Health Equity: 07/27/10

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

[EQ] Book Review: Mind the Gap - The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

Mind the Gap

The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett - Bloomsbury Press

By Claude S. Fischer Boston Review JULY/AUGUST 2010

Available online at: http://bostonreview.net/BR35.4/fischer.php

“………..Wilkinson and Pickett, eminent health scholars from the United Kingdom, present considerable evidence correlating unequal incomes in nations or American states with negative outcomes in physical health, mental balance, levels of violence, social integration, teen births, school performance, and just about everything else. Inequality, they explain, makes people focus on status and their relative positions on the prestige ladder.

Such obsessions, in turn, create anxiety, distrust, and social isolation, which raise people’s level of physiological stress. Finally, stress, as we all now know, exacts high costs. It weakens the immune system, for example, and drives people to poor coping behavior such as overeating and lashing out at others. Through these steps, The Spirit Level argues, economic inequality becomes bad for everyone’s health.

But does this psychological explanation really account for the harms of inequality? And just how sure are we that the social ills Wilkinson and Pickett canvass are even caused by inequality? Whether we accept their psychological framework determines to some extent how we will respond to problems of inequality, and in hewing to it, the authors generate some pretty tepid solutions…………”

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[EQ] Managing the health effects of climate change

Managing the health effects of climate change

Lancet and University College London Institute for Global Health Commission

Anthony Costello, Mustafa Abbas, Adriana Allen, Sarah Ball, Sarah Bell, Richard Bellamy, Sharon Friel, Nora Groce, Anne Johnson, Maria Kett, Maria Lee, Caren Levy, Mark Maslin, David McCoy, Bill McGuire, Hugh Montgomery, David Napier, Christina Pagel, Jinesh Patel, Jose Antonio Puppim de Oliveira, Nanneke Redclift, Hannah Rees, Daniel Rogger, Joanne Scott, Judith Stephenson, John Twigg, Jonathan Wolff, Craig Patterson*

Lancet 2009; 373: 1693–733

Available online PDF [41p.] at: http://bit.ly/aiPyOQ

“……………Effects of climate change on health will affect most populations in the next decades and put the lives and wellbeing of billions of people at increased risk. During this century, earth’s average surface temperature rises are likely to exceed the safe threshold of 2°C above pre-industrial average temperature. Rises will be greater at higher latitudes, with medium-risk scenarios predicting 2–3°C rises by 2090 and 4–5°C rises in northern Canada, Greenland, and Siberia.

In this report, we have outlined the major threats—both direct and indirect—to global health from climate change through changing patterns of disease, water and food insecurity, vulnerable shelter and human settlements, extreme climatic events, and population growth and migration. Although vector-borne diseases will expand their reach and death tolls, especially among elderly people, will increase because of heat waves, the indirect effects of climate change on water, food security, and extreme climatic events are likely to have the biggest effect on global health.

A new advocacy and public health movement is needed urgently to bring together governments, international agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), communities, and academics from all disciplines to adapt to the effects of climate change on health. Any adaptation should sit alongside the need for primary mitigation: reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and the need to increase carbon bio-sequestration through reforestation and improved agricultural practices. The recognition by governments and electorates that climate change has enormous health implications should assist the advocacy and political change needed to tackle both mitigation and adaptation.

Management of the health effects of climate change will require inputs from all sectors of government and civil society, collaboration between many academic disciplines, and new ways of international cooperation that have hitherto eluded us. Involvement of local communities in monitoring, discussing, advocating, and assisting with the process of adaptation will be crucial.

An integrated and multidisciplinary approach to reduce the adverse health effects of climate change requires at least three levels of action.

· First, policies must be adopted to reduce carbon emissions and to increase carbon bio-sequestration, and thereby slow down global warming and eventually stabilise temperatures.

· Second, action should be taken on the events linking climate change to disease.

· Third, appropriate public health systems should be put into place to deal with adverse outcomes……….”

Institute for Global Health (Prof A Costello FRCPCH, S Ball BSc, C Patterson LLB); UCL Medical School (M Abbas, J Patel BSc); Development Planning Unit (A Allen PhD, C Levy MA, J A Puppim de Oliveira PhD); Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geomatic Engineering (S Bell PhD); Department of Political Science (Prof R Bellamy PhD); Department of Epidemiology and Public Health (S Friel PhD); Leonard Cheshire Disability and Inclusive Development Centre (Prof N Groce PhD, M Kett PhD); Division of Population Health (Prof A Johnson MD); Faculty of Laws (Prof M Lee LLM, Prof J Scott LLM); UCL Environment Institute (Prof M Maslin PhD); Centre for International Health and Development (D McCoy DrPH); Aon Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre (Prof B McGuire PhD, J Twigg PhD); Institute for Human Health and Performance (Prof H Montgomery MD); Department of Anthropology (Prof D Napier DPhil, Prof N Redclift DPhil); Clinical Operational Research Unit (C Pagel PhD); Department of Life Sciences (H Rees); Department of Economics (D Rogger MPhil); Institute for Women’s Health (Prof J Stephenson FFPH); and Department of Philosophy (Prof J Wolff MPhil), UCL (University College London), London, UK
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/global-health/ucl-lancet-climate-change.pdf

http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/73225/E93420.pdf

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IMPORTANT: This transmission is for use by the intended
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