A Dissenter's Journey

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Philip T. James
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Spongiform Encephalopathy ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Food Standards ◽  
Health Initiatives ◽  
The Caribbean

After I studied medicine, my career took an early and unusual course when I was offered a clinical research post in Jamaica dealing with childhood malnutrition, of which I knew nothing. My subsequent nutritional explorations allowed gastrointestinal and metabolic analyses to have an impact on several public health policies. The biggest challenges came from unexpected political demands: coping with poor school performers in the Caribbean; addressing UK public health initiatives in health education; breaking the siege of Sarajevo; developing a Food Standards Agency as a sudden need for Tony Blair as incoming prime minister; dealing with widespread bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Europe; and responding to a United Nations request to assess global malnutrition. This last task revealed the need for a lifelong approach to nutrition, which also encompassed pregnancy. But perhaps the biggest challenge was establishing the criteria for obesity assessment, management, and prevention for policy makers across the globe. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Nutrition, Volume 41 is September 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

The Role of Citizen Science in Promoting Health Equity

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa G. Rosas ◽  
Patricia Rodriguez Espinosa ◽  
Felipe Montes Jimenez ◽  
Abby C. King
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Health Equity ◽  
Healthy Eating ◽  
Mobile Applications ◽  
Health Inequities ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Scientific Process

While there are many definitions of citizen science, the term usually refers to the participation of the general public in the scientific process in collaboration with professional scientists. Citizen scientists have been engaged to promote health equity, especially in the areas of environmental contaminant exposures, physical activity, and healthy eating. Citizen scientists commonly come from communities experiencing health inequities and have collected data using a range of strategies and technologies, such as air sensors, water quality kits, and mobile applications. On the basis of our review, and to advance the field of citizen science to address health equity, we recommend ( a) expanding the focus on topics important for health equity, ( b) increasing the diversity of people serving as citizen scientists, ( c) increasing the integration of citizen scientists in additional research phases, ( d) continuing to leverage emerging technologies that enable citizen scientists to collect data relevant for health equity, and ( e) strengthening the rigor of methods to evaluate impacts on health equity. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health, Volume 43 is April 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

The Recent Rise of Suicide Mortality in the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gonzalo Martínez-Alés ◽  
Tammy Jiang ◽  
Katherine M. Keyes ◽  
Jaimie L. Gradus
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Suicide Risk ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
Suicide Mortality ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Suicide Rates ◽  
Subsequent Decrease

Suicide is a major public health concern in the United States. Between 2000 and 2018, US suicide rates increased by 35%, contributing to the stagnation and subsequent decrease in US life expectancy. During 2019, suicide declined modestly, mostly owing to slight reductions in suicides among Whites. Suicide rates, however, continued to increase or remained stable among all other racial/ethnic groups, and little is known about recent suicide trends among other vulnerable groups. This article ( a) summarizes US suicide mortality trends over the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, ( b) reviews potential group-level causes of increased suicide risk among subpopulations characterized by markers of vulnerability to suicide, and ( c) advocates for combining recent advances in population-based suicide prevention with a socially conscious perspective that captures the social, economic, and political contexts in which suicide risk unfolds over the life course of vulnerable individuals. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health, Volume 43 is April 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals NeMoR: a New Method Based on Data-Driven for Neonatal Mortality Rate Forecasting

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Eduardo Beluzo ◽  
Luciana Correia Alves ◽  
Natália Martins Arruda ◽  
Cátia Sepetauskas ◽  
Everton Silva ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Machine Learning ◽  
Neonatal Mortality ◽  
Regression Models ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Neonatal Mortality Rate ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Public Health Policies

