Friday, October 30, 2009

[EQ] WHO Report: Global health risks

Global health risks

World Health Organization, October 2009

Available online as PDF file [70p.] at:
http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GlobalHealthRisks_report_full.pdf

A response to the need for comprehensive, consistent and comparable information on health risks at global and regional level.

Global health risks is a comprehensive assessment of leading risks to global health. It provides detailed global and regional estimates of premature mortality, disability and loss of health attributable to 24 global risk factors.

“……A description of diseases and injuries and the risk factors that cause them is vital for health decision-making and planning. Data on the health of populations and the risks they face are often fragmentary and sometimes inconsistent. A comprehensive framework is needed to pull together information and facilitate comparisons of the relative importance of health risks across different populations globally.

Most scientific and health resources go towards treatment. However, understanding the risks to health is key to preventing disease and injuries. A particular disease or injury is often caused by more than one risk factor, which means that multiple interventions are available to target each of these risks. For example, the infectious agent Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the direct cause of tuberculosis; however, crowded housing and poor nutrition also increase the risk, which presents multiple paths for preventing the disease. In turn, most risk factors are associated with more than one disease, and targeting those factors can reduce multiple causes of disease. For example, reducing smoking will result in fewer deaths and less disease from lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, chronic respiratory disease and other conditions. By quantifying the impact of risk factors on diseases, evidence-based choices can be made about the most effective interventions to improve global health….”

**This document – the Global health risks report – provides an update for the year 2004 of the comparative risk assessment (CRA) for 24 global risk factors**

Key figures and graphs [ppt 1.17Mb]

The Report in Sections

Website: http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/global_health_risks/en/index.html

:: Front cover, table of contents and summary [pdf 930kb]
:: Part 1: Introduction [pdf 994kb]
:: Part 2: Results [pdf 1.57Mb]
:: Part 3: Joint effects of risk factors [pdf 443kb]
:: Annex A: Data and methods [pdf 841kb]
:: References [pdf 148kb]

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This message from the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO/WHO, is part of an effort to disseminate
information Related to: Equity; Health inequality; Socioeconomic inequality in health; Socioeconomic
health differentials; Gender; Violence; Poverty; Health Economics; Health Legislation; Ethnicity; Ethics;
Information Technology - Virtual libraries; Research & Science issues. [DD/ KMC Area]

“Materials provided in this electronic list are provided "as is". Unless expressly stated otherwise, the findings
and interpretations included in the Materials are those of the authors and not necessarily of The Pan American
Health Organization PAHO/WHO or its country members”.
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[EQ] The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights:

The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights

Irene Khan - Amnesty International Secretary General – 2009

Website: http://www.theunheardtruth.com/

“……In a bracing argument enriched by compelling photographs from across the world, Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan makes the case that poverty remains a global epidemic because we continue to define it as an economic problem. The book calls for a re-evaluation of this long-standing assumption and turns us toward confronting poverty as a global human-rights violation…..”

“…….Ending poverty has become the rallying cry of international organizations, political and business leaders, philanthropists and rock stars. But it is almost certainly doomed to fail if it is driven solely by the imperative of boosting economic growth through investment, trade, new technology or foreign aid, claims Irene Khan in the Unheard Truth.

Khan argues with passion, backed up by analysis, that fighting poverty is about fighting deprivation, exclusion, insecurity and powerlessness. People living in poverty lack material resources but that more than that, they lack control over their own lives. To tackle global poverty, we need to focus on the human rights abuses that drive poverty and keep people poor. Giving people a say in their own future, and demanding that they be treated with dignity and respect for their rights is the way to make progress.

Through personal reflection and case-studies, Khan shows why poverty is first and foremost not a problem of economics but of human rights. As the numbers of people living in poverty swell to upwards of 2 billion, she argues that poverty is the world's worst human rights crisis. Slums are growing at an alarming rate condemning a billion people to live in dismal condition and with the constant threat of forced eviction, the commodity boom is pushing oil and mining activities into lawless zones impoverishing hundreds and thousands of people, and more than half a million women are dying every year due to complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, 99% of these are in the developing world, because of discrimination and denial of essential health care.

