23 June 2013

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead


©   M. Herzfeld

19 June 2013

Our Health - Who Decides? Forum update

As you know we are currently planning a significant event for November this year – our inaugural forum: Our health – who decides?

There are a group of 13 Network members who are working together to bring you a thought-provoking, exciting and engaging event. We are committed to delivering an event that is people-focused and that is underpinned by the values of courage, empowerment, shared responsibility and fairness.

So far the following presenters have agreed to be involved. To stay up to date, you are invited to follow this blog (scroll down on left side):

Ron Labonte: Ronald Labonte is Canada Research Chair in Globalization & Health Equity, Institute of Population Health , and Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, at the University of Ottawa , and Adjunct Professor, Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, University of Saskatchewan . He is the former Director of the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit (SPHERU), a bi-university interdisciplinary research organization he created and led from 1999 until 2004, that was committed to “engaged research” on population health determinants at local, national and global levels. Ron is a founding member of the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research, and a past board member of provincial and national public health associations in Canada. He recently worked with international colleagues in preparing The Global Health Watch, an ‘alternative world health report,’ released in July, 2005. 

Fran Baum is Professor of Public Health and Director of the Southgate Institute of Health, Society and Equity, and the South Australian Community Health Research Unit, at Flinders University. Professor Baum is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and one of Australia's leading researchers on the social and economic determinants of health. In 2008 she was awarded a prestigious Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship focusing on development of effective government and community responses to social determinants of health inequity and social exclusion. She holds several other national competitive grants investigating aspects of health inequity, and has an extensive teaching career in public health. Professor Baum's numerous publications relate to social determinants of health, including Aboriginal people's health, health inequities, primary health care, health promotion, Healthy Cities, and social capital. Her text book The New Public Health (3rd ed. 2008 OUP) is widely used as a core public health text.


Dora Marinova is Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University Sustainability Policy (CUSP) Institute (WA). Dora’s involvement and interest in interdisciplinary research started during her PhD studies with the development of a novel method for measuring the effects of R&D investment on economic development. Her background in engineering, mathematics and economics allows her to cross boundaries between social sciences and science research, policy strategies and engineering, demography and community development, university, industry and civil society.

  

Sally Brinkam is a social epidemiologist with the majority of her research focusing on societies' impact on child development. Sally is a Senior Research Fellow and Program Manager Faculty Member at the world renowned Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth. Sally is also the Co-Director of the Fraser Mustard Centre, an innovative new initiative between the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research and the South Australia Department of Education and Child Development aimed to improve research translation. Sally is well known for spearheading the use of the Early Development Instrument (EDI) in Australia, being the first to pilot the instrument outside of Canada. Sally continues to work across the country to help facilitate the use of the Australian EDI (AEDI) working with communities, service providers and governments. Locally Sally consults to the Department of Children's Services Policy Directorate primarily around data-linkage, the Children's Centres Operational Group around evaluation, and the SA AEDI Team around community advocacy and research translation. Internationally, Sally works with Governments and donor organisations such as the World Bank, UNICEF, AusAid and the Bernard Van Leer Foundation working with various measures of child development for monitoring and evaluation purposes. Sally has over 50 publications including books, chapters, monographs and journal articles covering topics such as infant mouthing behaviours, child physical activity and nutrition levels, the measurement of alcohol related violence, the evaluation of teenage pregnancy prevention programs, how child development varies across communities and the impact of socio economics and service integration on child development. As such Sally brings locally, nationally and internationally recognised epidemiological skills particularly in relation to population monitoring of child development and education.  She has a commitment to practical, pragmatic and translatable research.



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To assist your fellow members in their efforts to make this event both memorable and significant we invite you to be involved. There are a number of ways you can participate NOW including:


·         Financial support: Does your organisation have the capacity to contribute some funding toward this event, or to fund a particular aspect of it such as the involvement of an international speaker? If so, we’d like to hear from you. The Network does not have any funding to run this event and therefore we are looking for support from organisations that are able to help out.

·         Tell everyone: Help us promote this event and encourage people to put it in their diaries.

·         Invite someone else: Think about inviting a peer who might not ordinarily think that their work is about health, a neighbour, a politician, your Mum...to come with you to this forum. This event is for everyone who has ever wondered, “Why, despite the vast resources spent on health care, is there still so much ill health and health inequality?”



We look forward to bringing you more news about our progress shortly and also look forward to hearing from you about how you can assist.