ABSTRACTReduction in child mortality is one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. In Brazil, despite recent reduction in child mortality in the last decades, the neonatal mortality is a persistent problem and it is associated with the quality of prenatal, childbirth care and social-environmental factors. In a proper health system, the effect of some of these factors could be minimized by the appropriate number of newborn intensive care units, number of health care units, number of neonatal incubators and even by the correct level of instruction of mothers, which can lead to a proper care along the prenatal period. With the intent of providing knowledge resources for planning public health policies focused on neonatal mortality reduction, we propose a new data-driven machine leaning method for Neonatal Mortality Rate forecasting called NeMoR, which predicts neonatal mortality rates for 4 months ahead, using NeoDeathForecast, a monthly base time series dataset composed by these factors and by neonatal mortality rates history (2006-2016), having 57,816 samples, for all 438 Brazilian administrative health regions. In order to build the model, Extra-Tree, XGBoost Regressor, Gradient Boosting Regressor and Lasso machine learning regression models were evaluated and a hyperparameters search was also performed as a fine tune step. The method has been validated using São Paulo city data, mainly because of data quality. On the better configuration the method predicted the neonatal mortality rates with a Mean Square Error lower than 0.18. Besides that, the forecast results may be useful as it provides a way for policy makers to anticipate trends on neonatal mortality rates curves, an important resource for planning public health policies.Graphical AbstractHighlightsProposition of a new data-driven approach for neonatal mortality rate forecast, which provides a way for policy-makers to anticipate trends on neonatal mortality rates curves, making a better planning of health policies focused on NMR reduction possible;a method for NMR forecasting with a MSE lower than 0.18;an extensive evaluation of different Machine Learning (ML) regression models, as well as hyperparameters search, which accounts for the last stage in NeMoR;a new time series database for NMR prediction problems;a new features projection space for NMR forecasting problems, which considerably reduces errors in NRM prediction.

scholarly journals Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Reduction Policies: Progress and Promise

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
James Krieger ◽  
Sara N. Bleich ◽  
Stephanie Scarmo ◽  
Shu Wen Ng
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Needs ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Added Sugar ◽  
Sugar Sweetened Beverage ◽  
Sweetened Beverages ◽  
Integrated Policy ◽  
Evidence Of Impact

Evidence showing the effectiveness of policies to reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) is growing. SSBs are one of the largest sources of added sugar in the diet and are linked to multiple adverse health conditions. This review presents a framework illustrating the various types of policies that have been used to reduce SSB exposure and consumption; policies are organized into four categories (financial, information, defaults, and availability) and take into consideration crosscutting policy considerations (feasibility, impact, and equity). Next, for each category, we describe a specific example and provide evidence of impact. Finally, we discuss crosscutting policy considerations, the challenge of choosing among the various policy options, and important areas for future research. Notably, no single policy will reduce SSB consumption to healthy levels, so an integrated policy approach that adapts to changing market and consumption trends, evolving social, political, and public health needs, and emerging science, is critical. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health, Volume 42 is April 1, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals A Critical Review of the Social and Behavioral Contributions to the Overdose Epidemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Cerdá ◽  
Noa Krawczyk ◽  
Leah Hamilton ◽  
Kara E. Rudolph ◽  
Samuel R. Friedman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Health Problem ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Prescription Opioid ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Opioid Overdose ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Public Health

More than 750,000 people in the United States died from an overdose between 1999 and 2018; two-thirds of those deaths involved an opioid. In this review, we present trends in opioid overdose rates during this period and discuss how the proliferation of opioid prescribing to treat chronic pain, changes in the heroin and illegally manufactured opioid synthetics markets, and social factors, including deindustrialization and concentrated poverty, contributed to the rise of the overdose epidemic. We also examine how current policies implemented to address the overdose epidemic may have contributed to reducing prescription opioid overdoses but increased overdoses involving illegal opioids. Finally, we identify new directions for research to understand the causes and solutions to this critical public health problem, including research on heterogeneous policy effects across social groups, effective approaches to reduce overdoses of illegal opioids, and the role of social contexts in shaping policy implementation and impact. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health, Volume 42 is April 1, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals Formulating evidence-based public health policies: A guide to policy makers

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
SaurabhR Shrivastava ◽  
PrateekS Shrivastava ◽  
Jegadeesh Ramasamy
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Public Health Policies

scholarly journals Reproducible Research: A Retrospective

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger D. Peng ◽  
Stephanie C. Hicks
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Research ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Public Health Research ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Reproducible Research ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date

