This book describes the principal conceptual, methodological, and empirical developments stemming from PAHO and WHO's institutional efforts in public health, which have entailed the broad and committed participation of the Member States. It provides and overview of the status of Essential Public Health Functions (EPHF) in 41 countries and territories of the Americas, based on self-evaluation exercises performed by health authorities to measure their performance.
Obesity and overweight have been under estimated as public health problems in Latin America and the Caribbean and both conditions are on the rise in the region. This book is a review of the prevalence of the problem and the medium and long term adverse effects of the conditions and the implications for planning public health actions.
Building Health Throughout the Life Courseelucidates how health develops and changes throughout the life course, and how the use of the life course approach among public health practitioners can ensure that health as a human right is achieved for all individuals. It describes the life course vision of health that focuses not only on diseases and their consequences, but rather on achieving long, healthy, active, and productive lives. The book consists of three stand-alone parts. Part 1, "Concepts", aims to illuminate the complexity of health through the understanding of the life course approach. It can be used to familiarize oneself with the evolution and meaning of the life course, which serves as a basis for effective public health practice. Part 2, "Implications", identifies the implications for the operationalization of the life course approach in public health. It translates the technical language of the life course literature to understand how the application of the life course approach requires changes in health systems, policies, research, and practice. Part 3, "Application in Public Health", identifies key opportunities to strengthen the adoption of the life course approach in public health practice. It describes concrete, evidence-based actions to improve health and well-being through the promotion and generation of skills throughout the life course. This book aims to help decision-makers and public health professionals to understand the life course meaning and concepts, which is essential to comprehend how health develops and changes throughout the life course. The book also describes how the life course model allows us to address health disparities by generating mechanisms to improve health and well-being by promoting the vision of health as the product of a series of experiences that contribute to or detract from health in the near and long term.
Of Findings10. Other Data Use Interventions: Multicomponent Interventions; Summary of Findings; Recommendations for Improved Monitoring and Evaluation; Discussion; Conclusion; References; Annexes; Annex 1. Search Terms; Annex 2. Theory of Change Definitions; Annex 3. Included Documents Organized by Primary Intervention Type; Annex 4. IDEA Workshop Meeting Agenda and List of Participants; Annex 5. IDEA Evidence Synthesis Table
The WHO World report on ageing and health is not for the book shelf it is a living breathing testament to all older people who have fought for their voice to be heard at all levels of government across disciplines and sectors. - Mr Bjarne Hastrup President International Federation on Ageing and CEO DaneAge This report outlines a framework for action to foster Healthy Ageing built around the new concept of functional ability. This will require a transformation of health systems away from disease based curative models and towards the provision of older-person-centred and integrated care. It will require the development sometimes from nothing of comprehensive systems of long term care. It will require a coordinated response from many other sectors and multiple levels of government. And it will need to draw on better ways of measuring and monitoring the health and functioning of older populations. These actions are likely to be a sound investment in society's future. A future that gives older people the freedom to live lives that previous generations might never have imagined. The World report on ageing and health responds to these challenges by recommending equally profound changes in the way health policies for ageing populations are formulated and services are provided. As the foundation for its recommendations the report looks at what the latest evidence has to say about the ageing process noting that many common perceptions and assumptions about older people are based on outdated stereotypes. The report's recommendations are anchored in the evidence comprehensive and forward-looking yet eminently practical. Throughout examples of experiences from different countries are used to illustrate how specific problems can be addressed through innovation solutions. Topics explored range from strategies to deliver comprehensive and person-centred services to older populations to policies that enable older people to live in comfort and safety to ways to correct the problems and injustices inherent in current systems for long-term care.
The main objective of these updated global guidelines is to offer health-based air quality guideline levels, expressed as long-term or short-term concentrations for six key air pollutants: PM2.5, PM10, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide. In addition, the guidelines provide interim targets to guide reduction efforts of these pollutants, as well as good practice statements for the management of certain types of PM (i.e., black carbon/elemental carbon, ultrafine particles, particles originating from sand and duststorms). These guidelines are not legally binding standards; however, they provide WHO Member States with an evidence-informed tool, which they can use to inform legislation and policy. Ultimately, the goal of these guidelines is to help reduce levels of air pollutants in order to decrease the enormous health burden resulting from the exposure to air pollution worldwide.
This publication contains a number of papers which consider the public health role of vaccines in improving the health of the world's populations, and looks at the challenges of using immunisation to combat emerging and re-emerging diseases. Issues discussed include the innovative use of vaccines against diseases such as meningococcal infection in Africa, Haemophilus influenza type b, varicella, and hepatitis, efforts to develop a new generation of vaccines against cholera and typhoid, shigella and Helicobacter pylori, as well as developments in the quest for vaccines against tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, dengue, malaria, and hookworm. It also deals with the use of vaccines to fight bioterrorism attacks; regulatory and safety issues; financing issues, impact of health sector reform and the sustainability of immunisation programmes.
The mhGAP Intervention Guide (IG) is a clinical guide on mental neurological and substance use disorders for general health care workers who work in non-specialized health care settings particularly in low- and middle-income countries. These health care workers include general physicians family physicians nurses and clinical officers. The mhGAP programme provides a range of tools to support the work of health care providers as well as health policy makers and planners The proposed guide is an adaptation of the mhGAP Intervention Guide to be used in humanitarian settings. These settings include a broad range of acute and chronic emergency situations arising from armed conflicts natural disasters and industrial disasters and may include mass displacement of populations (eg refugees and/or internally displaced people).
Regular physical activity is proven to help prevent and treat noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as heart disease stroke diabetes and breast and colon cancer. It also helps to prevent hypertension overweight and obesity and can improve mental health quality of life and well-being. In addition to the multiple health benefits of physical activity societies that are more active can generate additional returns on investment including a reduced use of fossil fuels cleaner air and less congested safer roads. These outcomes are interconnected with achieving the shared goals political priorities and ambition of the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030. The new WHO global action plan to promote physical activity responds to the requests by countries for updated guidance and a framework of effective and feasible policy actions to increase physical activity at all levels. It also responds to requests for global leadership and stronger regional and national coordination and the need for a whole-of-society response to achieve a paradigm shift in both supporting and valuing all people being regularly active according to ability and across the life course. The action plan was developed through a worldwide consultation process involving governments and key stakeholders across multiple sectors including health sports transport urban design civil society academia and the private sector.
