Imposing Unfair Risks

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inmaculada de Melo-Martín ◽  
Kristen Intemann
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Reliable Criterion ◽  
Good Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health And Well Being

This chapters evaluates whether inductive risks judgments can serve as a reliable criterion to identify normatively inappropriate dissent (NID). Dissent that calls for rejecting certain consensus views related to public policy can be risky. When consensus views are mistakenly rejected, it can have serious consequences for public health and well-being. These risks may not be worth taking when the risks disproportionately fall on the public, or when the dissent in question fails to conform to widely shared standards of good science. It concludes that this account also fails to offer a criterion to reliably identify NID. In part this is because of the difficulties presented by the criterion of shared standards in science. Also, the ambiguities present in judgments about inductive risks lead to serious problems in practice.

scholarly journals Advancing environmental public health in Latin America and the Caribbean

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Marcelo Korc ◽  
Fred Hauchman
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Leadership Role ◽  
The Public ◽  
Environmental Public Health ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Health And Well Being

This paper highlights the important leadership role of the public health sector, working with other governmental sectors and nongovernmental entities, to advance environmental public health in Latin America and the Caribbean toward the achievement of 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 3: Health and Well-Being. The most pressing current and future environmental public health threats are discussed, followed by a brief review of major historical and current international and regional efforts to address these concerns. The paper concludes with a discussion of three major components of a regional environmental public health agenda that responsible parties can undertake to make significant progress toward ensuring the health and well-being of all people throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Communicating the Public Health Risks of Climate Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda R. Weathers ◽  
Edward Maibach ◽  
Matthew Nisbet
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Public Health Community ◽  
Health Organizations ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Community ◽  
Public Health Organizations ◽  
Health And Well Being

Effective public communication and engagement have played important roles in ameliorating and managing a wide range of public health problems including tobacco and substance use, cardiovascular disease, HIV/AIDS, vaccine preventable diseases, sudden infant death syndrome, and automobile injuries and fatalities. The public health community must harness what has been learned about effective public communication to alert and engage the public and policy makers about the health threats of climate change. This need is driven by three main factors. First, people’s health is already being harmed by climate change, and the magnitude of this harm is almost certain to get much worse if effective actions are not soon taken to limit climate change and to help communities successfully adapt to unavoidable changes in their climate. Therefore, public health organizations and professionals have a responsibility to inform communities about these risks and how they can be averted. Second, historically, climate change public engagement efforts have focused primarily on the environmental dimensions of the threat. These efforts have mobilized an important but still relatively narrow range of the public and policy makers. In contrast, the public health community holds the potential to engage a broader range of people, thereby enhancing climate change understanding and decision-making capacity among members of the public, the business community, and government officials. Third, many of the actions that slow or prevent climate change, and that protect human health from the harms associated with climate change, also benefit health and well-being in ways unrelated to climate change. These “cobenefits” to societal action on climate change include reduced air and water pollution, increased physical activity and decreased obesity, reduced motor-vehicle–related injuries and death, increased social capital in and connections across communities, and reduced levels of depression. Therefore, from a public health perspective, actions taken to address climate change are a “win-win” in that in addition to responsibly addressing climate change, they can help improve public health and well-being in other ways as well. Over the past half decade, U.S.-based researchers have been investigating the factors that shape public views about the health risks associated with climate change, the communication strategies that motivate support for actions to reduce these risks, and the practical implications for public health organizations and professionals who seek to effectively engage individuals and their communities. This research serves as a model for similar work that can be conducted across country settings and international publics. Until only recently, the voices of public health experts have been largely absent from the public dialogue on climate change, a dialogue that is often erroneously framed as an “economy versus the environment” debate. Introducing the public health voice into the public dialogue can help communities see the issue in a new light, motivating and promoting more thoughtful decision making.

scholarly journals Representations of Free-Living and Unrestrained Dogs as an Emerging Public Health Issue in Australian Newspapers

