What opportunities might the United States election campaign offer for public health advocacy?
As of this week, there are some positive answers to this question.
The column also brings Olympics health assessments from Paris, news from the World AIDS Conference, First Nations health updates, and yet more concerns about Big Tech companies limiting public access to news.
Don’t miss the details of upcoming events.
The quotable?
As a health professional who has worked for nearly two decades to help avert public health catastrophe from climate change, I’m thrilled by the prospect of @KamalaHarris becoming America’s best-ever climate President – topping even the current @POTUS.”
New opportunities for public health advocacy
The Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, has hit the global headlines, bringing many opportunities for public health advocates in the US and elsewhere in highlighting issues such as access to abortion, climate justice, and the need to address racism in all its forms.
An article in Nature titled What Kamala Harris’s historic bid for the US presidency means for science says that, as the daughter of a scientist and a supporter of diversity in STEM, Harris as a potential candidate has caused optimism among scientists.
The article cites the following:
- As a US senator for California, Harris co-sponsored efforts to improve the diversity of the science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) workforce.
- During the 2020 Democratic primary race, Harris campaigned on progressive health policies.
- Last December, she launched a nationwide ‘reproductive freedoms’ speaking tour, and in March she became the first US vice-president to make an official visit to an abortion provider.
- Harris’s approach to reproductive justice is not limited to access to contraception and abortion, as she has advocated for maternal-health issues more broadly, highlighting the need to combat implicit bias against Black women in healthcare.
- Harris has long promoted action on climate as well as environmental justice, says Leah Stokes, a climate-policy researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, Harris became a champion for communities on the front lines of fossil fuel pollution, Stokes says, and followed a similar path with work on public health and the environment as a senator from 2017 to 2021.
Podcast: https://t.co/7f4Pa6p3Fq
Paris Olympics
How might a Health Impact Assessment score the Olympic Games?
As well as considering the event’s carbon footprint and contribution to the marketing of junk foods, there is the health and safety of athletes, staff and spectators to consider, especially in a time of COVID.
BBC: Recycled bottle tops and tables made from shuttlecocks – the greenest Olympics?
Meanwhile, five members of the Australian women’s water polo team have reportedly tested positive for COVID-19.
World AIDS Conference
The 25th International AIDS Conference is taking place this week in Munich, Germany, with the theme ‘putting people first’. (Also see this related Croakey story).
A new report from UNAIDS shows that the world is at a critical moment that will determine whether world leaders meet their commitment to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. The report, The Urgency of Now: AIDS at a Crossroads, brings together new data and case studies which demonstrate that the decisions and policy choices taken by world leaders this year will decide the fate of millions of lives.
Whilst the end of AIDS is within our grasp, this decade, currently the world is off track. Globally, of the 39.9 million people living with HIV, 9.3 million, nearly a quarter, are not receiving life-saving treatment.
Global health
The latest UN State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World
The Lancet: Many crises, one call to action: advancing gender equality in health in response to polycrises
The article begins: “The state of polycrises linked to concurrent conflict, climate catastrophe, the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing HIV epidemic, and geopolitical, economic, and social shocks is a cause of deep concern for the global health community. Polycrises, including the ongoing atrocities in Gaza, Sudan, and Myanmar, political movements in different countries that threaten to over-turn human rights and climate laws, or the flash floods in Bangladesh, Brazil, and Tanzania, have led to a new era likely to worsen gender inequalities and health challenges in terms of scale, severity, and complexity. Not only have these crises laid bare injustices and entrenched gender-based intersectional inequalities that exist in health, but they have also deepened and widened health disparities within and across countries, with differences starkly marked along lines of income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability, and geographical location, among other factors.”
First Nations health updates
Public health
JAMA: Effect of Cash Benefits on Health Care Utilisation and Health – A Randomized Study
Among low-income individuals, how does a cash benefit affect use of the emergency department and outpatient care?
In this study of 2880 randomized participants, there were significantly fewer emergency department visits among those assigned to receive a monthly cash benefit compared with the control group (217.1 vs 317.5 emergency department visits per 1000 persons), including fewer emergency department visits leading to hospital admission and fewer emergency department visits related to behavioral health and substance use. There were more outpatient visits to subspecialists, particularly for individuals without a car.
Cash benefits changed patterns of health care utilisation in ways that suggest policies to alleviate poverty may improve health and access to healthcare.
Media matters
Big Tech companies are undermining the public’s access to important news – from Ukraine to Australia.
Columbia Journalism Review: More Than Ukraine Fatigue. How tech companies squeeze out the Ukrainian press https://reneweconomy.com.au/we-published-an-analysis-from-a-leading-economist-on-soaring-nuclear-costs-facebook-removed-it/
Vale
The University of Western Australia is saddened by the loss of distinguished Nobel Laureate Emeritus Professor Robin Warren AC, who was aged 87.
Professor Warren and Professor Barry Marshall AC were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005.
Their work on the bacterial basis for stomach ulcers revolutionised the treatment of gastro-duodenal ulcers, by enabling an antibiotic cure, and has led to a significant reduction worldwide in the prevalence of gastric cancer.
Croakey was privileged to interview Dr Robin Warren many years ago.
#CroakeyREAD
Events upcoming