the tools of choice to achieve this.
In this video interview Dr. Abraham Flaxman, Associate Professor of Global Health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, explains the importance of verbal autopsy and how updated software is improving this method.
In the 1980s, at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, more than 59,000 Americans lost their lives to the brutal disease. The $146.6 billion that federal funding has contributed to the battle against AIDS since 2012 is paying off, but AIDS still claims far too many lives and HIV is still far too costly, increasing the average patient’s healthcare costs by roughly 20%. An infographic by WalletHub summarizes HIV/AIDS statistics, along with Q&As with a panel of experts about the disease’s costs.
By Stephen Bezruchka / Havard Health Policy Review
Mortality increases at the national level are very rare phenomena this century. In the 1900s, mortality only increased in countries greatly affected by World War I and II, and in the 1990s in Sub-Saharan nations with high AIDS prevalence as well as after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The Guardian
Every country in the world is facing and failing to tackle a mental health crisis, from epidemics of anxiety and depression to conditions caused by violence and trauma, according to a review by experts that estimates the rising cost will hit $16tn (£12tn) by 2030.
A team of 28 global experts* assembled by the Lancet medical journal says there is a “collective failure to respond to this global health crisis” which “results in monumental loss of human capabilities and avoidable suffering.”
By IHME
A new scientific study concludes there is no safe level of drinking alcohol.
The study, published today in the international medical journal The Lancet, shows that in 2016, nearly 3 million deaths globally were attributed to alcohol use, including 12 percent of deaths in males between the ages of 15 and 49.