By raising the issue of rights, the Unheard Truth is not pointing fingers but providing a formula for sustainable and equitable solutions, and giving people the means to change the power imbalance that keeps them poor….” (au)

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[EQ] A Comparative Perspective on Poverty Reduction in Brazil, China and India

A Comparative Perspective on Poverty Reduction in Brazil, China and India

Martin Ravallion, The World Bank

Development Research Group - Director’s Office

Policy Research Working Paper 5080 - October 2009 WPS5080

Available online as PDF file [38p.] at:

http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2009/10/15/000158349_20091015114049/Rendered/PDF/WPS5080.pdf

“………Brazil, China and India have seen falling poverty in their reform periods, but to varying degrees and for different reasons. History left China with favorable initial conditions for rapid poverty reduction through market-led economic growth; at the outset of the reform process there were ample distortions to remove and relatively low inequality in access to the opportunities so created, though inequality has risen markedly since.

By concentrating such opportunities in the hands of the better off, prior inequalities in various dimensions handicapped poverty reduction in both Brazil and India. Brazil’s recent success in complementing market- oriented reforms with progressive social policies has helped it achieve more rapid poverty reduction than India, although Brazil has been less successful in terms of economic growth. In the wake of its steep rise in inequality, China might learn from Brazil’s success with such policies. India needs to do more to assure that poor people are able to participate in both the country’s growth process and its social policies; here there are lessons from both China and Brazil. All three countries have learned how important macroeconomic stability is to poverty reduction…..”.

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[EQ] Beta version of ADePT Health -- Poverty and Inequality Research

ADePT: Software Platform for Automated Economic Analysis

Poverty and Inequality Research

Beta version of ADePT Health is now available

Website: http://go.worldbank.org/CXMO0VQ9D0

ADePT Health allows users to produce quickly and with a minimal risk of errors most tables that have become standard in applied health equity analysis. The tables emerge in a standardized format, and are based on a set of methods that are widely accepted in the literature. Through its standardized tables, ADePT Health facilitates comparisons of health equity over time within countries, and between countries.

The software uses the methods outlined in "Analyzing Health Equity Using Household Survey Data: A Guide to Techniques and Their Implementation" by Owen O'Donnell, Eddy van Doorslaer, Adam Wagstaff and Magnus Lindelow, copies of which can be ordered online or downloaded for free at http://www.worldbank.org/analyzinghealthequity.

ADePT--the whole program, not just the health modules--can be downloaded from www.worldbank.org/adept

Analyzing Health Equity Using Household Survey Data

by Owen O'Donnell, Eddy van Doorslaer, Adam Wagstaff, and Magnus Lindelow

Health equity has become an increasingly popular research topic during the course of the past 25 years. Many factors explain this trend, including a growing demand from policymakers, better and more plentiful household data, and increased computer power. But progress in quantifying and understanding health equities would not have been possible without appropriate analytic techniques. These techniques are the subject of this book.

The book includes chapters dealing with data issues and the measurement of the key variables in health equity analysis

(Part i), quantitative techniques for interpreting and presenting health equity data (Part ii), and the application of these techniques in the analysis of equity in health care utilization and health care spending (Part iii). The aim of the book is to provide researchers and analysts with a step-by-step practical guide to the measurement of a variety of aspects of health equity, with worked examples and computer code, mostly for the computer program Stata. It is hoped that these step-by-step guides, and the easy-to-implement computer routines contained in them, will help stimulate yet more research in the field, especially policy-oriented health equity research that enables researchers to help policymakers develop and evaluate programs to reduce health inequities.

The book can be ordered online, and electronic versions of the chapters can be downloaded using the links below. Also available are Powerpoint lectures of chapters, customizable "do" files for use in Stata, a Stata "ado" file for dominance checking, and an Excel file for computing standard errors of the concentraiton index with grouped data.

Electronic versions of the book and individual chapters, Powerpoint lectures, Stata and Excel files

Electronic versions of the book and individual chapters:

Download: Complete Book (PDF 6.42MB)

Table of Contents (PDF 58kb)

Ch. 1: Introduction (PDF 119kb)

Ch. 2: Data for Health Equity Analysis: Requirements, Sources and Sample Designs (PDF 159kb)

Ch. 3: Health Outcome #1: Child Survival (PDF 107kb)

Ch. 4: Health Outcome #2: Anthropometrics (PDF 1.05MB)

Ch. 5: Health Outcome #3: Adult Health (PDF 156kb)

Ch. 6: Measurement of Living Standards (PDF 188kb)

Ch. 7: Concentration Curves (PDF 134kb)

Ch. 8: The Concentration Index (PDF 176kb)

Ch. 9: Extensions to the Concentration Index: Inequality Aversion and the Health Achievement Index (PDF 132kb)

Ch. 10: Multivariate Analysis of Health Survey Data (PDF 188kb)

Ch. 11: Nonlinear Models for Health and Medical Expenditure Data (PDF 194kb)

