Health Equity: 08/31/12

Friday, August 31, 2012

[EQ] PLoS Medicine Series on Big Food

PLoS Medicine Series on Big Food

Over three weeks beginning 19 June 2012 Plus Medicine published seven articles that examine the activities and influence of the food and beverage industry in the health arena.
The PLoS Medicine Editors 2012. PLoS Med 9(6)

Website: http://bit.ly/LFDdW6

“…..The series on Big Food aims to examine and stimulate debate about the activities and influence of the food industry in global health.
We define “Big Food” as the multinational food and beverage industry with huge and concentrated market power.

The series adopts a multi-disciplinary approach and includes critical perspectives from around the world. It represents one of first times such issues have been examined in the general medical literature.

The PLoS Medicine Editors begin the series with an editorial discussing the rationale and process of commissioning articles for the series. As they note, industry in health has long fascinated PLoS Medicine but the journal's focus on Big Food is new.

Food, unlike tobacco and drugs, is necessary to live and is central to health and disease. And yet the big multinational food companies control what people everywhere eat, resulting in a stark and sick irony: one billion people on the planet are hungry while two billion are obese or overweight.

The guest editors, Marion Nestle and David Stuckler, then lay out a background to the role of Big Food in global health, and offer three competing views of how public health professionals can respond.

Subsequent articles include: a comparison of soda companies' corporate social responsibility campaigns with those of the tobacco industry; an analysis of the rapid rise of Big Food sales in developing countries; an essay on food sovereignty and who holds power over food; views from South America and Africa on the displacement of traditional diets by the incursion of multinational food companies; and a perspective arguing against an uncritical acceptance of the food industry in health. …”

Articles:

Big Food: The Food Industry Is Ripe for Scrutiny

The PLoS Medicine Editors

Big Food, Food Systems, and Global Health

David Stuckler, Marion Nestle

Food Sovereignty: Power, Gender, and the Right to Food

Rajeev C. Patel

The Impact of Transnational “Big Food” Companies on the South:
A View from Brazil

Carlos A. Monteiro, Geoffrey Cannon

Thinking Forward: The Quicksand of Appeasing the Food Industry

Kelly D. Brownell

Soda and Tobacco Industry Corporate Social Responsibility Campaigns:
How Do They Compare?

Lori Dorfman, Andrew Cheyne, Lissy C. Friedman, Asiya Wadud, Mark Gottlieb

Manufacturing Epidemics: The Role of Global Producers in Increased Consumption
of Unhealthy Commodities Including Processed Foods, Alcohol, and Tobacco

David Stuckler, Martin McKee, Shah Ebrahim, Sanjay Basu

The Consumer Food Environment, Health, and the Policy Response in South Africa

Ehimario U. Igumbor, David Sanders, Thandi R. Puoane, Lungiswa Tsolekile, Cassandra Schwarz,
Christopher Purdy, Rina Swart, Solange Durão, Corinna Hawkes

KMC/2012/HSS
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[EQ] Child Mortality Estimation Methods - PLoS medicine

Child Mortality Estimation Methods

PLoS Medicine - Published 28 August 2012

Website: http://bit.ly/ODEXvi

“…..Millennium Development Goal 4 calls for a reduction of two-thirds in the under-5 mortality rate between 1990 and 2015. Reliable estimates of child mortality are critical to the monitoring of progress toward this important goal. The UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME) annually reports on country, regional and global trends in child mortality.

In this Collection of five research articles and two reviews the independent Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to the UN IGME introduces the group's methodological innovations in estimating child mortality.

The Collection is produced with support from UNICEF and the TAG of the UN IGME. The Collection Editor is Dr. Virginia Barbour, and the Academic Editor is Professor. Peter Byass.

Articles and Reviews:

Accelerated Progress in Reducing Global Child Mortality, 1990–2010

Kenneth Hill, Danzhen You, Mie Inoue, Mikkel Z. Oestergaard,
Technical Advisory Group of the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation

Methods Used to Adjust for Bias due to AIDS in Estimating Trends in Under-Five Mortality

Neff Walker, Kenneth Hill, Fengmin Zhao

Appropriate Time Periods for Child Mortality Estimates from Full Birth Histories

Jon Pedersen, Jing Liu

Consistency of Under-Five Mortality Rate Estimates Using Full Birth Histories and Summary Birth Histories

Romesh Silva

A Global Overview of Infant and Child Mortality Age Patterns in Light of New Empirical Data

Michel Guillot, Patrick Gerland, François Pelletier, Ameed Saabneh

Estimating Sex Differences in Childhood Mortality since the 1970s

Cheryl Chriss Sawyer

A Comparison of UN IGME and IHME Estimates of Levels and Trends in Under-Five Mortality Rates and Deaths

Leontine Alkema, Danzhen You

Thank you.

[EQ] No more disease silos for sub-Saharan Africa

No more disease silos for sub-Saharan Africa

Patricio V Marquez, lead health specialist, Eastern and Southern Africa Region World Bank, Washington, DC, USA

Jill L Farrington, honorary senior lecturer Nuffield Centre for International Health and Development, Leeds, UK
BMJ 2012; 345 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e5812 -- August 2012

….Countries in sub-Saharan Africa are facing a double burden of communicable and non-communicable disease.
Authors argue that knowledge of their common determinants and the links between diseases should be used to spur development of coordinated programmes to prevent and treat both…..

Website: http://bit.ly/Rv02Io

“…………Much illness and inefficient use of resources could be avoided in sub-Saharan Africa if the approach were rethought, building on accumulated scientific evidence and country experiences. Rather than concentrating on a few specific diseases, African governments and the international community should prioritise building health systems that offer universal financial protection against the cost of ill health along with improved access to, and the use of, quality services that meet the multiple health needs of the population.

But an effective response also needs to include multisectoral policies and actions for dealing with disease related risk behaviours, environmental factors, and their social and economic determinants in the entire population. Indeed, international evidence indicates that measures such as some of those included in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (for example, higher excise taxes to make tobacco products less affordable), are highly cost effective for disease prevention and control, complementing and reinforcing medical care interventions.

Unless appropriate action is taken, the poor health status of African populations has the potential to magnify vulnerability among the sub-Saharan African countries, which are already easy prey to a variety of shocks—economic, natural disasters and armed conflicts—that tend to perpetuate poverty across generations………….”

Thank you.