Public health response to the obesity epidemic: too soon or too late?

Public health actions in response to new threats are often taken despite uncertainty about the efficacy of the action. The challenge, then, is to make ongoing judgments about whether actions are taken too soon, before a sufficient understanding of the efficacy of interventions is known, or too late, after much of the prevention potential is lost. The ongoing obesity epidemic presents exactly this type of challenge. General lessons learned from the AIDS and tobacco epidemics as well as others can be useful now as we contemplate options for reversing the ongoing epidemic of obesity in the United States. In this article we briefly review current evidence regarding the efficacy of obesity interventions in both clinical and community settings. We conclude that although little direct evidence is available on the efficacy of interventions for the obesity epidemic, there are some reasonable options derived from experience with other public health epidemics that can contribute to the solution of the obesity problem.     

Measles eradication: is it in our future?

Measles eradication would avert the current annual 1 million deaths and save the $1.5 billion in treatment and prevention costs due to measles in perpetuity. The authors evaluate the biological feasibility of eradicating measles according to 4 criteria: (1) the role of humans in maintaining transmission, (2) the availability of accurate diagnostic tests, (3) the existence of effective vaccines, and (4) the need to demonstrate elimination of measles from a large geographic area. Recent successes in interrupting measles transmission in the United States, most other countries in the Western Hemisphere, and selected countries in other regions provide evidence for the feasibility of global eradication. Potential impediments to eradication include (1) lack of political will in some industrialized countries, (2) transmission among adults, (3) increasing urbanization and population density, (4) the HIV epidemic, (5) waning immunity and the possibility of transmission from subclinical cases, and (6) risk of unsafe injections. Despite these challenges, a compelling case can be made in favor of measles eradication, and the authors believe that it is in our future. The question is when.     

What is the UK Gender Duty and why is it linked to men's health?

Emerging from contemporary UK equality policy, the Gender Duty is not ostensibly about health, although men's health groups are keen to use it to bring about improvements in the health of men. Nevertheless, the status of men's health as an inequality is contentious and any links to equality policy should not be left unquestioned. In this article, I try to develop a critical but supportive perspective regarding the potential of equality legislation for improving men's health by describing the Gender Duty and exploring the links between equality and human rights and men's health.     

Coronary thrombolysis: still too little too late?

We reviewed the case records of 109 consecutive patients with a definite diagnosis of myocardial infarction, admitted through the accident and emergency department of an inner-city general hospital to identify delays in referral to hospital, admission to the coronary care unit, and start of thrombolysis. Of the 109 patients, only 28 (26%) received streptokinase (the only thrombolytic drug used at this hospital), and at least 47 (58%) of the remaining 81 who should have benefited from it did not. However, the proportion of patients given streptokinase improved significantly after publication of the Second International Study of Infarct Survival (ISIS 2) study results. The average delay from onset of symptoms to presentation at the accident department was over 3 hours, with a further 1 hour in-hospital delay before administration of streptokinase. This study revealed considerable underuse of thrombolytic therapy in cases where treatment was clearly indicated, but this picture improved substantially during the period of audit.     

The sector-wide approach in health: what is it? Where is it leading?

This paper describes early experience with the Sector-Wide Approach (SWAp), an emerging trend in development practice in low-income countries. The paper describes what a SWAp is, and why it is now being pursued. The SWAp is characterized as a sustained government-led partnership with donor agencies and other groups. By applying sector-wide policies to an expenditure framework and national implementation systems, explicit health sector reforms are undertaken to meet sectoral and national development objectives. The approach has changed the dynamic between governments and donor agencies, requiring systemic changes in policy-making and management in both governments and donor agencies. With the SWAp, ongoing joint assessment and negotiations around sectoral plans and review of performance replaces the old way of preparing and supervising projects. Early experiences in countries undergoing SWAps are discussed, including the problem of reconciling priority programs and old practices with broader health sector reforms and new ways of managing development assistance. The paper concludes by identifying some of the key challenges for the future of SWAps.