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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Muennig, Peter, author.
Introducing global health : practice, policy, and solutions / Peter Muennig, Celina Su. –First edition.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-53328-4 (pbk.); ISBN 978-1-118-22041-2 (ebk.); ISBN 978-1-118-23399-3 (ebk.)
I. Su, Celina, author. II. Title.
[DNLM: 1. World Health. 2. Health Policy. WA 530.1]
RA418
362.1–dc23
2013012274
I.1. This river makes finding recyclables easy.
1.1. Changes in life expectancy from 1940 to 2009 in some of the nations that we discuss extensively in this book.
1.2. Residents live near a waterway containing raw sewage and trash in Chennai, India, 2013.
1.3. During the Industrial Revolution, the advent of coal and steam use as energy sources became widespread.
1.4. In 2005, a chemical plant explosion in Jilin, a province in northern China, led to a massive release of nitrobenzene into the Songhua River. The water became foamy and was too dangerous to drink. The spill at first was covered up by the Chinese government, but the truth was disclosed after large numbers of dead fish washed ashore in the large northern city of Harbin and residents began to panic.
1.5. President Reagan meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at the Hotel Cipriani in Venice, Italy, 6/9/1987.
1.6. Population pyramids typical in various stages of development.
2.1. The Preston curve: Life expectancy versus GDP per capita.
2.2. In China, the export revolution started during the transition to a predominantly capitalist economy led to massive environmental destruction, causing broad effects on ecosystems and adversely affecting the quality of life of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens.
2.3. A woman helps one of China’s barefoot doctors with nursing duties in Luo Quan Wan village.
2.4. Children outside a school in Kerala.
2.5. Life expectancy of women in Chile relative to Japan, the United States, New Zealand, and Norway.
3.1. Death by broad cause group.
3.2. Child mortality rates by cause and region.
3.3. A chulla, or a traditional outdoor cook stove used in India. This particular chulla is going to be lit using branches, scrap wood, dried dung cakes, and coconut shells.
3.4. A lack of access to clean water and adequate sanitation severely inhibits many countries, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa. This problem inhibits their ability to accelerate their development.
3.5. A member of a local relief committee in a village in East Africa builds a latrine. This particular village has chosen to use aid provided by the organization Oxfam to build latrines.
4.1. Many in international development make the same mistake that this food shop in Chongqing, China, makes. It is important to have a grasp of local and international knowledge before implementation (in this case, a sign suggesting that the snack shack is selling feces).
4.2. Aid is delivered to Port Au Prince, Haiti, following the magnitude 7 earthquake that hit the city in 2010.
5.1. One of the many EMRs available from commercial vendors. Nations that are now converting to EMR systems face the challenge of either navigating the many systems that were in place prior to implementing a mandate for providers to use such records or forcing providers to drop their existing systems in favor of a universal system.
5.2. The chances that a forty-five-year-old woman will survive to her sixtieth birthday (fifteen-year survival) in twelve nations in 1975 (left half) and 2005 (right half). These fifteen-year survival estimates are plotted against health expenditures (y-axis).
5.3. Trends in self-reported health status and total household income after accounting for medical expenditures (from the General Social Survey, 1972–2008, provided by the author).
5.4. Global health expenditures, average number of doctor visits per year, and life expectancy.
5.5. An Ayurvedic medicine shop in India.
6.1. The percentage of women who feel that husbands are justified in hitting their wives under certain circumstances by selected nations. The data for each country are broken down by wealth so that we see that poorer women are more likely to favor beatings than wealthier women.
6.2. A man appears to collect fish for human consumption after extreme river pollution and high temperatures lead to large numbers of fish dying in the river in Wuhan, China.