Advances in computing technology have spurred two extraordinary phenomena in science: large-scale and high-throughput data collection coupled with the creation and implementation of complex statistical algorithms for data analysis. These two phenomena have brought about tremendous advances in scientific discovery but have raised two serious concerns. The complexity of modern data analyses raises questions about the reproducibility of the analyses, meaning the ability of independent analysts to recreate the results claimed by the original authors using the original data and analysis techniques. Reproducibility is typically thwarted by a lack of availability of the original data and computer code. A more general concern is the replicability of scientific findings, which concerns the frequency with which scientific claims are confirmed by completely independent investigations. Although reproducibility and replicability are related, they focus on different aspects of scientific progress. In this review, we discuss the origins of reproducible research, characterize the current status of reproducibility in public health research, and connect reproducibility to current concerns about replicability of scientific findings. Finally, we describe a path forward for improving both the reproducibility and replicability of public health research in the future. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health, Volume 42 is April 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals Enhancing Community Engagement by Schools and Programs of Public Health in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mindi B. Levin ◽  
Janice V. Bowie ◽  
Steven K. Ragsdale ◽  
Amy L. Gawad ◽  
Lisa A. Cooper ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Community Engagement ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Community Based Participatory Research ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Control And Prevention

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define community engagement as “the process of working collaboratively with and through groups of people” in order to improve their health and well-being. Central to the field of public health, community engagement should also be at the core of the work of schools and programs of public health. This article reviews best practices and emerging innovations in community engagement for education, for research, and for practice, including critical service-learning, community-based participatory research, and collective impact. Leadership, infrastructure, and culture are key institutional facilitators of successful academic efforts. Major challenges to overcome include mistrust by community members, imbalance of power, and unequal sharing of credit. Success in this work will advance equity and improve health in communities all around the world. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health, Volume 42 is April 1, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals The EU Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Knowledge Gateway

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (Supplement_4) ◽  
Author(s):  
I Bakogianni
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Risk Factors ◽  
Health Promotion ◽  
Disease Prevention ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
The Eu

Abstract Issue/ problem Unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, alcohol and tobacco use are leading risk factors for non-communicable diseases. They are all modifiable and health promotion policies can support that. Description of the problem However, information overload, controversies and uncertainties, budget constraints and difficulties in balancing disparate interests are common challenges that can hamper action by policy makers in the field of public health. To support them, the European Commission has created the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Knowledge Gateway. It is a reference point for independent and reliable information to assist policy making; it summarises both the data and knowledge needed to support prioritisation of public health policies and justify investments in health promotion. Results The Knowledge Gateway currently covers the areas of nutrition, physical activity, alcohol, marketing of foods and beverages, and related societal impacts such as disease burden and health inequalities. These topics have been prioritised by Member States representatives and policy makers. The content is organised into concise, well-structured briefs which include definition of each issue, health related effects, and examples of policy recommendations and implemented policies. The high-quality source documents are selected in a tiered approach and are mainly authored or endorsed by authoritative public health organisations. Lessons Judging by the positive feedback received, the Knowledge Gateway is being used widely across Member States and stakeholders. The content of the Knowledge Gateway will be further expanded to support other health priorities such as mental health promotion. Policy makers have a unique, trusted “one-stop-shop” with high quality information to support, justify and strengthen the development of public health policies and health promotion. Key messages The use of reliable authoritative information for the development of public health policies can support the prevention of major non-communicable disease risk factors. The EU Knowledge Gateway is a unique reference point of reliable, independent information to support policy making in the area of public health.

Active Aging and Public Health: Evidence, Implications, and Opportunities

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shilpa Dogra ◽  
David W. Dunstan ◽  
Takemi Sugiyama ◽  
Afroditi Stathi ◽  
Paul A. Gardiner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Active Aging ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
Public Health Challenges

By 2050, 20% of the world's population will be over the age of 65 years, with projections that 80% of older adults will be living in low- to middle-income countries. Physical inactivity and sedentary time are particularly high in older adults, presenting unique public health challenges. In this article, we first review evidence that points to multiple beneficial outcomes of active aging, including better physical function, cognitive function, mental health, social health, and sleep and suggest the need to shift the research focus from chronic disease outcomes to more relevant outcomes that affect independence and quality of life. Second, we review the critical role of age-friendly environments in facilitating active aging equitably across different countries and cultures. Finally, we consider emerging opportunities related to social engagement and technology-enabled mobility that can facilitate active aging. In all these contexts, it is a priority to understand and address diversity within the global aging population. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health, Volume 43 is April 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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