More references that may interest from the Australian Health Promotion Association Conference (Day 3 - final)

Addressing spatial concentrations of social disadvantage: 

http://www.ahuri.edu.au/publications/projects/myrp704/

Summary
This Multi-Year Research Project (MYRP) will focus on the role of housing policies and programs in meeting the challenges presented by spatial concentrations of disadvantage.

Project Number: MYRP704
Research Theme: Public_and_community_housing, Social_wellbeing, Urban_planning_and_development
Project Leader: Pawson, Hal
Funding Year: 2011
Research Centre: Swinburne-Monash, UNSW-UWS

Description

Three overarching issues will be considered through the MYRP:
  1. How concentrations of social disadvantage have been conceptualised and how this relates to our broader understanding of the operation and impacts of housing and urban systems.
  2. The impacts of spatial disadvantage, and the importance of housing and place in mediating the incidence and experience of residents of disadvantaged areas.
  3. How policy, practitioners and communities can respond to spatial disadvantage in 'best for people, best for place' terms.
A policy, practice and literature review has been completed.  It shows how disadvantage was at one stage concentrated in inner city areas but is increasingly found in middle-ring suburbs of Australian major cities. It argues that there are conceptual issues that still need resolution, such as understanding the most appropriate scale at which place-based disadvantage might be analysed,  and distinguishing the role that places (as opposed to demographic factors) play in identifying spatial disadvantage.  Future research as part of the MYRP will seek to develop a typology of disadvantaged places.
The review also considered the causes and consequences of spatial disadvantage. The emergence of public housing as a residualised tenure has been an obvious means by which disadvantage has been concentrated in particular areas, but there has also been some evidence (e.g. Randolph & Holloway, 2005) that private rental markets have impacted on spatial disadvantage. Future research as part of the MYRP will explore the role of the planning system and housing costs in concentrating disadvantage. It will also seek to better understand the lived experience of people in disadvantaged places, and consider the role of mobility in mitigating the effects of disadvantaged places.
Unlike other countries, there are currently few place-based initiatives aimed at addressing social disadvantage in Australia, with most focused on public housing redevelopments.  Some of the planned case-studies will involve places in which various interventions to address disadvantage have already been rolled out. Through analysis of these interventions and their impacts, it is hoped to provide new insights into regeneration policy effectiveness. 

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Indigenous Community Volunteers

Working with Indigenous Australian communities to improve quality of life, wellbeing and social inclusion.

18 June 2013

Promoting health in a different kind of way - more from the Australian Health Promotion Association Conference (Day 2)

Home-cooked food made by neighbours for neighbours



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Visit this website: Guilt Free Clothing

To the CEOs of H&M, GAP, and other fashion brands:

As citizens and consumers, we urge you to immediately sign an enforceable Bangladesh fire and building safety agreement, or risk fatal damage to your brand image. The agreement must commit you to pay for routine, independent inspections and safety upgrades for your supplier factories. Your companies and other multinationals profit from cheap labour, and can do much more to reduce the dangers of the places where your products are made....visit website for more.....


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The War Against the Poor 
Occupy Wall Street and the Politics of Financial Morality 

By Frances Fox Piven
We’ve been at war for decades now -- not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home.  Domestically, it’s been a war against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not surprising. You wouldn’t often have found the casualty figures from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the nightly TV news.  Devastating as it’s been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed -- until now.....read more here: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175463/

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Investing in Disadvantaged Young Children is an Economically Eļ¬ƒcient Policy

James J. Heckman

http://jenni.uchicago.edu/Australia/invest-disadv_2005-12-22_247pm_awb.pdf

For further info on Heckman visit: http://www.heckmanequation.org/

“Health Poem” by the Danish poet Piet Hein

Health is not bought with a chemist’s pills
Nor saved by the surgeon’s knife
Health is not only the absence of ills
But the fight for the fullness of life.

17 June 2013

Interesting references and papers from the Australian Health Promotion Association Conference in Sydney

Here is paper that may be worth a look it was referenced by Prof Mark Dooris from University of Central Lancashire in a presentation given this morning at the Australian Health Promotion National Conference.

 2012 Sep;132(5):235-9. Epub 2011 Jul 15.

A perspective on the future public health practitioner.

Source

Centre for Population Health Sciences, School of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, UK.

