Are health statisticians the new post-modernists?
By which I don’t mean: are they edgy and cool? Rather, I mean do they deliberately write a load of impenetrable made-up gobbledygook that makes them sound clever to the layperson? For your delectation, I compare two statistics papers that were published this week, one in PLOS Medicine, the other in The Lancet.
Posted in Aid, MDGs | 2 Comments
Global Health Leader Takes World Bank Helm
The nomination by the US Government of physician Jim Yong Kim for the World Bank Presidency triggered the usual debate over the fairness of the electoral process, as well as intense scrutiny of Kim’s qualifications and experience. But missing in all this furor was what the appointment of Dr Kim, a leading figure in global [...]
Posted in World Bank | No Comments
Chinese doctors under threat: who will repair the broken windows?
This is a guest post by Yina Xiao, a Researcher here at Bocconi University, about an under-reported (suppressed?) challenge currently facing the medical profession in China… Last Friday, April 13th, a serial killer attacked the chief of the E.N.T. department in Peking University’s 2nd affiliated hospital (Renming Hospital) and a resident working in the emergency department [...]
Posted in China, Health systems | No Comments
Times they are a climate-changin
In an editorial last year, the BMJ’s editor Fiona Godlee described climate change as “the greatest risk to human health”; more of a risk than either communicable or non-communicable disease. I agree but would add that a) climate change threatens human survival, not just our health; and b) that threat is not limited to humans [...]
Posted in Climate Change | 6 Comments
Corporate (anti) social responsibility
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is in the news quite a bit this week. But is it a duck or a rabbit? Or, to be less vague, are the number of ‘anomalies’ stacking up against CSR (the ‘duck’) so persuasive that we can’t really say it’s a duck any more; that we have to conclude that, [...]
Posted in Multinational corporations, Social Justice, Uncategorized | 2 Comments
Which global health journal do you recommend…?
I’m often asked by students and colleagues to suggest a suitable global health journal for their work. A while back, I compiled this table of journals that publish research on global health. It’s not bang up to date and you will need to check the journal website for the latest on their impact factors, terms [...]
Posted in Miscellaneous | 9 Comments
Welcome to Portswood!
Southampton Medics’ Review have been making some great videos over the years to raise money for charity. The proceeds from their latest show are to be split between The Cardiomyopathy Association – a leading cause of death in young people, and a local charity – The Soceity of St James – homelessness service. This time [...]
Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments
Our leadership is dire, so why shouldn’t we despise government?
A couple of weeks ago Jeffrey Sachs wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian: ‘Western politicians are dire, but we mustn’t despise government’. There’s no denying Sachs is a persuasive writer, but in this case he writes himself into a corner. The examples he marshals together as evidence for why we should despise governments are so compelling [...]
Posted in Climate Change, Multinational corporations, Private sector | 5 Comments
Improving the lives of ‘half the sky’
What non-health factors contribute to good maternal and child health in developing countries? Good question. In a chapter to a new book edited by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine ‘ Good Health at Low Cost: 25 years on‘ I synthesise evidence from five country studies in an effort to find [...]
Posted in Maternal and Child Health | No Comments
Personalized medicine is the issue on the table
In less than 36 hours I’ll be flying out of Heathrow for the 2011 Summit on the Global Agenda in Abu Dhabi.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments