Health Equity: 05/26/11

Thursday, May 26, 2011

[EQ] Health in Brazil - towards sustainability and equity in health

Health in Brazil - towards sustainability and equity in health

The Lancet – Website http://bit.ly/iAayVm

May 9, 2011

“……..Brazil has made significant improvements in maternal and child health, emergency care, and in reducing the burden of infectious diseases. But the news is not all good. The country continues to have a burden of injury mortality that is different from other countries due to the large number of murders, especially using firearms. Obesity levels are increasing and caesarean section rates are the highest in the world.

Brazil now has the opportunity to move closer towards its ultimate goal of universal, equitable, and sustainable health care as enshrined in the 1988 Constitution. To highlight this opportunity, The Lancet is publishing a Series of six papers that critically examine what the country’s policies have achieved and where future challenges lie. As Cesar Victora and colleagues conclude in the final paper of the Series: “the challenge is ultimately political, requiring continuous engagement by Brazilian society as a whole to secure the right to health for all Brazilian people.”

Series Comments

Brazil: towards sustainability and equity in health

Sabine Kleinert, Richard Horton

Brazil: structuring cooperation for health

Paulo Buss

Brazil’s health-care reform: social movements and civil society

Sonia Fleury

Higher education and health care in Brazil

Naomar Almeida-Filho

The impact of the Brazil experience in Latin America

Ricardo Uauy

Series Papers

The Brazilian health system: history, advances, and challenges

Jairnilson Paim, Claudia Travassos, Celia Almeida, Ligia Bahia, James Macinko

Maternal and child health in Brazil: progress and challenges

Cesar G Victora, Estela M L Aquino, Maria do Carmo Leal, Carlos Augusto Monteiro, Fernando C Barros, Celia L Szwarcwald

Successes and failures in the control of infectious diseases in Brazil:
social and environmental context, policies, interventions, and research needs

Mauricio L Barreto, M Gloria Teixeira, Francisco I Bastos, Ricardo A A Ximenes, Rita B Barata, Laura C Rodrigues

Chronic non-communicable diseases in Brazil: burden and current challenges

Maria Inês Schmidt, Bruce Bartholow Duncan, Gulnar Azevedo e Silva, Ana Maria Menezes, Carlos Augusto Monteiro, Sandhi Maria Barreto, Dora Chor, Paulo Rossi Menezes

Violence and injuries in Brazil: the effect, progress made, and challenges ahead

Michael Eduardo Reichenheim, Edinilsa Ramos de Souza, Claudia Leite Moraes, Maria Helena Prado de Mello Jorge, Cosme Marcelo Furtado Passos da Silva, Maria Cecília de Souza Minayo

Health conditions and health-policy innovations in Brazil: the way forward

Cesar G Victora, Mauricio L Barreto, Maria do Carmo Leal, Carlos A Monteiro, Maria Ines Schmidt, Jairnilson Paim, Francisco I Bastos, Celia Almeida, Ligia Bahia, Claudia Travassos, Michael Reichenheim, Fernando C Barros,

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[EQ] OECD Looks To Measure The 'Better Life'

Compendium of OECD well-being indicators

OECD May 2011

Website: http://bit.ly/iZ41bq

PDF at: http://bit.ly/jYuhRo

In terms of focus, the Compendium provides evidence on:

· the well-being of people in each country, rather than on the macro-economic conditions of economies; hence, many standard indicators of macro-economic performance (e.g. GDP, productivity, innovation) are not included in this Compendium.

· the well-being of different groups of the population, in addition to average conditions. Measures of inequalities in people‟s conditions will figure prominently in the "How‟s Life?" report but are only discussed briefly in this Compendium.

· well-being achievements, measured by outcome indicators, as opposed to well-being drivers measured by input or output indicators.

· objective and subjective aspects of people‟s well-being as both living conditions and their appreciation by individuals are important to understand people‟s well-being.

In terms of scope, the framework distinguishes between current material living conditions and quality of life, on the one hand, and the conditions required to ensure their sustainability over time, on the other

- Material living conditions (or „economic well-being‟) determine people‟s consumption possibilities and their command over resources. While this is shaped by GDP, the latter also includes activities that do not contribute to people‟s well-being (e.g. activities aimed at offsetting some of the regrettable consequences of economic development) while it excludes non-market activities that expand people‟s consumption possibilities.

- Quality of life, defined as the set of non-monetary attributes of individuals, shapes their opportunities and life chances, and has intrinsic value under different cultures and contexts.
- The sustainability of the socio-economic and natural systems where people live and work is critical for well-being to last over time. Sustainability depends on how current human activities impact on the stocks of different types of capital (natural, economic, human and social). However, suitable indicators for describing the evolution of these stocks are still lacking in many fields. For this reason, indicators of sustainability are not included in this Compendium, although some of them will feature in "How‟s Life?".

OECD Looks To Measure The 'Better Life'. "It is time to move beyond gross domestic product when measuring the success of societies, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), has concluded in a change of mission for the international organization….The OECD's new Better Life Index, an amalgam of 11 indicators, including income and jobs, but also life satisfaction and safety, aims to capture the diversity of life and priorities in advanced economies.

Unlike existing composite indicators users of the new OECD index can give each of the 11 indicators a different weight according to their own preferences and see how such changes alter the league table of countries…." [Financial Times]

"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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