Abstract

In the centuries following the Enlightenment, scientific and technological developments gave 'modern people' an unprecedented ability to understand, predict and control the natural world. This has brought health and social benefits unimaginable to our ancestors and sets us apart from all previous generations. Yet there is a wide-ranging body of evidence that suggests that modernity is now in decline, largely because its methods and mindset are increasingly recognized as unsustainable. Problems are manifest in the emergence of new public health epidemics such as obesity and addictive behaviours, the loss of well-being and increase in anxiety and depression in affluent society, and the persistence of ever-widening health and social inequalities at national and global levels. Still larger problems now confront us, such as climate change, peak oil and the loss of biodiversity, all of which are linked to the 'modern' way of life. We are potentially faced with the collapse of certain aspects of modern society: we are certainly faced with the prospect of inevitable change. While the broad public health community has an important role to play in developing workable solutions to such daunting problems, we argue that some profound changes will be needed in order for us to cope successfully. No blueprints for dealing with change exist, which means that we will need to learn our way into the future. In this paper we take a perspective on the role and nature of the future practitioner in public health and health promotion. We argue that future practitioners will need to develop new ways of thinking, being and doing; new perspectives and new forms of understanding the world. We believe our discipline - and people generally - to be capable of such development, as insights from multiple sources tell us that human nature is malleable, not fixed. We use this analysis to trace, as examples, the imagined lives of five women living in different eras over the course of history in a Western society, and the emergence of different mindsets or worldviews, as the social, economic and cultural context changes. Post-modern analysts might insist that we have no basis for making value judgements between such different worldviews. In this paper, however, we argue that future practitioners should be empathetic to different views and willing to move beyond them, as necessary. We will need to learn and develop in ways that are compatible with our intrinsic needs as human beings and the needs of our ecosystem. We conclude by suggesting just some of the supportive processes of change needed in mapping out a more sustainable future for the public health community.

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 2002 Sep;56(9):647-52.

A glossary for health inequalities.

Source

Center for Society and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston 02115, USA. ichiro.kawachi@channing.harvard.edu

Abstract

In this glossary, the authors address eight key questions pertinent to health inequalities: (1) What is the distinction between health inequality and health inequity?; (2) Should we assess health inequalities themselves, or social group inequalities in health?; (3) Do health inequalities mainly reflect the effects of poverty, or are they generated by the socioeconomic gradient?; (4) Are health inequalities mediated by material deprivation or by psychosocial mechanisms?; (5) Is there an effect of relative income on health, separate from the effects of absolute income?; (6) Do health inequalities between places simply reflect health inequalities between social groups or, more significantly, do they suggest a contextual effect of place?; (7) What is the contribution of the lifecourse to health inequalities?; (8) What kinds of inequality should we study?
Full text article available here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1732240/pdf/v056p00647.pdf

12 June 2013

Latest news sent to the Network 12 May 2013

Book Club this Friday in Hobart

Anyone who is reading Gavin Mooney’s last book, The Health of Nations, (as well as anyone interested) is welcome to come along to a one hour discussion this Friday 14 June - please contact me for details.

Items of interest

Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Communities
Please go to http://www.mrchobart.org.au/announcements/tasmania-our-place-refugee-week-photographic-exhibtion-opening-friday-14-june-6pm-on-view-to-27-june for an invitation to the launch of the Refugee Week exhibition 2013 at the Moonah Arts Centre on Friday 14 June at 6.00pm.

Drug Action Week - 16-22 June 2013 - The Drug Education Network (DEN) would like to invite you to attend the Launch of Drug Action Week 2013 - 7:30 am – 9:00 am - Monday 17th June 2013 - Churchill Room, Salamanca Inn, 10 Gladstone Street Hobart - Please bring along some information to promote your service to attendees. Please RSVP to admin@den.org.au or 1300 369 319 asap! .

A collaborative newsletter between the Alcohol Tobacco & Other Drugs Council and the Mental Health Council of Tasmania: http://www.redaction.com.au/2013_06_04_Jointforces_4thed.pdf

