September 3, 2015
July 30, 2015
In high-income countries, cervical cancer ranks in the bottom half of all new cancer cases – below gallbladder, mouth, or brain cancers. In places like Ethiopia, Ghana, and Uganda, and 20 other African countries, according to 2013 health surveys, it is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women.
July 28, 2015
The negotiations for the next set of development goals have yielded hope for advocates fighting hepatitis. The disease made it under goal 3 in the draft outcome document that is expected to be adopted in September at the UN General Assembly, which means it now has a better chance of mobilizing resources. But just how much will it really take to bring the disease under control, and eventually eliminate it?
July 14, 2015
We have reached a defining moment in the AIDS response. Against all odds, we have achieved the AIDS targets of Millennium Development Goal 6. AIDS changed everything. In these pages are valuable insights and ground-breaking and heart-warming experiences from the innovative and exciting work that partners, communities and countries have done and are doing in the AIDS response. There are also heart-breaking stories about the challenges that still remain.
In the pantheon of human aches, pains and killer diseases, few might think back pain merits much attention. But, in fact, lower back pain ranks above diabetes and heart disease worldwide when measured according to a common health metrics yardstick known as Years Lived with Disability (YLDs).
July 2, 2015
We propose a Lives Saved Scorecard to drive funding and policy attention to where it is most needed. The ideal scorecard would track all investments by donors and governments, the coverage of each life-saving intervention, the quality of interventions delivered, and the link to child deaths averted in a cross-country, comparable manner.
June 16, 2015
There’s plenty of moral and rhetorical support for fighting diseases of poverty, but if you look at global health spending trends lately the story is one of stagnation, or even decline.
June 12, 2015
People are living longer, but with more disease and disability: an unprecedented transition from a world with communicable diseases to one with chronic disease and disability, with implications for welfare of people worldwide. Yet health systems and economies are not prepared for this transition. Instead, asymmetry between health-system responses and the growing needs is worsening, as are inequalities.
May 18, 2015
Since 2013, SJN has partnered with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) to share instances of exceptional progress and success in public health (known as “positive deviants”) using research and data produced at IHME. This weekly series highlights a timely example of positive deviance and shows you what locality has seen the most gains. We don’t, however, always know why such successes took place, which is why we look to journalists like you, in hopes that you’ll use these data as inspiration for stories. Run with the data. Report. Research. Find out how these countries are succeeding–and publish what you find with the world.
May 8, 2015
A lot of progress has been made against measles, but many around the world remain unlucky when it comes to this deadly and disabling disease. And bad luck, when it comes to infectious disease, travels.
May 4, 2015
Educating women saves lives – and the world is getting better at doing both.
April 27, 2015
Perhaps it isn’t surprising that in Wisconsin, home of Miller Brewing and where bars outnumber grocery stores almost 3 to 1, rates of binge and heavy drinking are on the rise. In 2012, Wisconsin also had some of the highest rates of heavy drinking in the country.
April 10, 2015
The benefits of breastfeeding to the health and development of newborn children are well-documented, with ‘exclusive’ breastfeeding in the first six months of life shown to enhance children’s immunity to infectious disease
April 9, 2015
Like many fields, public health is in the midst of a data revolution: randomized control trials, pay-for-performance and value calculations, all based on data, are changing our ideas about what works and how to finance it.
April 3, 2015
As improving the quality of health services and people’s access to them becomes more of a global priority (especially in the wake of the Ebola crisis), it’s easy to forget that “health” – how we live and die, and how we interact with health systems – rarely happens at the country-level. Global health leaders want to “ensure that every country [have] a robust and resilient health system,” but we also need to look at the wide variations happening within a country to learn from successful, local initiatives.
April 2, 2015
A major objective of many health systems worldwide is to ensure that all people obtain the high-quality health services they need without risk of financial hardship. Achieving this universal health coverage (UHC) requires reducing inequalities within countries as well as between countries. Within-country inequalities, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, has therefore become the focus of research. In a recent study published in BMC Medicine, Emmanuela Gakidou from the University of Washington, USA, and colleagues focus on maternal, neonatal, and child health (MNCH) interventions across 72 districts in Zambia. Using data collected over 20 years, they produce the first systematic assessment of trends in this area. Here Gakidou explains their findings and what the implications are, not only for Zambia but also for other sub-Saharan African countries.
A new study reveals that while Zambia has made great progress against malaria over the past decade or so it was losing ground on many other health needs like basic child immunizations and maternal health care.
Interventions for improving maternal and child health have resulted in significant national health gains in Zambia since 1990. However, these national gains mask substantial variations across districts and interventions. Emmanuela Gakidou discusses the findings of her study on this area published today in BMC Medicine.
March 23, 2015
Today is World Tuberculosis Day, a time where international organizations turn a spotlight on the burden of tuberculosis (TB) and heightened action against this deadly disease.
March 6, 2015
Many governments are trying to make it harder for the tobacco industry to do business in their countries.
February 19, 2015
With wars taking place in several regions of the world right now, and regular news accounts of violent deaths in the United States, it seems like it would be easy to tally up the countries where people face the highest likelihood of dying from interpersonal violence.
February 13, 2015
With America’s measles outbreak still spreading to new corners of the country, the public’s response is also become increasingly charged. Families are demanding that schools and pediatricians bar unvaccinated children from their premises. Political debates over how or if immunizations should be mandatory have exploded amid the rising measles case count.
January 30, 2015
When people in rural Uganda or Kenya don’t get the care they need or want, for example, we don’t always know why. Is it because local health facilities don’t stock the medications, or have enough trained medical staff? Did patients have to wait too long for service – or do they think their local health facility isn’t clean or has the services they need, and so they don’t seek care in the first place?
January 29, 2015
If you’re a health worker in Uganda, what do you need in order to provide the best possible care for your patients – people who could be suffering from anything from HIV to broken limbs? You need a range of medicines and other medical supplies, like stethoscopes or blood pressure cuffs. And of course enough medical personnel.