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. 5807
Author(s):  
Chris Degeling ◽  
Julie Hall ◽  
Lily M. van Eeden ◽  
Summer M. Finlay ◽  
Suk Maya Gurung ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Risks ◽  
Community Support ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
Free Living ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Health Risks ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Health And Well Being

That dogs can live and breed as free-living animals contributes to public health risks including zoonotic transmission, dog bites, and compromising people’s sense of safety in public spaces. In Australia, free-living dog populations are comprised of domestic dogs, dingoes, and dog–dingo hybrids, and are described using various terms (for example, stray or community), depending on social or geographic context. Urban expansion and regional migration mean that risks associated with contact between humans and free-living dogs are increasing. Public health authorities, local governments, and community organisations have called for transdisciplinary partnerships to address dog-related health risks with a sustainable long-term approach. Values pluralism and a lack of sustained community engagement in affected areas have meant that the outcome of such efforts to date has been mixed. To identify ideas in public circulation about the impact of unrestrained and free-living dogs on human health and well-being, and understand the framework through which these animals are problematised and solutions are proposed in public discourse, we systematically examined coverage of these issues in print media. Our analyses indicate that reporting in Australian newspapers tends to frame the public health impacts of free-living dogs as problems of public order requiring direct government action to re-establish control. The public health impacts of free-living dog populations in Australia have complex causes that intersect at the nexus between human and canine behaviour, agricultural and land management practices, local bylaws, and efforts to conserve ecological systems. Placing responsibility on governments limits opportunities for greater community involvement in developing integrated One Health approaches. Better-quality evidence of the impacts of dog populations on community health and well-being, and broad community support are needed to reshape public debates on animal control, which, ultimately, will promote more effective approaches to mitigate dog-related public health risks at the human–animal–environment interface.

scholarly journals Physical Activity and Health Promotion in Esports and Gaming–Discussing Unique Opportunities for an Unprecedented Cultural Phenomenon

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sascha Ketelhut ◽  
Anna Lisa Martin-Niedecken ◽  
Patrick Zimmermann ◽  
Claudio R. Nigg
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Physical Activity ◽  
Health Promotion ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Health Implications ◽  
The Public ◽  
All Cause Mortality ◽  
Health Promoting ◽  
Evidence Based Guidelines ◽  
Health And Well Being

Due to long periods of sedentary behavior, and unhealthy diets gamers and esports players are at risk for numerous chronic diseases and all-cause mortality. Health research has started addressing the public health implications of the esports phenomenon, drawing a bleak picture of this megatrend. However, instead of just highlighting adverse public health implications of this trend, it is recommended to become involved in this phenomenon and positively influence it. Esports has an enormous potential for physical activity and health-promoting efforts, provides a context for broadly disseminating interventions, and offers new ways of gaining access to an often-neglected population. This paper presents: the potential of the esports phenomenon to promote physical activity, health, and well-being in gamers and esports players; the strategic and preventive solutions to ameliorate esports possible adverse health impacts; and the utilization of esports technology (streams, media platforms, exergames, etc.) as an innovative health promotion tool, especially reaching gamers and esports players with attractive and interactive interventions. This is to encourage systematic scientific research so that evidence-based guidelines and intervention strategies involving regular physical activity, healthy diet, and sleep hygiene for esports will be developed. The goal is to promote public health approaches that move toward a better integration of esports and gaming.

scholarly journals Naming Institutionalized Racism in the Public Health Literature: A Systematic Literature Review

2018 ◽  
Vol 133 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel R. Hardeman ◽  
Katy A. Murphy ◽  
J’Mag Karbeah ◽  
Katy Backes Kozhimannil
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Core Concept ◽  
Institutionalized Racism ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Literature ◽  
Health Field ◽  
Health And Well Being ◽  
Public Health Literature