Applications now open for the Heart Foundation Australian Indigenous Scholarship
Applications Close: Friday 28 June 2013 (5pm AEST). We are contacting you to ask you to help spread the word about the $40,000 pro rata per annum scholarship the Heart Foundation is offering. Our funding will support an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Island person to study for a research degree (PhD or Masters) in any area of research that is relevant to cardiovascular health (including biomedical, clinical, public health and health services research). The Heart Foundation is a co-signatory to the national Close the Gap campaign and we are committed to improving the life expectancy and quality of life of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.  As part of our plan, we are increasing our commitment to supporting and using research to benefit Indigenous Australians by providing the Australian Indigenous Scholarship. We would like to ensure as many people as possible have the opportunity to apply for the scholarship so that we can continue to strategically drive cardiovascular research and facilitate high quality research into the causes, diagnosis, treatment, management and prevention of cardiovascular disease that effects all Australians. The generous award provides a stipend of $40,000 pro rata per annum for up to 2 years for Masters and up to 3 years for PhD. Part time scholarships for longer periods may be considered. Further information is available on the Heart Foundation website about the Australian Indigenous Scholarship. Please share this opportunity with anyone who you feel might like to apply.  If you are able to assist us by including the information in any publications or websites, please contact Ernie Kocsis on 03 9321 1581. 

How integrated are homelessness, mental health and drug and alcohol services in Australia? Final report:
Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI); 13 May 2013. This is the final report of a project that focused on the integration of mental health and drug and alcohol services for homeless people in two states and documented the mechanisms and effectiveness of such linkages.

Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes – a great article!

State of the World’s Children 2013 Children with Disabilities
…..GIVEN SAME OPPORTUNITIES AS OTHERS, CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES CAN BE AGENTS OF CHANGE -- UN REPORT
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), New York, May 30 2013 , Website: http://uni.cf/18yEt7n, PDF file [150p.] at: http://uni.cf/15eBTzG
Children with disabilities have the same rights as all children but are some of the most invisible and marginalized people in the world according to a United Nations report released today, which cites recommendations on how to actively include children with disabilities in civic, social and cultural affairs so that both they and their communities benefit.

Alcohol Policy in Canada
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). The CAMH Alcohol Policy Framework (http://www.camh.ca/en/hospital/about_camh/influencing_public_policy/Documents/4854-AlcoholPolicyFramework.pdf) reviews the evidence around alcohol-related harm, discusses best practices for the prevention of alcohol problems, and outlines principles for an Ontario approach to alcohol policy in which the sale and consumption of alcohol are regulated with public health and safety as primary concerns. This document may prove useful to organizations and individuals engaged in public health, policy, and/or advocacy work in the area of alcohol.

The State of Food and Agriculture 2013 (SOFA)
Food Systems for Better Nutrition:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3300e/i3300e00.htm
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations – FAO
FAO urges end of malnutrition as priority --------Social and economic costs of global malnutrition unacceptable………….Twenty six percent of all children under five are stunted

Maternal and Child Nutrition - The Lancet Series 2013, The Lancet, published June 6, 2013
Available at http://www.thelancet.com/series/maternal-and-child-nutrition?elsca1=TW&elsca2=socialmedia. If you can’t access these articles and want something in particular please let me (Miriam) know and I will get it for you
"Nutrition is crucial to both individual and national development. The evidence in this Series furthers the evidence base that good nutrition is a fundamental driver of a wide range of developmental goals. The post-2015 sustainable development agenda must put addressing all forms of malnutrition at the top of its goals".
Global nutrition policy review What does it take to scale up nutrition action?, World Health Organization 2013, Available online at:
http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/84408/1/9789241505529_eng.pdf
“Malnutrition is found worldwide and is linked, either directly or indirectly, to major causes of death and disability. More than one third of all child deaths are attributable to undernutrition. Many low- and middle-income countries, particularly in Africa, have not achieved significant reductions in underweight, stunting or vitamin and mineral malnutrition. Wasting is still widespread, and essential infant and young child feeding practices are not improving in those low- and middle-income countries. At the same time, the rates of overweight and obesity are rising.”

European Environment Agency, 2013, European Union, 2013, Available online PDF [106p.] at: http://bit.ly/10Tytys
“……. This report outlines a number of environmental issues with a direct influence on people's health and well-being and is a follow-up and update to the 2005 EEA/JRC report.
As highlighted in EEA's The European Environment — state and outlook 2010 the policy focus is increasingly shifting from single environmental pollution issues towards systemic challenges regarding the maintenance of ecosystem resilience and the delivery of ecosystem services to human society. Climate change is a good example with its combined impacts on food and water security, heat waves, flooding risks and potential spread of diseases“……The current, predominantly hazard-focused and compartmentalised approach to environment and health is insufficient to address interconnected and interdependent challenges, such as climate change, depletion of resources, ecosystem degradation, the obesity epidemic, and persistent social inequality. The policy focus therefore needs to be widened to social and other policy domains, such as consumption, resource efficiency, natural capital, ecosystem services and spatial planning. This implies a greater need for a multidisciplinary and multi‑stakeholder dialogue to take account of values and attitudes.
Climate mitigation is an area where complex systemic interactions, feedbacks and trade-offs are particularly obvious. A shift towards renewable (bio-based) energy may have consequences for food security and human well-being, as energy cropping increasingly competes with food production. Where it replaces extensive farming systems, a negative side-effect on biodiversity and landscape amenity values can also be expected, affecting, for example, recreation opportunities.

