Bull World Health Organ
February 2025
Objective: To map how social, commercial, political and digital determinants of health have changed or emerged during the recent digital transformation of society and to identify priority areas for policy action.
Methods: We systematically searched MEDLINE, Embase and Web of Science on 24 September 2023, to identify eligible reviews published in 2018 and later. To ensure we included the most recent literature, we supplemented our review with non-systematic searches in PubMed® and Google Scholar, along with records identified by subject matter experts.
Glob Public Health
December 2025
Most data governance frameworks are designed to protect the individuals from whom data originates. However, the impacts of digital practices extend to a broader population and are embedded in significant power asymmetries within and across nations. Further, inequities in digital societies impact everyone, not just those directly involved.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLancet Public Health
September 2024
The increasing use of digital media and devices by children has led to growing concerns that spending time online without sufficient guarding is having negative effects on their health and wellbeing. In this Viewpoint, we argue that children's use of digital technologies and engagement in digital environments should be recognised as important determinants of their health and that a public health approach is required to protect children from digital harms. Drawing on lessons from well-established approaches to address other public health challenges, we summarise three groups of public health interventions that can help delay media use among very young children, reduce digital media use among children of all ages, and mitigate any harmful consequences of children's digital media use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn 2017, we set out-along with a larger group of authors-to assess Germany's contribution and potential leadership role in global health. We considered the ambitions and manifold efforts of Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration to become a trusted leader in global health governance and a reliable supporter of multilateral institutions, especially WHO. Based on the recommendations of our 2017 paper, in this Review we determine whether the country has indeed lived up to its vision and ambitions expressed in the Global Health Strategy adopted by the cabinet in 2020.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe One Health concept has acquired increasing attention due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue for a health promotion perspective that frames One Health in terms of positive health for people, animals, and ecosystems and includes a spiritual-cosmological dimension. This would enhance policy, research, and practice across disciplines and sectors for a more resilient and harmonious planet.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Health Policy Manag
December 2022
In line with the global trend, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has been growing vulnerable to the direct and indirect health effects of climate change including death tolls due to climatological disasters and diseases sensitive to climate change since the industrial revolution. Regarding the limited capacity of MENA countries to adapt and respond to these effects, and also after relative failures of the previous negotiation in Glasgow, in the upcoming COP27 in Egypt, the heads of the region's parties are determined to take advantage of the opportunity to host MENA to mitigate and prevent the worst effects of climate change. This would be achieved through mobilizing international partners to support climate resilience, a major economic transformation, and put health policy and management in a strategic position to contribute to thinking and action on these pressing matters, at least to avoid or minimize the future adverse consequences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOver the past two decades, global health diplomacy, foreign policy for health, and global health policy have changed substantially. Diplomacy is a constitutive part of the system of global health governance. COVID-19 hit the world when multilateral cooperation was subject to major challenges, and global health has since become integral to geopolitics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDuring the pandemic, the world has experienced how the geopolitics of global health have immediate, ruthless repercussions for the lives and livelihoods of billions, say . The challenge of a pandemic treaty negotiation process is to be responsive to these interconnected levels of geopolitics
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Interest in digital technologies in the health care sector is growing and can be a way to reduce the burden on professional caregivers while helping people to become more independent. Social robots are regarded as a special form of technology that can be usefully applied in professional caregiving with the potential to focus on interpersonal contact. While implementation is progressing slowly, a debate on the concepts and applications of social robots in future care is necessary.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF