On the plan to combat hunger and misery

This paper discusses the "Plan Against Hunger and Misery" as it relates to the Ministry of Health. The Plan centers around the program "Milk is Health", subsidized by the Brazilian Nutritional Surveillance System and aimed at undernourished children, his/her close relatives and pregnant women under nutritional risks identified in the public health sector. The authors raise questions regarding the role(s) to be played by the health system and by the Nutritional Surveillance System in the implementation of the Plan, the guidelines for food distribution, the indicators for selecting target groups and the parameters for evaluating the program "Milk is Health" itself. It is also argued that the Plan should value structural modifications, without which it will not be possible to ameliorate misery and hunger in Brazil.     

初级卫生保健是构建和谐社会的卫生公平底线

中国曾经是国际初级卫生保健的典范,各国都把“人人享有初级卫生保健”作为人人享有健康权的底线,实现卫生公平是政府的公共职能,农村是初级卫生保健的重点,社区卫生服务是初级卫生保健的载体。     

Knowledge and perception of oral health promotion in schools among dental nurses in Sarawak, Malaysia

In recent years, the concept of a Health-Promoting School has received much interest. In Malaysia, dental nurses are ideally placed to play a lead role in promoting Oral Health within the school setting. This study aims to provide information on the knowledge, perception and perceived role of Oral Health Promotion in schools, among dental nurses. A postal questionnaire was used to measure dental nurses' knowledge, perception and perceived role of Oral Health Promotion. The majority (60%) of dental nurses had good knowledge of Oral Health Promotion. Generally, they perceived that they play an important role in promoting Oral Health in schools. However, a sizeable proportion (25%) did not think they had a role to play in working together with school authorities to provide children with healthy food choices in school canteens. The majority (60%) of dental nurses did not perceive Oral Health Promotion to be important as a whole. They had a good perception of the concepts: it supports behaviour change, it has appropriate goals, it integrates oral health and general health and relieves anxiety. However, they had a poorer perception of the concepts; diverse educational approaches, participation, focus on prevention, early intervention, "spread of effect" of dental health education and "make healthier choices the easier choices". Years of service was not significantly associated with knowledge and perception of Oral Health Promotion. Dental nurses should be reoriented towards a more holistic practice of Oral Health Promotion. Workshops that invite active participation from dental nurses should be conducted to equip them with the necessary knowledge and skills.     

The emerging global discourse of sexual rights

Since 1945, United Nations (UN) conferences and documents have promoted human rights as essential to individual liberty and international peace. It took until 1994, however, for the term "sexual rights" to first appear in a UN document. Recently, other groups have also been promoting the idea of sexual rights. The professional and scientific World Association of Sexology offered a Declaration of Sexual Rights in 1999. In 2000, The World Health Organization co-authored "Promotion of Sexual Health," including a central role for sexual rights. This emerging sexual rights discourse can be linked to the women's rights and gay and lesbian rights movements of the 1970s, and to the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s.     

The role of the health facilitator in community health education

A community health education program has been established by the Department of Community Health Sciences of Duke University Medical Center in two target areas of Durham County, North Carolina. The program trains unpaid lay people, health facilitators, to whom others already turn for help, to increase their competency for advising and referring community residents to appropriate community resources.Several methods for identifying potential health facilitators have been developed. Evaluation of the role of health facilitators hinges upon designing measures to demonstrate their existence in the community and the impact that they make. To be successful, the training of health facilitators should result in improving the quality of the advice they give their fellows. It is also important to assess the cultural acceptability of the facilitators' advice and to ensure that their helping role in the community is not disturbed by the possible professionalization of their role due to the training program.The authors are with the Division of Community Health Models, Department of Community Health Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina 27710. Dr. Salber is Professor, Community Health Sciences, and Director, Community Health Models; Mr. Beery is Associate and Director, Community Health Education Program; and Ms. Jackson is Associate and Health Education Specialist, Community Health Education Program. This study was aided by a grant from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. The authors wish to thank Dr. David P. Phillips, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California at San Diego, for his valuable criticisms and comments and Dr. John Cassel, Professor of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina, School of Public Health, for his interest in and encouragement of this program.     

以农村卫生为重点 提高全民族健康素质

中国曾经是国际初级卫生保健的典范，各国都把“人人享有初级卫生保健”作为人人享有健康权的底线。健全初级卫生保健，保障健康公平底线是政府的公共职能．农村卫生是提高全民健康素质构建和谐社会的基础。     

A technology anthology. Recent writings and remarks on the state of the state-of-the-art

Early this year, the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) backed down from plans to publish a final regulation governing the criteria for coverage of medical technologies in the Medicare program. Originally drafted in 1989, the rules spawned an eight-year controversy, largely because they proposed making "cost-effectiveness" one factor in deciding whether certain procedures would be reimbursed. It was one of the first attempts to articulate the precise role cost-effectiveness should play in coverage policy in either the public or private sectors. Many groups opposed the introduction of cost-effectiveness into the equation, but none so actively as medical device manufacturers, represented by the Health Industry Manufacturers Association (HIMA). Following are excerpts from their exchanges, beginning with HCFA's proposed rule in January of 1989.     

A new approach to public health. Strategies for its implementation]

Public Health System accepts "New Public Health" only in a theoretical way, since in the practice essential modifications to get "Health For All-2000" aims are not implemented. It is necessary to look "bridge-heads" that permit to introduce changes gradually to reorganize Health Services. In the present article, different alternatives are analyzed, all of them giving priority to the programmes that consider Health as a natural resource. These programmes can be "Governmental Programmes" so Health policies coming from the Health Department can be assumed by the others Public Administration Departments.     

Department manager's checklist: overtime

The "Department Manager's Checklist" appears in The Health Care Manager occasionally, as space permits. It is the intent of this department to provide helpful information in abbreviated form that department managers can use for quick reference as needed. Each such checklist will provide guidelines for proceeding with some practice or process of importance to the manager, encapsulating the essential points that might be found in one or more lengthier references on the topic. No checklist should ever be considered the last word on a given topic. Neither should it be considered to include all the manager would ever need to know on the topic. Each checklist is presented simply as an organized reminder and potential primer on its subject. This "Department Manager's Checklist," an update of a checklist appearing in The Health Care Supervisor 14:1 (September 1995), addresses the department manager's role in the control of overtime.     

标准是推进慢性病健康管理的关键

本文阐述健康管理作为一种医疗卫生服务手段,在慢性病防控中的重要作用以及在中国的发展历史;并指出当前在中国健康管理概念不清,市场混乱的情况下,亟需对健康管理的实践进行规范和监督。中国健康管理协会与2019年1月发布的《慢病健康管理规范》团体标准内容全面,基于科学,可操作性强,适合国情,对于有序推动慢病健康管理具有重要意义。     

New guidelines issued for occupational exposures

New recommendations have been issued by the U.S. Public Health Service for health care workers who are occupationally exposed to HIV. The post-exposure prophylaxis recommendations have been modified to include a basic four-week regimen of AZT and 3TC and an expanded regimen to include a protease inhibitor for higher-risk cases. Copies of the guidelines, "Public Health Service Guidelines for the Management of Health-Care Worker Exposures to HIV and Recommendations for Post-Exposure Prophylaxis", are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).     

Tuberculosis Treatment Completion Rates in Southern New Mexico <Emphasis Type="Italic">Colonias</Emphasis>

TB medication completion treatment rates for active TB patients living in impoverished US-Mexico border communities called colonias in southern New Mexico counties are unknown. It might be suspected that residents of colonias have lower completion rates than those living in incorporated and medically more accessible areas. A retrospective record review of closed TB case records from 1993 to 2010 of southern New Mexico border counties, was conducted using a modified version of the New Mexico Department of Health Tuberculosis Targeted Health Assessment/History form (Appendix 1). Study findings reveal that despite their unincorporated status, poorer living conditions and questionable legal status, colonia TB patients had a higher medication completion rate than their non-colonia counterparts. A robust New Mexico TB treatment program contributed to high completion rates with death being the number-one reason for treatment non-completion in both colonia and non-colonias.     

New perspective on the health of Canadians: 28 years later.

As part of its 100th-anniversary celebration, the Pan American Health Organization has named 12 persons as "Public Health Heroes of the Americas" in recognition of their noteworthy contributions to#10; public health in the Region of the Americas. Over the course of this year, the Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública/Pan American Journal of Public Health will be carrying pieces written by or about these heroes.     