World of Work Report 2013: Repairing the economic and social fabric
The study analyses the global employment situation five years after the start of the global financial crisis. It looks at labour market performance and projections both at the global and regional levels. Full report PDF at: http://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/world-of-work/2013/WCMS_214476/lang--en/index.htm
Main Findings:
·         Five years after the global financial crisis, the global employment situation remains uneven, with emerging and developing economies recovering much faster than the majority of advanced economies. Employment rates (the proportion of people of working age who have a job) exceed pre-crisis levels in 30 per cent of the countries analysed. In 37 per cent of the countries, employment rates have increased in recent years, but not enough to return to the pre-crisis situation, while in the remaining 33 per cent of countries, employment rates have continued to decline. Based on current trends, employment rates across emerging and developing economies will return to pre-crisis levels in 2015; while employment rates in advanced economies will only return to the precrisis situation after 2017.
·         At the global level, the number of unemployed people will continue to increase unless policies change course. Global unemployment is expected to approach 208 million in 2015, compared with slightly over 200 million at the time of publication.
·         Key labour market weaknesses that preceded the crisis have remained acute or worsened, even in high-growth economies. For example, over the past 5 years, the incidence of long-term unemployment (the share of unemployed persons out of work for 12 months or more) has increased in 60 per cent of the advanced and developing economies for which data exist.
·         In addition, many workers have become discouraged and are no longer actively looking for a job. Labour force participation rates decreased between 2007 and 2012 in more than half of the countries analysed.


06 June 2013

Forum news

As you know we are currently planning a significant event for November this year – our inaugural forum: Our health – who decides?

There are a group of 12 Network members who are working together to bring you a thought-provoking, exciting and engaging event. We are committed to delivering an event that is people-focused and that is underpinned by the values of courage, empowerment, shared responsibility and fairness.

Just to give you a taste, here are two presenters who will be part of the forum:


Fran Baum is Professor of Public Health and Director of the Southgate Institute of Health, Society and Equity, and the South Australian Community Health Research Unit, at Flinders University. Professor Baum is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and one of Australia's leading researchers on the social and economic determinants of health. In 2008 she was awarded a prestigious Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship focusing on development of effective government and community responses to social determinants of health inequity and social exclusion. She holds several other national competitive grants investigating aspects of health inequity, and has an extensive teaching career in public health. Professor Baum's numerous publications relate to social determinants of health, including Aboriginal people's health, health inequities, primary health care, health promotion, Healthy Cities, and social capital. Her text book The New Public Health (3rd ed. 2008 OUP) is widely used as a core public health text.

 Dora Marinova is Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University Sustainability Policy (CUSP) Institute (WA). Dora’s involvement and interest in interdisciplinary research started during her PhD studies with the development of a novel method for measuring the effects of R&D investment on economic development. Her background in engineering, mathematics and economics allows her to cross boundaries between social sciences and science research, policy strategies and engineering, demography and community development, university, industry and civil society.
  

To assist your fellow members in their efforts to make this event both memorable and significant we invite you to be involved. There are a number of ways you can participate NOW including:
·         Financial support: Does your organisation have the capacity to contribute some funding toward this event, or to fund a particular aspect of it such as the involvement of an international speaker? If so, we’d like to hear from you. The Network does not have any funding to run this event and therefore we are looking for support from organisations that are able to help out.
·         Ideas for presenters: Do you have ideas for inspirational presenters that you have heard elsewhere and would love to bring to Tasmania to enable others to hear their message (or that you’ve always wanted to hear)? In thinking about this, please align your thoughts with the forum themes as outlined in the attached flier.
·         Tell everyone: Help us promote this event and encourage people to put it in their diaries.
·         Invite someone else: Think about inviting a peer who might not ordinarily think that their work is about health, a neighbour, a politician, your Mum...to come with you to this forum. This event is for everyone who has ever wondered, “Why, despite the vast resources spent on health care, is there still so much ill health and health inequality?”


We look forward to bringing you more news about our progress shortly and also look forward to hearing from you about how you can assist.