 |
|
Data on Life Expectancy Show Many Countries Clustered in High Mortality Traps
October 11, 2007Boston, MA - Growing recognition of the importance of health as a contributing factor to economic development and societal change has prompted the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) to add a new subsection in Sustainable Health to its existing section on Sustainable Development. The inaugural subsection, posted online Oct. 3, 2007 includes an editorial by Barry R. Bloom, Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), describing this new dimension of the sustainable science field and summarizing the special section's four articles, among them Mortality Traps and the Dynamics of Health Transitions, in which Professors David Bloom and David Canning, from the Department of Population and International Health at HSPH, analyze global life expectancy data to show that most countries are clustered in high or low mortality groupings with little continuum of change between them.
The traditional view of health in the context of economic development sees robust macroeconomic performance leading to improvements in health. But that paradigm has broadened in recent years to include the view that, "health is also a significant contributing determinant of economic and social development," writes Dean Barry R. Bloom.
The new challenge for the international community, he continues, "goes beyond how to contribute to pilot programs in health that provide drugs, vaccines and preventive or health care services" to how to do so in a way that engages the local and national populations and enables the programs to expand to a nationwide scale that is sustainable over time.
[As defined by the UN Bruntland Commission: "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."]
Economists David E. Bloom and David Canning describe the discovery in life expectancy data of two clusters of countries, one of high mortality and the other low, that both progress toward improved life expectancy but lack a continuum of change between them. An examination of life expectancy in the early 1960s revealed one group of countries clustered around a life expectancy of 40 years and a second group clustered around a life expectancy of 65 years. By the first half of this decade, the mode of each cluster had moved up by about 10 years. ( Mode is the value occurring most frequently in a series of observations or statistical data.) The authors reject the idea that these changes reflect a simple convergence process, that instead, the data suggest continuous advances within the cluster but that low life expectancy countries seem mired in a mortality "trap." A few countries from time to time seem to escape the trap by rapidly reaching a certain threshold and then leap the gap to the high life expectancy cluster. These observations hold even when excluding the effect of AIDS mortality on countries. The authors suggest consideration of a "big push" (or transformational) theory of health aid that focuses on helping those countries approaching the low-mortality threshold to bounce into the low mortality cluster rather than providing incremental funding to a larger set of countries.
"With limited resources, the largest health gains may be achieved by focusing on countries near the threshold, where small changes in health status can have large effects on those countries' chances of escaping the mortality trap," they write.
A second paper, by Burton H. Singer of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University and Marcia Caldas de Castro, assistant professor of demography in the Department of Population and International Health at HSPH, argues that sustainable control of schistosomiasis and other water-borne diseases in the tropics will require bridging organizations and communities to ensure human and animal disease surveillance, monitoring the impact of new economic development projects and linking the engineering and health institutions responsible for clean water and sanitation.
Another article describes the success of a program in rural villages of Argentina that, by including the community, was able to create sustainable control of the parasite causing Chagas disease. A fourth article is an analysis of factors predisposing industrial workers in India to cardiovascular disease in which the critical importance of education to reduce tobacco use and hypertension is revealed.
All four papers in the special series, writes Dean Barry R. Bloom, "emphasize the importance of multisectoral approaches to providing sustainable solutions to complex health problems in developing countries -- public health, medicine, engineering, education and community engagement."
Sustainable health: A new dimension of sustainability science
Barry R. Bloom
PNAS 2007 104: 15969.
Bridges to sustainable tropical health
Burton H. Singer and Marcia Caldas de Castro
PNAS 2007 104: 16038-16043.
Mortality traps and the dynamics of health transitions
David E. Bloom and David Canning
PNAS 2007 104: 16044-16049.
Sustainable vector control and management of Chagas disease in the Gran Chaco, Argentina
Ricardo E. Gürtler, Uriel Kitron, M. Carla Cecere, Elsa L. Segura, and Joel E. Cohen
PNAS 2007 104: 16194-16199.
Educational status and cardiovascular risk profile in Indians
K. Srinath Reddy, Dorairaj Prabhakaran, Panniyammakal Jeemon, K. R. Thankappan, Prashant Joshi, Vivek Chaturvedi, Lakshmy Ramakrishnan, and Farooque Ahmed
PNAS 2007 104: 16263-16268.