新背景下英国国家卫生和临床技术优化研究院的转型

2010年年底,英国卫生部做出重大决定:英国未来药品的市场准入评价将不再依赖英国知名医药技术评价机构一英国国家卫生和临床技术优化研究所,将主要依靠一个以价值为基础的药品定价体系.英国卫生部的这个决定无疑将对临床技术评价研究所的未来发展和定位产生深远影响.纵观临床技术评价研究所成立至今走过的道路,结合目前英国医疗改革的形势,描述了临床技术评价研究所及其利益相关各方与这个政治决策的关系,总结了目前英国国内对临床技术评价研究所未来走向的讨论,并简单探讨了该决定对国际医药技术评价界的影响.     

New nutrition science in practice

A number of imperatives require a re-think of science in general and of nutrition science in particular. Nutrition science has never been a body of knowledge in its own right and many other sciences have been nutritional in their orientation. At its best "nutrition science" has been integrative as well as reductionist. It has worked across disciplines. The IUNS, (International Union of Nutritional Sciences) undertook to re-examine nutrition science from a policy point of view and to do so with knowledge-makers in general and with the International Science Council. There is now a Sciences for Health and Wellbeing (SHWB) initiative involving all branches of science. It is expected that innovative, integrative, sustainable, and cost-effective approaches to human well-being and health will emerge. Some of the pressing needs for such collaboration have been in the areas of sustainable food systems, potable water, more nutritious crops, food and human behaviour, to reduce the burden of nutritionally-related disease (NRD) and make health care affordable. An IUNS Task Force met in Giessen in 2005. It concluded that nutrition science should develop on 3 fronts, the biomedical, societal and environmental. This will encourage new and more effective initiatives for nutrition and its partners to address local, regional and global concerns about planetary and personal health and well-being. Some important and critical areas already require collective attention. Unlike our predecessors in nutrition science, we will be unable to fulfil the expectations of us unless we progress this wider and less anthropocentric form of our science.     

The macro-level drivers of intimate partner violence: New evidence from a multilevel dataset

This study uses multi-level regression analysis to determine the impact of macro-level drivers on intimate partner violence (IPV). It argues that we need to look beyond the usual, individual-level risk factors in order to understand why women experience abuse at the hands of their intimate partners. Using Demographic and Health Survey data from 40 developing countries, this paper demonstrates that socio-economic development, beliefs and laws play an important role in explaining IPV.     

Setting national health goals and targets in the context of a fiscal crisis: the politics of social choice in New Zealand.

The setting of national health goals and targets in New Zealand has taken place in the context of fiscal crisis. The mandate for State intervention for social goals has also been under a sustained ideological challenge. These circumstances, together with other developments within the New Zealand health service, prepared the way for the development of the first set of health goals and targets. Six criteria were used to identify health problems for which goals and targets could be set. Ten areas were included, and specific, timed and quantified targets were set in each area for the year 2000 with shorter term targets for 1995. The Minister of Health gave priority to three areas: tobacco control, secondary prevention of cervical cancer, and reduction of road accident injury and death. An important aspect of the program is that the goals and targets are to be the focus of the annual contract between the Minister of Health (the primary funder of health care) and the Area Health Boards (the primary providers of health care). A matrix of policy options is presented for resource allocation and public health. The case study described represents one solution to the set of policy choices presented by fiscal and ideological challenge; the "new managerialism" has been allied with the "new public health." The authors argue that a combination of ideological renewal and fiscal probity has preserved a vigorous role for the State in health and health care. This matrix of policy options also underlines the necessity to consider health outcomes, as well as organizational goals, in the evaluation of the performance of health systems.     

New technology offers 'real time' picture of patients' status

Health plans are seeing their patients "face to face" on a daily basis in this new age "virtual reality" population management program. Find out how several health plans are benefitting from a program that provides unique insight into their members' needs.     

“健康融于所有政策”在美国加州的实践和启示

“健康融于所有政策”的理念和策略,在世界各国的健康政策制定中已经实践多年。世界卫生组织对其进行了定义,并制定“国家行动框架”推动各国实施。《健康中国“2030”规划纲要》明确提出“把健康融入所有政策,加快转变健康领域发展方式,全方位、全周期维护和保障人民健康。”本文对世界卫生组织有关“健康融入所有政策”的定义及内涵原则,美国加州推进该政策要求的实践进行了梳理和剖析,以期在政策建议的角度对我国推进健康中国建设提供参考。笔者建议我国应以WHO确定的策略为基础,在形成共识、确定模式、明确内容、追踪评估4个维度形成合力,推动“健康融于所有政策”更好地发挥作用。