Objectives: Although a range of factors shapes health and well-being, institutionalized racism (societal allocation of privilege based on race) plays an important role in generating inequities by race. The goal of this analysis was to review the contemporary peer-reviewed public health literature from 2002-2015 to determine whether the concept of institutionalized racism was named (ie, explicitly mentioned) and whether it was a core concept in the article. Methods: We used a systematic literature review methodology to find articles from the top 50 highest-impact journals in each of 6 categories (249 journals in total) that most closely represented the public health field, were published during 2002-2015, were US focused, were indexed in PubMed/MEDLINE and/or Ovid/MEDLINE, and mentioned terms relating to institutionalized racism in their titles or abstracts. We analyzed the content of these articles for the use of related terms and concepts. Results: We found only 25 articles that named institutionalized racism in the title or abstract among all articles published in the public health literature during 2002-2015 in the 50 highest-impact journals and 6 categories representing the public health field in the United States. Institutionalized racism was a core concept in 16 of the 25 articles. Conclusions: Although institutionalized racism is recognized as a fundamental cause of health inequities, it was not often explicitly named in the titles or abstracts of articles published in the public health literature during 2002-2015. Our results highlight the need to explicitly name institutionalized racism in articles in the public health literature and to make it a central concept in inequities research. More public health research on institutionalized racism could help efforts to overcome its substantial, longstanding effects on health and well-being.

scholarly journals A Call for a Public Health Agenda for Social Media Research

10.2196/16661 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. e16661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherry Pagoto ◽  
Molly E Waring ◽  
Ran Xu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Research ◽  
Social Media Research ◽  
Health And Well Being ◽  
Health Agenda

Research has revealed both the benefits and harms of social media use, but the public has very little guidance on how best to use social media to maximize the benefits to their health and well-being while minimizing the potential harms. Given that social media is intricately embedded in our lives, and we now have an entire generation of social media natives, the time has come for a public health research agenda to guide not only the public’s use of social media but also the design of social media platforms in ways that improve health and well-being. In this viewpoint we propose such a public health agenda for social media research that is framed around three broad questions: (1) How much social media use is unhealthy and what individual and contextual factors shape that relationship; (2) What are ways social media can be used to improve physical and mental well-being; and (3) How does health (mis)information spread, how does it shape attitudes, beliefs and behavior, and what policies or public health strategies are effective in disseminating legitimate health information while curbing the spread of health misinformation? We also discuss four key challenges that impede progress on this research agenda: negative sentiment about social media among the public and scientific community, a poorly regulated research landscape, poor access to social media data, and the lack of a cohesive academic field. Social media has revolutionized modern communication in ways that bring us closer to a global society, but we currently stand at an inflection point. A public health agenda for social media research will serve as a compass to guide us toward social media becoming a powerful tool for the public good.

Mapping of Public Health Jobs in India—Where Can the Public Health Graduates Be Employed?

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shanti Dahal ◽  
Anjali Sharma ◽  
Sanjay Zodpey
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Workforce Planning ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Public Health Workforce ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Health Professionals ◽  
Job Opportunities ◽  
Health And Well Being ◽  
Health Programmes

Introduction: Public health programmes work to improve the health and well-being of communities by identifying the risks affecting people at different stages of life and finding best ways to minimize them. This article attempts to map the public health jobs available in India and contribute towards providing new insights in recruitment strategies for public health professionals (PHPs). Methods: A total of 427 public health jobs advertised in recruitment portals, newspapers and websites of organizations during 2012–2015 were analysed for title, qualification, location and job disciplines. Results: Higher qualification in public health and/or social sciences is much preferred followed by MBBS and management. The largest group of vacancies consisted of programme management responsibilities followed by profiles in RMNCH. Delhi, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar had the highest number of jobs. Recommendations: A dedicated public health jobs web portal can be a rich resource for employers for easy access to profiles of PHPs. It will also give due emphasis to public health as a profession. Building a public health cadre in state health services shall be a desirable step to ensure creation of enough job opportunities. Conclusion: Research should be undertaken to understand the changing trends in public health employment. Such studies can be beneficial for public health workforce planning and monitoring.

