GHNGN climate change

Should global health prioritize climate change over more proximate health concerns?

Climate change is a public health issue.  According to many studies conducted by researchers around the world, temperatures at the Earth’s surface are increasing, as well as in the atmosphere and oceans. It is said the global average temperature has increased by 1.1°C since the pre-industrial period, and by 0.2°C compared to 2011-2015. The main cause of this is greenhouse gas emission and the increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Consequently, climate change is altering Read more…

prison health GHNGN

Prison Health is Public Health

As the world scrambles to thwart off the effects of COVID-19, life in social isolation and under physical distancing has left us trying to understand this new normal. Throughout this time, feelings of despair, confusion and grief have become daily and overbearing occurrences for much of the world’s population. Every country’s response has been different but one thing is certain; our mental health, to varying degrees, has collectively been challenged. Governments and institutions throughout the Read more…

World refugee day – An Interview with Anila Noor

In honor of World Refugee Day, Anila Noor joined us for an interview about her experience as a refugee and work as a Gender Migration Policy Expert. We don’t have to look far to find strong, inspiring women around us, but what stands out the most about Anila is her story. Anila says she has been a feminist since the day she was born. She continued to foster those values all throughout her early life Read more…

Idea Creativity

A Culture of Creative Volunteering in Global Health – Contemplating Modern Altruism

For anyone using Facebook, Instagram or other Social Media: have you ever been bothered by ads popping up that completely match your interests? This is called targeted advertising and is based on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. I don’t want to demonize it. It is actually quite fascinating. As with many things in the world, you don’t make them better by devaluing and wildly criticizing them. However, understanding them and providing ideas about how to Read more…

Biological Manifestations of Social Maladies: Lupus in the United States

What determines health and causes disease? From ancient times to the 21st century, the determinants of health have morphed and shifted along with our understanding of disease etiology – from Hippocratic principles and miasmatic forces, to germ theory and hereditary factors such as genetics and epigenetics. However, in modern medicine and public health, we have come full circle to incorporate ancient and modern paradigms.

Obstetric Fistula: The Invisible Women

Credits: WHO/P. Virot “Taking action means saying ‘no’ to indifference… It is a choice: whether or not to support a woman, whether or not to protect her, whether or not to defend her rights” Dr. Denis Mukwege Each year between 50,000 and 100,000 women and girls worldwide are affected by obstetric fistula, resulting in an estimated 2-3 million women currently living with the condition. Fistula presents a burden in nearly 60 countries, almost exclusively in Read more…

COVID-19: What about my asthma?

Health authorities include those with asthma among the list of groups most vulnerable to developing severe illness.  According to the World Health Organization (WHO), asthma is a chronic inflammatory condition characterized by recurrent attacks of dyspnea and wheezing, which may vary in severity and frequency from person to person. The bronchioles narrow due to inflammation and more mucus is secreted, leading to shortness of breath. Around 339 million people are living with asthma globally. There Read more…

Achieving FP2020 in Nigeria: the need to make more contraceptive options easily accessible by young people

By Nnamdi Eseme In Nigeria many young people do not fully understand the meaning of family planning, options available and how to go about it. This is evidenced in the high rate of unsafe abortions among girls and women, maternal deaths and alarming increase in population. Despite huge efforts made to increase contraceptive usage and educating women of reproductive age about family planning, little has been achieved in ensuring that proper contraception is used.  In Read more…

“What we learned from the World Health Summit 2015”

By Carmen D. Mejía Velázquez This year the World Health Summit (WHS) was held in the heart of the city of Berlin, Germany.  More than 1,500 participants from 90 different countries took part in this forum where different ideas and concepts were exchanged and presented. Among the participants, decision-makers and representatives from health fields and industries were invited to address the most relevant health issues that medicine and health care systems are facing nowadays. The Read more…

Routledge Handbook in Global Public Health, edited by Richard Parker and Marni Sommer (2011)

By Ana Antunes When gathering ideas for this book review section, I asked myself a very simple question – If I had to choose only one book to fulfil the Global Health section of my Faculty’s library (or my own personal shelf in a wretched alternate universe) – what would it be? The answer came straight to mind, possibly because this was the book that I reached more often whenever working on essays or simply Read more…