scholarly journals What can we learn from Israel’s rapid roll out of COVID 19 vaccination?

Author(s):  
Martin McKee ◽  
Selina Rajan

AbstractIsrael has led the world in rolling out its COVID-19 vaccination program. This experience provides lessons that others can learn from. It is, however, necessary to consider some national specificities, including the small size of the country, its young population, and the political imperative to drive this program forward. Israel also has a number of other advantages, including a strong public health infrastructure. The lessons that can be learnt include the importance of coordinating delivery mechanisms with the inevitable prioritisation of groups within the population, timely deployment of a skilled cadre of health workers, a recognition that not everyone in the population shares in the benefits of digital connectedness, the need to reach out to disadvantaged groups, based on an understanding of the barriers that they face, and the importance of placing COVID-19 vaccination within a comprehensive response to the pandemic.

Author(s):  
Christian W. McMillen

There will be more pandemics. A pandemic might come from an old, familiar foe such as influenza or might emerge from a new source—a zoonosis that makes its way into humans, perhaps. The epilogue asks how the world will confront pandemics in the future. It is likely that patterns established long ago will re-emerge. But how will new challenges, like climate change, affect future pandemics and our ability to respond? Will lessons learned from the past help with plans for the future? One thing is clear: in the face of a serious pandemic much of the developing world’s public health infrastructure will be woefully overburdened. This must be addressed.


Author(s):  
Eve E. Buckley

This chapter contrasts the political interpretation of sertanejos’ endemic illnesses, promulgated by Brazilian sanitarians, with the approach to public health promoted by Rockefeller Foundation International Health Board (IHB) representatives who also worked in Brazil during the 1910s. These contrasting interpretations of the political and racial origins of endemic disease delineate two poles around which subsequent approaches to sertão development turned. Early in the chapter, public health infrastructure in the northeast region is evaluated in relation to states’ limited capacity to assist drought refugees or prevent epidemics in migrant camps, and the efforts of cearense physician Rodolfo Teófilo are emphasized. The remainder of the chapter focuses on a sanitary survey of the sertão undertaken by Belisário Penna and Arthur Neiva in 1912; subsequent public health projects engaged in by Penna (notably the Serviço de Profilaxia Rural, or Rural Sanitation Service) and the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Board in Brazil; and the establishment of a national department of public health stemming from these efforts. The analysis emphasizes the racism of IHB director Wickliffe Rose which led him to dismiss the modernizing potential of sertanejos and to attribute their diseases to racial weakness. This is contrasted with Penna’s rejection of racial and climatic determinism.


Author(s):  
M.C. Carrillo ◽  
H.M. Snyder ◽  
R. Conant ◽  
S. Worley ◽  
R. Egge

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias (ADRD) are complex global health issues that require resources and commitments from around the world. The international research community continues to build upon knowledge and generate fresh ideas and strategies to move toward an effective therapy to treat, delay, or prevent ADRD. With accelerated momentum and more funding, the field is poised to hasten the discovery of interventions to stop, slow, or prevent disease progression, and improve care and quality of life for those affected.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Renaud F. Boulanger ◽  
Lourdes García-García ◽  
Letitia Ferreyra-Reyes ◽  
Sergio Canizales-Quintero ◽  
Manuel Palacios-Martínez ◽  
...  

Background: The Orizaba Health Region, in Veracruz, Mexico, has hosted the research programme of the Consorcio Mexicano contra la Tuberculosis since 1995. Methods: The objective of this retrospective case study conducted in 2009 was to describe and explain the evolution and outcomes of the stakeholder and community engagement activities of the Consorcio. Recorded interviews and focus groups were coded to identify major themes related to the success of stakeholder and community engagement activities. Results: The Consorcio successfully managed to embed its research program into the local public health infrastructure. This integration was possible because the core research team tailored its engagement strategy to the local context, while focusing on a large spectrum of stakeholders with various positions of authority and responsibility. The overall engagement strategy can be described as a three-pronged endeavor: building a “coalition” with local authorities, nurturing “camaraderie” with community health workers, and striving to be “present” in the lives of community members and participants. Conclusions: The Consorcio’s efforts teach valuable lessons on how to approach stakeholder and community engagement in tuberculosis (TB) research, particularly in developing countries. Furthermore, the health outcomes reveal stakeholder and community engagement as a potentially under-tapped tool to promote disease control.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary L. Freed

