The column this week has a focus on the many determinants of health, some big speeches with big stakes, pressures on global healthcare from conflict, oppression and Western demand, COVID updates, and more.
The quotable?
“Our job is to convince people that democracy can actually deliver.”
Policy tango: two steps forward, one step…..?
South Australia is attracting international attention (well at least, the popular The Rest is Politics podcast) with its plan to ban political donations, and this week announced it would “deliver the most comprehensive civics and citizenship curriculum in the country”.
Premier Peter Malinauskas said students at every year level will learn about “democratic principles that contribute to active citizenship, and apply them in a real world which is undergoing radical change”.
It’s surely needed and to be congratulated, particularly given the “civics crisis”, as one commentator put it, that became evident during last year’s Voice campaign, revealing “how little we know about how we are governed”.
But it will interesting to see what those students think of South Australia’s controversial anti-protest law changes, which last year lifted the maximum penalty for obstructing public place from $750 to $50,000, or three months imprisonment.
It’s a move that Amnesty Australia said would “have a chilling effect on the right of citizens to peacefully protest and on South Australia’s democracy”.
Big speeches and big stakes
Democratic principles, justice, equity and racism have been at the heart of big speeches this week, in Australia and internationally, particularly in the United States with the Democrat National Conference underway in Chicago.
Don’t miss former Minister for Indigenous Australian’s Linda Burney’s farewell speech to Parliament this week, reported elsewhere at Croakey, and some more below.
Penny Wong: Centre For Asian-Australian Leadership inaugural annual lecture
Michelle Obama: “In 77 days, we have the power to turn our country away from the fear, division and smallness of the past. We have the power to marry our hope with our action. We have the power to pay forward the love, sweat and sacrifice of our mothers and fathers and all those who came before us….
“Who’s telling Trump he might be seeking one of those black jobs?”
Read the speech transcript or watch it in full.
Barack Obama: “Our job is to convince people that democracy can actually deliver…..We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make decisions about our own life, how we worship, what our family looks like, how many kids we have, who we marry. And we believe that freedom requires us to recognise that other people have the freedom to make choices that are different than ours.”
Read the transcript or watch the full speech.
Social, environmental, commercial, digital, political….
Voices of the Crisis Final Report from the People’s Commission into Australia’s Housing Crisis
Public health interventions to address digital determinants of children’s health and wellbeing
UK race riots: Excerpt from X/Twitter thread from UK journalist/commentator George Monbiot:
“Neoliberalism simultaneously promises the world and snatches it away……
The result is a cadre of young men, like those of a century ago, who think they are sticking it to The Man, when in fact they are following his orders. Many of them now call themselves “heterodox”, which is kind of ironic, as they all seem to believe the same things.
These “heterodox” beliefs are roughly what their conservative grandparents believed, and what previous generations of young people rebelled against. It’s a stale, cruel doctrine of racism, misogyny, homophobia and patriarchy, repackaged as edgy and radical.”
Countering Industry Arguments Against Code Implementation: Evidence and Rights-Based Responses
Indigenous health & (in)justice
Coroner finds death of Dougie Hampson ‘preventable’, refers doctor to medical complaints board
You can watch a 60-minute presentation from the Productivity Commission on the latest Annual Data Compilation Report (ADCR) on the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.
Climate action needs you!
That’s the call to action from a publication from US author, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit, called: “What Can I Do about the Climate Emergency? (A LOT! HERE’S HOW!)”
It promises a practical guide for everyone – activist, protester, campaigner, policy person, letter writer – for “what they can do against climate chaos and for a just and thriving natural and human world”, with examples of people “who have found their role, their power, their impactful projects, and their climate community”.
“Harvard’s revised curriculum now includes lessons on disaster planning and reducing the healthcare system’s carbon footprint. For the section on kidney and endocrine health, Kline said they incorporated a module for natural disaster planning. Patients with chronic kidney disease who rely on dialysis will need a disaster plan in place if a weather event interferes with their access to care, she explained.”
Global health and healthcare
Arrivals and awards
Spreading the word
Spreading the virus…..
Working-age adults between 30 and 39 years were most affected by lost productivity due to long COVID, accounting for 26.9 percent of total labour loss.
“The weight of evidence around long COVID and its impact on population health has experts calling for the condition to be factored into policy decisions,” Professor Raina McIntyre and colleagues wrote in The Conversation.
Measures that reduce the risk of COVID infection will subsequently reduce long COVID risk, including mask use in high-risk, crowded places, clean air and ensuring people are up-to-date with vaccines.
“There’s strong evidence vaccines reduce the likelihood of long COVID, and some evidence antivirals may also lower the risk,” they wrote. The authors note some limitations in the study which can be read here.
A recent Nature study estimated the global economic impact of long COVID to be approximately $1 trillion – equivalent to about one percent of the global economy.
JAMA Network: Characterizing Long COVID in Children and Adolescents
Coming up