Harvard School of Public Health
[As defined by the UN Bruntland Commission: "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."]
Economists David E. Bloom and David Canning describe the discovery in life expectancy data of two clusters of countries, one of high mortality and the other low, that both progress toward improved life expectancy but lack a continuum of change between them. An examination of life expectancy in the early 1960s revealed one group of countries clustered around a life expectancy of 40 years and a second group clustered around a life expectancy of 65 years. By the first half of this decade, the mode of each cluster had moved up by about 10 years. ( Mode is the value occurring most frequently in a series of observations or statistical data.) The authors reject the idea that these changes reflect a simple convergence process, that instead, the data suggest continuous advances within the cluster but that low life expectancy countries seem mired in a mortality "trap." A few countries from time to time seem to escape the trap by rapidly reaching a certain threshold and then leap the gap to the high life expectancy cluster. These observations hold even when excluding the effect of AIDS mortality on countries. The authors suggest consideration of a "big push" (or transformational) theory of health aid that focuses on helping those countries approaching the low-mortality threshold to bounce into the low mortality cluster rather than providing incremental funding to a larger set of countries.
"With limited resources, the largest health gains may be achieved by focusing on countries near the threshold, where small changes in health status can have large effects on those countries' chances of escaping the mortality trap," they write.
A second paper, by Burton H. Singer of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University and Marcia Caldas de Castro, assistant professor of demography in the Department of Population and International Health at HSPH, argues that sustainable control of schistosomiasis and other water-borne diseases in the tropics will require bridging organizations and communities to ensure human and animal disease surveillance, monitoring the impact of new economic development projects and linking the engineering and health institutions responsible for clean water and sanitation.
Another article describes the success of a program in rural villages of Argentina that, by including the community, was able to create sustainable control of the parasite causing Chagas disease. A fourth article is an analysis of factors predisposing industrial workers in India to cardiovascular disease in which the critical importance of education to reduce tobacco use and hypertension is revealed.
All four papers in the special series, writes Dean Barry R. Bloom, "emphasize the importance of multisectoral approaches to providing sustainable solutions to complex health problems in developing countries -- public health, medicine, engineering, education and community engagement."
Sustainable health: A new dimension of sustainability science
Barry R. Bloom
PNAS 2007 104: 15969.
Bridges to sustainable tropical health
Burton H. Singer and Marcia Caldas de Castro
PNAS 2007 104: 16038-16043.
Mortality traps and the dynamics of health transitions
David E. Bloom and David Canning
PNAS 2007 104: 16044-16049.
Sustainable vector control and management of Chagas disease in the Gran Chaco, Argentina
Ricardo E. Gürtler, Uriel Kitron, M. Carla Cecere, Elsa L. Segura, and Joel E. Cohen
PNAS 2007 104: 16194-16199.
Educational status and cardiovascular risk profile in Indians
K. Srinath Reddy, Dorairaj Prabhakaran, Panniyammakal Jeemon, K. R. Thankappan, Prashant Joshi, Vivek Chaturvedi, Lakshmy Ramakrishnan, and Farooque Ahmed
PNAS 2007 104: 16263-16268.
Harvard School of Public Health
Life Expectancy Current Events and Life Expectancy News RSS3-substituted indolones as novel therapeutic compounds for neurodegenerative conditions
Neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), disrupt the quality of life for patients, put a tremendous burden on family caregivers, and cost society billions of dollars annually.
Study: Elderly Women Can Increase Strength But Still Risk Falls
Elderly women can increase muscle strength as much as young women can, a new study from the University of New Hampshire finds, indicating that decline in muscle function is less a natural part of the aging process than due to a decline in physical activity.
Researchers estimate lives lost due to delay in antiretroviral drug use for HIV/AIDS in South Africa
More than 330,000 lives were lost to HIV/AIDS in South Africa from 2000 and 2005 because a feasible and timely antiretroviral (ARV) treatment program was not implemented, assert researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) in a study published online by the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (JAIDS) (http://www.jaids.com/).