AbstractWhen attempting to provide lessons for other countries from the successful Israeli COVID-19 vaccine experience, it is important to distinguish between the modifiable and non-modifiable components identified in the article by Rosen, et al. Two specific modifiable components included in the Israeli program from which the US can learn are (a) a national (not individual state-based) strategy for vaccine distribution and administration and (b) a functioning public health infrastructure. As a federal government, the US maintains an often complex web of state and national authorities and responsibilities. The federal government assumed responsibility for the ordering, payment and procurement of COVID vaccine from manufacturers. In designing the subsequent steps in their COVID-19 vaccine distribution and administration plan, the Trump administration decided to rely on the states themselves to determine how best to implement guidance provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This strategy resulted in 50 different plans and 50 different systems for the dissemination of vaccine doses, all at the level of each individual state. State health departments were neither financed, experienced nor uniformly possessed the expertise to develop and implement such plans. A national strategy for the distribution, and the workforce for the provision, of vaccine beyond the state level, similar to that which occurred in Israel, would have provided for greater efficiency and coordination across the country. The US public health infrastructure was ill-prepared and ill-staffed to take on the responsibility to deliver > 450 million doses of vaccine in an expeditious fashion, even if supply of vaccine was available. The failure to adequately invest in public health has been ubiquitous across the nation at all levels of government. Since the 2008 recession, state and local health departments have lost > 38,000 jobs and spending for state public health departments has dropped by 16% per capita and spending for local health departments has fallen by 18%. Hopefully, COVID-19 will be a wakeup call to the US with regard to the need for both a national strategy to address public health emergencies and the well-maintained infrastructure to make it happen.


2021 ◽  
Vol 111 (S3) ◽  
pp. S224-S231
Author(s):  
Lan N. Đoàn ◽  
Stella K. Chong ◽  
Supriya Misra ◽  
Simona C. Kwon ◽  
Stella S. Yi

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the many broken fragments of US health care and social service systems, reinforcing extant health and socioeconomic inequities faced by structurally marginalized immigrant communities. Throughout the pandemic, even during the most critical period of rising cases in different epicenters, immigrants continued to work in high-risk-exposure environments while simultaneously having less access to health care and economic relief and facing discrimination. We describe systemic factors that have adversely affected low-income immigrants, including limiting their work opportunities to essential jobs, living in substandard housing conditions that do not allow for social distancing or space to safely isolate from others in the household, and policies that discourage access to public resources that are available to them or that make resources completely inaccessible. We demonstrate that the current public health infrastructure has not improved health care access or linkages to necessary services, treatments, or culturally competent health care providers, and we provide suggestions for how the Public Health 3.0 framework could advance this. We recommend the following strategies to improve the Public Health 3.0 public health infrastructure and mitigate widening disparities: (1) address the social determinants of health, (2) broaden engagement with stakeholders across multiple sectors, and (3) develop appropriate tools and technologies. (Am J Public Health. 2021;111(S3):S224–S231. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306433 )


2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (03) ◽  
pp. 289-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. HSU ◽  
A. ZEE

We develop simple models for the global spread of infectious diseases, emphasizing human mobility via air travel and the variation of public health infrastructure from region to region. We derive formulas relating the total and peak number of infections in two countries to the rate of travel between them and their respective epidemiological parameters.


2021 ◽  
pp. 35-63
Author(s):  
Joia S. Mukherjee

The tide turned in public health due to the fight for AIDS treatment access around the world. While prevention, not treatment was the focus of most health interventions in the 20th century, based on this SPHC model, AIDS resulted in a reversal of the gains made in the child survival revolution. Entire communities collapsed under the weight of AIDS which struck down mothers, fathers, teachers, farmer, and health workers. This chapter focuses on the AIDS pandemic, beginning in the 1980s, and traces the global spread of this deadly disease. Importantly, the chapter covers the emergence of the movement of people living with AIDS both in accelerating the discovery of antiretroviral and as a movement that focused the right to health for all. It is the force of this movement that resulted in novel funding of global health.


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