Health risks from infrastructure failures are not well understood, despite the potential widespread introduction of chemical, microbial, and physical contaminants, as well as service disruptions. This study gathered input from various experts to define these issues. A strategy for intervention and mitigation was developed along with and mechanisms for timely, direct, inter-agency communication, coordination, and collaboration.
This book sets out a systematic approach to making long-term choices about national infrastructure systems, for practitioners, policy-makers and academics.
In 2015, building on the advances of the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations adopted Sustainable Development Goals that include an explicit commitment to achieve universal health coverage by 2030. However, enormous gaps remain between what is achievable in human health and where global health stands today, and progress has been both incomplete and unevenly distributed. In order to meet this goal, a deliberate and comprehensive effort is needed to improve the quality of health care services globally. Crossing the Global Quality Chasm: Improving Health Care Worldwide focuses on one particular shortfall in health care affecting global populations: defects in the quality of care. This study reviews the available evidence on the quality of care worldwide and makes recommendations to improve health care quality globally while expanding access to preventive and therapeutic services, with a focus in low-resource areas. Crossing the Global Quality Chasm emphasizes the organization and delivery of safe and effective care at the patient/provider interface. This study explores issues of access to services and commodities, effectiveness, safety, efficiency, and equity. Focusing on front line service delivery that can directly impact health outcomes for individuals and populations, this book will be an essential guide for key stakeholders, governments, donors, health systems, and others involved in health care.
This two-volume set discusses the importance of linking the decision making concept to damage identification and structural modeling. It examines the process of addressing and maintaining structural health, including measurements, structural identification, and damage identification and discusses the theoretical and practical issues involved for each aspect. Emphasizing state-of-the-art practice as well as future directions, this text also features numerous practical case studies and covers the latest techniques in sensing and sensor utilization.
Provides a comprehensive assessment of the scientific evidence on prevalence and the resulting health effects of a range of exposures that are know to be hazardous to human health, including childhood and maternal undernutrition, nutritional and physiological risk factors for adult health, addictive substances, sexual and reproductive health risks, and risks in the physical environments of households and communities, as well as among workers. This book is the culmination of over four years of scientific equiry and data collection, know as the comparative risk assessment (CRA) project.
In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
SYNER-G, a multidisciplinary effort funded by the European Union, allowed the development of an innovative methodological framework for the assessment of physical as well as socio-economic seismic vulnerability and risk at urban and regional level. The results of SYNER-G are presented in two books both published by Springer, the present and a second one, entitled “SYNER-G: Typology Definition and Fragility Functions for Physical Elements at Seismic Risk: Buildings, Lifelines, Transportation Networks and Critical Facilities”(*), which provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art of the fragility curves, an alternative way to express physical vulnerability of elements at risk. In this second volume of SYNER-G, the focus has been on presenting a unified holistic methodology for assessing vulnerability at systems level considering interactions between elements at risk (physical and non-physical) and between different systems. The proposed methodology and tool encompasses in an integrated fashion all aspects in the chain, from hazard to the vulnerability assessment of components and systems and to the socio-economic impacts of an earthquake, accounting for most relevant uncertainties within an efficient quantitative simulation scheme. It systematically integrates the most advanced fragility functions to assess the vulnerability of physical assets for buildings, utility systems, transportation networks and complex infrastructures such as harbours and hospitals. The increasing impact due to interactions between different components and systems is treated in a comprehensive way, providing specifications for each network and infrastructure. The proposed socio-economic model integrates social vulnerability into the physical systems modelling approaches providing to decision makers with a dynamic platform to capture post disaster emergency issues like shelter demand and health impact decisions. Application examples at city and regional scale have provided the necessary validation of the methodology and are also included in the book. The present volume, with its companion volume on fragility functions, represent a significant step forward in the seismic vulnerability and risk assessment of complex interacting urban and regional systems and infrastructures. These volumes are not only of interest to scientists and engineers but also to the insurance industry, decision makers and practitioners in the sector of civil protection and seismic risk management. (*) Pitilakis K, Crowley E, Kaynia A (eds) (2014) SYNER-G: Typology definition and fragility functions for physical elements at seismic risk, Series: Geotechnical, Geological and Earthquake Engineering 27, ISBN 978-94-007-7872-6, Springer Science+Business Media, Dordrecht.
This report examines the costs and consequences of failures and disruption in electricity service, traffic and travel, water supply, and natural gas service. Factors influencing costs and approaches to estimating costs are discussed. Particular attention is given to difficulties caused by floods and seismic activity. A chapter on risk management is also included. As an "appendix," a spreadsheet user's manual comprises approximately half the volume; related software is included in disk form. There is no index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.
Experts estimate that as many as 98,000 people die in any given year from medical errors that occur in hospitals. That's more than die from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDSâ€"three causes that receive far more public attention. Indeed, more people die annually from medication errors than from workplace injuries. Add the financial cost to the human tragedy, and medical error easily rises to the top ranks of urgent, widespread public problems. To Err Is Human breaks the silence that has surrounded medical errors and their consequenceâ€"but not by pointing fingers at caring health care professionals who make honest mistakes. After all, to err is human. Instead, this book sets forth a national agendaâ€"with state and local implicationsâ€"for reducing medical errors and improving patient safety through the design of a safer health system. This volume reveals the often startling statistics of medical error and the disparity between the incidence of error and public perception of it, given many patients' expectations that the medical profession always performs perfectly. A careful examination is made of how the surrounding forces of legislation, regulation, and market activity influence the quality of care provided by health care organizations and then looks at their handling of medical mistakes. Using a detailed case study, the book reviews the current understanding of why these mistakes happen. A key theme is that legitimate liability concerns discourage reporting of errorsâ€"which begs the question, "How can we learn from our mistakes?" Balancing regulatory versus market-based initiatives and public versus private efforts, the Institute of Medicine presents wide-ranging recommendations for improving patient safety, in the areas of leadership, improved data collection and analysis, and development of effective systems at the level of direct patient care. To Err Is Human asserts that the problem is not bad people in health careâ€"it is that good people are working in bad systems that need to be made safer. Comprehensive and straightforward, this book offers a clear prescription for raising the level of patient safety in American health care. It also explains how patients themselves can influence the quality of care that they receive once they check into the hospital. This book will be vitally important to federal, state, and local health policy makers and regulators, health professional licensing officials, hospital administrators, medical educators and students, health caregivers, health journalists, patient advocatesâ€"as well as patients themselves. First in a series of publications from the Quality of Health Care in America, a project initiated by the Institute of Medicine
Infrastructure—electricity, telecommunications, roads, water, and sanitation—are central to people’s lives. Without it, they cannot make a living, stay healthy, and maintain a good quality of life. Access to basic infrastructure is also a key driver of economic development. This report lays out a framework for understanding infrastructure resilience - the ability of infrastructure systems to function and meet users’ needs during and after a natural hazard. It focuses on four infrastructure systems that are essential to economic activity and people’s well-being: power systems, including the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity; water and sanitation—especially water utilities; transport systems—multiple modes such as road, rail, waterway, and airports, and multiple scales, including urban transit and rural access; and telecommunications, including telephone and Internet connections.