Treatment window expanded
Patients can still benefit up to 4.5 hours after a stroke if a drug that dis-solves blood clots in the brain is administered. Thus far, three hours had been considered the useful limit for administering thrombolytic drugs.
Study examines cost-effectiveness of HIV monitoring strategy in countries with limited resources
In a computer-based model evaluating the benefits and costs of three types of HIV disease monitoring strategies, early initiation of antiretroviral therapy and monitoring using the CD4 count, a measure of immune system function, instead of based on symptoms appear to provide health benefits in low- and middle-income countries.
Depressed dialysis patients more likely to be hospitalized or die, researcher finds
Dialysis patients diagnosed with depression are nearly twice as likely to be hospitalized or die within a year than those who are not depressed, a UT Southwestern Medical Center researcher has found.
Depressed dialysis patients more likely to be hospitalized or die, researcher finds
Dialysis patients diagnosed with depression are nearly twice as likely to be hospitalized or die within a year than those who are not depressed, a UT Southwestern Medical Center researcher has found.
Study shows PDE5 inhibitor more effective when used on demand in erectile dysfunction
European Urology, the official journal of the European Association of Urology will be featuring the article 'Effect of nightly versus on-demand vardenafil on recovery of erectile function in men following bilateral nerve-sparing radical prostatectomy' by F. Montorsi et al.in the October issue, showing for the first time that vardenafil, a PDE5 inhibitor, is more efficacious when used on-demand in men with erectile dysfunction, supporting a shift towards on-demand dosing with PDE5 inhibitors in this patient group.
Primary care health consultations can be cost-effective and may help reduce cardiovascular risk
Offering health tests and health consultations in primary care settings can be cost-effective and may help in the fight against the increased burden of lifestyle diseases, according to new research published today in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health (August issue published this week by SAGE).
Study outlines teens' preferences and trade-offs for freedom from acne
Teens report that they would pay about $275 to have never had acne, and are willing to pay considerably more to be acne-free than to have 50 percent clearance of their acne or to have clear skin with acne scars, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
More Life Expectancy Current Events and Life Expectancy News Articles
 | Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz With his bestselling blend of nail-biting intensity, daring artistry, and storytelling magic, Dean Koontz returns with an emotional roller coaster of a tale filled with enough twists, turns, shocks, and surprises for ten ordinary novels. Here is the story of five days in the life of an ordinary man born to an extraordinary legacy—a story that will challenge the way you look at good and evil,... |
 | Diet, Life Expectancy, and Chronic Disease: Studies of Seventh-Day Adventists and Other Vegetarians by Gary E. Fraser Research into the role of diet in chronic disease can be difficult to interpret. Measurement errors in different studies often produce conflicting answers to the same questions. Seventh-day Adventists and other groups with many vegetarian members are ideal study populations because they have a wide range of dietary habits that adds poer and clarity to research findings. This book analyzes the... |
 | Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz |
 | Rising Life Expectancy: A Global History by James C. Riley Between 1800 and 2000 life expectancy at birth rose from about 30 years to a global average of 67 years, and to more than 75 years in favored countries. This dramatic change was called a health transition, characterized by a transition both in how long people expected to live, and how they expected to die. Rising Life Expectancy examines the way humans reduced risks to their survival, both... |
| Life Expectancy by Dean R Koontz | |
 | Poverty and Life Expectancy: The Jamaica Paradox by James C. Riley A multidisciplinary study that reconstructs Jamaica's rise from low to high life expectancy and explains how that was achieved. Jamaica is one of the small number of countries that has attained a life expectancy nearly matching that in the rich lands, such as the US, despite having a much lower level of per capita income. Why this is so is the Jamaica paradox. This book provides an answer,... |
 | Life Expectancy by Dean R. Koontz |
 | Dean Koontz 2 Pack - By The Light of the Moon / Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz, Dean Koontz |
| Development crisis: AIDS slashes life expectancy in 23 African countries.: An article from: UN Chronicle by Beatriz Pavon This digital document is an article from UN Chronicle, published by United Nations Publications on September 1, 2004. The length of the article is 677 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.Citation... | |
| Life Expectancy by Dean R. Koontz |
| © 2008 BrightSurf.com |