Can J Public Health
October 2024
The COVID-19 pandemic led many countries to consider reforms to their economic policies, in part to better deal with global warming, mass population migration and displacements, and worsening global inequalities. Some health progressive changes have been made, but the world still confronts the contradiction between economic growth and the need to reduce aggregate global consumption. Well-being economies based on valuing human and planetary health have been proposed as a viable option, with more appeal than concepts such as degrowth or postgrowth economics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEstablishing a robust One Health (OH) governance is essential for ensuring effective coordination and collaboration among human, animal, and environmental health sectors to prevent and address complex health challenges like zoonoses or antimicrobial resistance. This study conducted a mixed-methods environmental scan to assess to what extent Mexico displays a OH governance and identify opportunities for improvement. Through documentary analysis, the study mapped OH national-level governance elements: infrastructure, multi-level regulations, leadership, multi-coordination mechanisms (MCMs), and financial and OH-trained human resources.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Several youth staying at emergency youth shelters (EYSs) in Toronto experience poorly coordinated care for their health needs, as both the EYS and health systems operate largely in silos when coordinating care for this population. Understanding how each system is structurally and functionally bound in their healthcare coordination roles for youth experiencing homelessness (YEH) is a preliminary step to identify how healthcare coordination can be strengthened using a system thinking lens, particularly through the framework for transformative system change.
Methods: Forty-six documents, and twenty-four semi-structured interviews were analyzed to explore how the EYS and health systems are bound in their healthcare coordination roles.
Despite self-congratulatory rhetoric, Canada compromised COVID-19 vaccine equity with policies impeding a proposed global waiver of vaccine intellectual property (IP) rules. To learn from Canada's vaccine nationalism we explore the - a coherent textual picture of the world - in a sample of Government of Canada communications regarding global COVID-19 vaccine sharing. Analysed documents portray risks and disparities as unrelated to the dynamics and power relations of the Canadian and international economies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Youth experiencing homelessness (YEH) suffer from poorer physical and mental health outcomes than stably housed youth. Additionally, YEH are forced to navigate fragmented health and social service systems on their own, where they often get lost between systems when transitioning or post-discharge. Inevitably, YEH require support with health system navigation and healthcare coordination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAbout 900 youth experiencing homelessness (YEH) reside at an emergency youth shelter (EYS) in Toronto on any given night. Several EYSs offer access to healthcare based on youths' needs, including access to primary care, and mental health and addictions support. However, youth also require healthcare from the broader health system, which is often challenging to navigate and access.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Emerging infectious diseases of zoonotic origin present a critical threat to global population health. As accelerating globalisation makes epidemics and pandemics more difficult to contain, there is a need for effective preventive interventions that reduce the risk of zoonotic spillover events. Public policies can play a key role in preventing spillover events.
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 PDFPurpose: This paper examines the intrahousehold dynamics between women and men present in tobacco farming households in Mozambique. Attention to the experiences and realities of the smallholder farmers is crucial for understanding approaches to alternative livelihoods. Intrahousehold dynamics can provide important insights into how these households and their members view tobacco production and engage with the political economy of tobacco farming, how they make decisions, and the rationale and values behind these decisions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Soc Determinants Health Health Serv
July 2023
Social protection can buffer the negative impacts of unemployment on health. Have stimulus packages introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic mitigated potential harms to health from unemployment? We performed a systematic review of the health effects of job loss during the first year of the pandemic. We searched three electronic databases and identified 49 studies for inclusion.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlobally, negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on malaria prevention and control efforts have been caused by delayed distributions of long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLIN), decreased outpatient attendance, and disruptions to malaria testing and treatment. Using a mixed methods approach, we aimed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on community-level malaria prevention and health-seeking practices in Benin more than one year after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We collected data through community-based cross-sectional surveys with 4200 households and ten focus group discussions (FGDs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough ideas about preventive actions for pandemics have been advanced during the COVID-19 crisis, there has been little consideration for how they can be operationalised through governance structures within the context of the wildlife trade for human consumption. To date, pandemic governance has mostly focused on outbreak surveillance, containment, and response rather than on avoiding zoonotic spillovers in the first place. However, given the acceleration of globalisation, a paradigm shift towards prevention of zoonotic spillovers is warranted as containment of outbreaks becomes unfeasible.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOne Health is a transdisciplinary approach used to address complex concerns related to human, animal, plant, and ecosystem health. One Health frameworks and operational tools are available to support countries and communities, particularly for the prevention and control of zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial resistance and the protection of food safety. However, One Health has yet to be implemented in a manner that fully considers the complexities and interconnectedness of the diverse influences that have impacts at a larger system level.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Health Policy Manag
April 2024
Introduction: The increasing incidence of pathogen transmission from animals to humans (zoonotic spillover events) has been attributed to behavioural practices and ecological and socioeconomic change. As these events sometimes involve pathogens with epidemic or pandemic potential, they pose a serious threat to population health. Public policies may play a key role in preventing these events.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlobalization has been declared dead or dying for many years, although recently, the number of voices declaring it 'over' has swelled [1]. As editors of a journal interrogating how globalization affects health, we confront the question: Have the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia's war against Ukraine, a breakdown in multilateralism, and the risk of a return to the stagflation of the 1970s finally sounded a death knell for the research and scholarship we have been publishing in the journal's 20-year history? We think not and argue below why, in our post-pandemic fractured and fractious era, it is vitally important to retain a focus on this messy construct short-handed as 'globalization.'
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) receding, many countries are pondering what a post-pandemic economy should look like. Some advocate a more inclusive stakeholder model of capitalism. Others caution that this would be insufficient to deal with our pre-pandemic crises of income inequality and climate change.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced the central role of the One Health (OH) approach, as a multisectoral and multidisciplinary perspective, to tackle health threats at the human-animal-environment interface. This study assessed Brazilian preparedness and response to COVID-19 and zoonoses with a focus on the OH approach and equity dimensions. We conducted an environmental scan using a protocol developed as part of a multi-country study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Maternal mortality continues to decrease in the world but remain the most important health problems in low-income countries. Although evidence indicates that social support is an important factor influencing health facility delivery, it has not been extensively studied in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the effect of maternal social support and related factors on health facility delivery in southwest Ethiopia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCovid-19 has impeded achievement of the sustainable development goals and a radical rethink of the global economy is required to meet them argue
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Accelerating progress to implement effective alcohol policies is necessary to achieve multiple targets within the WHO global strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol and the Sustainable Development Goals. However, the alcohol industry's role in shaping alcohol policy through international avenues, such as trade fora, is poorly understood. We investigate whether the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a forum for alcohol industry influence over alcohol policy.
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