8.1. Citizens of Mexico City wear masks to prevent the spread of influenza.
8.2. An anti-WTO protestor demonstrates in Hong Kong in 2005.
9.1. This child, like millions of others in India, suffers from extreme poverty and hunger.
9.2. A Nigerian girl suffers from kwashiorkor.
9.3. In India, a father and child suffering from marasmus.
9.4. The life cycle of the hookworm parasite.
9.5. A diagram outlining the potential connections between poverty and health. We see that inadequate resources are linked to poor education, low wages, and poor environmental conditions (boxes). However, these factors are in turn caused by a confluence of poor governance and historic circumstances (among other factors).
10.1. Hookworm is one of the most frequently encountered parasitic infections in the world.
10.2. A factory in China on the Yangtze River.
10.3. Slash-and-burn agriculture is a common form of farming in developing countries. It is also a major contributor to air pollution.
10.4. Slum upgrade in India. One approach to improving the quality of life in slums is to formally recognize them as neighborhoods within urban centers and to then install critical infrastructure, such as sewage, sidewalks, electricity, and in some cases, even improving the quality of the housing itself.
10.5. Potential land loss due to polar melting. The black outline represents the current landmass above sea level. With sufficient global warming, we can expect New York, Washington, DC, Baltimore, and Philadelphia to be under water.
11.1. From a purely economic perspective, it makes more sense to invest scarce aid dollars in women rather than men because women are more likely to comply with interventions, pass on information to their children, and are less likely to squander income on alcohol or other drugs than are men.
11.2. The missing women phenomenon. Some nations have many more boys than would be expected by natural sex ratios at birth.
11.3. A public communications campaign from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Top panel: An advertisement frequently seen on the subway. Bottom panel: Still from an accompanying YouTube video.
11.4. Adbusters is an organization stocked with disenfranchised advertisers that seeks in part to counter the harmful effects of consumer advertising in a process called culture jamming. This ad attempts to delink male virility and alcohol. It might be particularly effective at reducing alcohol consumption because most men know what alcohol can do when they actually do get lucky with their bar date.
11.5. A bike lane in Kunming, China. Sophisticated bike lanes are a regular feature of mainstream Chinese urban planning.
12.1. This map shows six special economic zones set up by the Chinese government in areas of Africa.
12.2. Natural resources in poorly governed nations not only encourage dangerous mining conditions, but also can lead to civil war.
13.1. How the concept of herd immunity works.
13.2. The different levels of disease causation or prevention.
13.3. The life cycle of the Onchocerca volvulus. This is a parasitic worm that is the cause of river blindness.
13.4. A Bolsa Família center in Feira de Santana, Brazil.
3.1. Counting Deaths Worldwide, by Disease
3.2. Leading Causes of Death for the World Overall and by Level of Economic Development
3.3. Counting Deaths Worldwide by Disease and the Most Relevant Policy for Addressing the Disease
3.4. Counting Deaths Worldwide by Preventive Policy Needed
3.5. Burden of Disease Worldwide in DALYs
3.6. DALYs Ranked by Country Categories
3.7. A Hypothetical Cost-Effectiveness League Table
5.1. Health Care Spending in 2009, per Person, in US Dollars
6.1. Three Forms of Social Democracy in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
6.2. Two Types of Nondemocratic Governance
6.3. Main Political Economy Types in Industrialized Countries
Peter Muennig is an associate professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, where he teaches global health policy, comparative health systems, and health disparities to graduate students in public health. He has consulted for numerous foreign governments and has run a nongovernmental organization, the Burmese Refugee Project (which he cofounded while still a student), for twelve years. He has published more than sixty peer-reviewed articles, two books, and many chapters and government reports. He or his work has appeared in many media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and CNN.
Celina Su is an associate professor of political science at the City University of New York. Her research concerns civil society, political participation, and social policy, especially health and education. Her publications include Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the Bronx (Cornell University Press, 2009) and Our Schools Suck: Young People Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on the Failures of Urban Education (coauthored, New York University Press, 2009). Her honors include the Berlin Prize and the Whiting Award for Excellence in Teaching. Su was cofounding executive director of the Burmese Refugee Project from 2001 to 2013. She earned her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.