scholarly journals A Statement of Commitment to Zero Tolerance of Harassment and Discrimination in Schools and Programs of Public Health

2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (4) ◽  
pp. 534-538
Author(s):  
Perry N. Halkitis ◽  
Linda Alexander ◽  
Kauline Cipriani ◽  
John Finnegan ◽  
Wayne Giles ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Zero Tolerance ◽  
Public Health Education ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
Policy Statement ◽  
Public Health Programs ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health And Well Being

The Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health convened a Task Force on Zero Tolerance of Harassment and Discrimination in 2019 to develop a policy statement and strategies for addressing harassment of all types in institutions offering public health education. We outline the premises and scholarly foundation for the development of the Statement of Commitment to Zero Tolerance of Harassment and Discrimination, the statement itself, and future plans for realizing the aspiration established in the statement. The development of this living document is predicated on the belief that it is the core responsibility of academic institutions to build the knowledge and that it is the responsibility of leaders, namely deans of schools of public health and directors of public health programs, to lead in building the shared knowledge and insist on the practices that create institutions for a better future free of harassment and discrimination. Our statement is informed by the knowledge that aggressions in the form of harassment and discrimination undermine the health and well-being of individuals, the public, and populations.

scholarly journals COVERAGE OF ISSUES THE IMPACT OF STRESS ON HEALTH AND COUNTERMEASURES IN A PUBLIC HEALTH CURRICULUM

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (15) ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
T.S. Gruzieva ◽  
N.V. Hrechyshkina ◽  
H.V. Inshakova ◽  
S.V. Vlasenko
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Public Health Workforce ◽  
Educational Standards ◽  
Health Curriculum ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Health And Well Being

Aim: substantiation of educational content on the impact of stress on health and countermeasures in a public health curriculum. Materials and methods: bibliographic, information and analytical methods and content analysis were used in the work. The study was carried out as part of the research work of the Bogomolets National Medical University on the topic «Medical and social substantiation of the optimization of the healthcare organization in the context of the public healthcare system development» (state registration number 0120U100807). Sources of information included scientific literature on the research topic, strategic and policy documents of WHO and WHO / Europe, including the WHO-ASPHER Competency Framework for the Public Health Workforce in the European Region, the Health 2020: the European policy for health and well-being, the European Action Plan for Strengthening Public Health Capacities and Services, educational standards for the preparation of Masters in Medicine and Public Health, an exemplary curriculum of the discipline «social medicine, public health» for the preparation of Masters of Medicine. Results. A study of scientific sources of literature has shown the growing influence of psychological factors, including stress, on the formation of population health and the need for countermeasures, which requires, among other things, the training of health care professionals able to determine the impact of stresses on public health, assess their prevalence, justify countermeasures. Justification of educational content on these issues was carried out on the basis of an analysis of the provisions of educational standards for the training of masters of health, an exemplary curriculum "social medicine, public health" for training masters of medicine, WHO documents, including the WHO-ASPHER Competency Framework for the Public Health Workforce in the European Region, the Health 2020: the European policy for health and well-being, the European Action Plan for Strengthening Public Health Capacities and Services etc. Learning content includes a statement of the purpose of the lesson on the topic «Stresses and Conflicts, mechanisms of protecting people from stress actions», its rationale, a list of basic concepts, educational target tasks, pre-classroom training issues, basic theoretical questions, typical examples of solving specific situational tasks, a list of recommended literature. The theoretical part of the lesson includes versatile questions of the prevalence of stressful situations in society, their causes, types and signs of stress, the impact of stressful situations on the health of the population, types of conflicts, their consequences, causes of conflicts, phases of their deployment and methods of settlement, measures to protect people from stress, psychoprophylaxis, strategies and measures to counter the negative impact of stress on public health. Conclusions. Training of Masters of Health Care in countering the negative effects of stressful situations on health will contribute to improving the preventive component in health care, reducing the global burden of disease caused by stressful situations, maintaining and strengthening the health of the population.

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