Ch. 12: Explaining Differences Between Groups: Oaxaca Decomposition (PDF 166kb)

Ch. 13: Explaining Socioeconomic-Related Health Inequality: Decomposition of the Concentration Index (PDF 95.5kb)

Ch. 14: Who Benefits from Health Sector Subsidies? Benefit Incidence Analysis (PDF 177kb)

Ch. 15: Measuring and Explaining Inequity in Health Service Delivery (PDF 123kb)

Ch. 16: Who Pays for Health Care? Progressivity of Health Finance (PDF 154kb)

Ch. 17: Redistributive Effect of Health Finance (PDF 78.9kb)

Ch. 18: Catastrophic Payments for Health Care (PDF 134kb)

Ch. 19: Health Care Payments and Poverty (PDF 107kb)

Powerpoint lectures (NB slides have notes beneath them, so you may want to right-click and save the PPT file so you can print it out with the notes showing):

Ch. 1: Introduction (PPT 556kb)

Ch. 2: Data for Health Equity Analysis: Requirements, Sources and Sample Designs (PPT 219kb)

Ch. 3: Health Outcome #1: Child Survival (PPT 166kb)

Ch. 4: Health Outcome #2: Anthropometrics (PPT 392kb)

Ch. 5: Health Outcome #3: Adult Health (PPT 426kb)

Ch. 6: Measurement of Living Standards (PPT 238kb)

Ch. 7: Concentration Curves (PPT 141kb)

Ch. 8: The Concentration Index (PPT 254kb)

Ch. 9: Extensions to the Concentration Index: Inequality Aversion and the Health Achievement Index (PPT 123kb)

Ch. 10: Multivariate Analysis of Health Survey Data (PPT 205kb)

Ch. 11: Nonlinear Models for Health and Medical Expenditure Data (PPT 320kb)

Ch. 12: Explaining Differences Between Groups: Oaxaca Decomposition (PPT 231kb)

Ch. 13: Explaining Socioeconomic-Related Health Inequality: Decomposition of the Concentration Index (PPT 274kb)

Ch. 14: Who Benefits from Health Sector Subsidies? Benefit Incidence Analysis (PPT 359kb)

Ch. 15: Measuring and Explaining Inequity in Health Service Delivery (PPT 213kb)

Ch. 16: Who Pays for Health Care? Progressivity of Health Finance (PPT 416kb)

Ch. 17: Redistributive Effect of Health Finance (PPT 268kb)

Ch. 18: Catastrophic Payments for Health Care (PPT 287kb)

Ch. 19: Health Care Payments and Poverty (PPT 465kb)

Stata programs and Excel files to accompany Analyzing Health Equity Using Household Survey Data:

Spreadsheet for computing concentration index and stand error of CI with grouped data
Stata ado file to check concentration curve dominance (right-click to save file)

Stata do files for individual chapters (right-click to save file)

Ch. 5: Health Outcome #3: Adult Health (DO 12.4kb)

Ch. 7: Concentration Curves (DO 12.9kb)

Ch. 8: The Concentration Index (DO 6.12kb)

Ch. 9: Extensions to the Concentration Index: Inequality Aversion and the Health Achievement Index (DO 3.06kb)

Ch. 10: Multivariate Analysis of Health Survey Data (DO 5.83kb)

Ch. 11: Nonlinear Models for Health and Medical Expenditure Data (DO 7.15kb)

Ch. 12: Explaining Differences Between Groups: Oaxaca Decomposition (DO 3.78kb)

Ch. 13: Explaining Socioeconomic-Related Health Inequality: Decomposition of the Concentration Index (DO 4.11kb)

Ch. 14: Who Benefits from Health Sector Subsidies? Benefit Incidence Analysis (DO 4.41kb)

Ch. 15: Measuring and Explaining Inequity in Health Service Delivery (DO 14.3kb)

Ch. 16: Who Pays for Health Care? Progressivity of Health Finance (DO 7.92kb)

Ch. 17: Redistributive Effect of Health Finance (DO 4.78kb)

Ch. 18: Catastrophic Payments for Health Care (DO 6.67kb)

Ch. 19: Health Care Payments and Poverty (DO 6.12kb)

    IMPORTANT: This transmission is for use by the intended recipient and it may contain privileged, proprietary or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient or a person responsible for delivering this transmission to the intended recipient, you may not disclose, copy or distribute this transmission or take any action in reliance on it. If you received this transmission in error, please notify us immediately by email to infosec@paho.org, and please dispose of and delete this transmission. Thank you.