South Korea in 2015 YAP, O. FIONA
Asian survey,
01/2016, Volume:
56, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The year 2015 featured real and metaphorical battles in South Korea: face-offs between the executive and the legislature saw President Park Geun-hye duel with the non-Park faction in the ruling ...Saenuri Party and fend off the opposition, whose alliance struggled with infighting and subsequent fractures. The government waged war against a health epidemic and exchanged artillery fire with North Korea at the Demilitarized Zone. The by-elections in April 2015 augur the political stage for pending elections in 2016 and 2017.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is a deadly and highly contagious disease. This study examined the impact of SARS on the depressive symptoms of older adults. A stratified random sample of ...296 older Chinese aged 55 years and older took part in a telephone survey to complete a Chinese version of the Geriatric Depression Scale before, during, and after the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong. Significant time effect was detected using one-way repeated measures, ANOVA and Mauchly's Test of Sphericity. Post hoc paired t-tests were used to further test the differences of the mean depressive scores reported by the participants over the three time periods. For the older men, no significant changes in the mean depression score were reported between the time before (Mean = 3.92, 95% CI: 3.40-4.43) and during (Mean = 3.77, 95% CI: 3.26-4.28) the SARS outbreak. However, after the SARS outbreak the score (Mean = 3.08, 95% CI: 2.61-3.54) was significantly lower than the pre-outbreak period. For women, depressive symptoms increased from the pre-outbreak level of 4.19 (95% CI: 3.59-4.79) to 5.18 during the SARS outbreak (95% CI: 4.56-5.80). After SARS, the score returned to the pre-outbreak level (Mean = 3.83, 95% CI: 3.27-4.40). SARS created psychological impact on older adults. Although the impact of SARS may be different for men and women, the findings suggest that actions should be taken to prevent mental health deterioration of older people during outbreak of a health epidemic. Adapted from the source document.
The Engaged Patient Timmermans, Stefan
Journal of health and social behavior,
09/2020, Volume:
61, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The patient–doctor interaction has changed profoundly in the past decades. In reaction to paternalistic communication patterns, health policy makers have advocated for patient-centered care and ...shared decision-making. Although these models of medical communication remain still aspirational, patients have become more engaged in advocating for their own health in encounters with physicians. I argue that the engaged patient is a more accurate conceptualization of the changing role of the patient than patient consumerism, the empowered, or expert patient. I examine how the emergence of engaged patients influences the autonomy of health professionals, relates to the rise of the internet as an alternative source of medical information, centers the role of the patient–doctor interaction in public health epidemics, and contributes to health inequities.
general note: 1959. 10 April
general note: Győr, Közegészségügyi - Járványügyi Állomás
general note: 1959. április 10.
general note: A megnyitó beszédet Dr. Doleschall Frigyes egészségügyi miniszter ...tartja.
This paper investigates whether political incentives affect the government's response during a health epidemic and the subsequent effects on citizens' voting behavior. Leveraging novel data, I study ...this question in the context of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Liberia. The national incumbent government appropriately prioritized the allocation of resources to villages affected by the epidemic. By building a spatiotemporal epidemiological model that estimates the ex-ante optimal allocation of relief efforts, there is also evidence that resources were misallocated toward electoral swing villages. Instead, no resources were diverted toward core supporters or co-ethnic villages. Voters, in turn, reacted by rewarding the national incumbent party in areas where additional resources were misallocated.
•I investigate whether political incentives affect the government's response during a health epidemic.•The government prioritized villages hit by the epidemic, but misallocated relief efforts toward politically swing villages.•Voters' support for the national incumbent party increased in areas with higher resource misallocation.
This article aims at analysing the role of international tourism attractiveness as a potential factor for the outbreak and the early spread of the recent COVID-19 disease across the world (also ...called the first wave) with a special focus on small Island economies. Econometric testing is implemented over a cross-country sample including 205 countries/territories (with 59 small islands) after controlling for several usual suspects. The results state a positive and significant relationship between COVID-19 prevalence and inbound tourism arrivals per capita. Thus in the early stages of the spread (before travel restrictions), international tourism could be seen as one of the main responsible factors for the recent pandemic, validating the “tourism-led vulnerability hypothesis”. Accordingly, considering that such health shocks should be more frequent in the near future, this finding suggests that the tourism specialization model in the context of small islands is too vulnerable to be considered as sustainable in the medium and long-run. Policymakers must opt for economic diversification when possible. Otherwise, building up a strong public-health system alongside a specialized tourism sector is required.
Advance Market Commitments Kremer, Michael; Levin, Jonathan; Snyder, Christopher M.
AEA papers and proceedings,
05/2020, Volume:
110
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Ten years ago, donors committed $1.5 billion to a pilot Advance Market Commitment (AMC) to help purchase pneumococcal vaccine for low-income countries. The AMC aimed to encourage the development of ...such vaccines, ensure distribution to children in low-income countries, and pilot the AMC mechanism for possible future use. Three vaccines have been developed and more than 150 million children immunized, saving an estimated 700,000 lives. This paper reviews the economic logic behind AMCs, the experience with the pilot, and key issues for future AMCs.
The frequency and complexity of viral outbreaks is increasing over time. The economic costs of outbreaks are severe; this is not only because of increased morbidity and mortality but also because ...viral outbreaks—representing aggregate health shocks—can severely restrict social interaction and economic exchange. Such aggregate health shocks lead to behavioral and prevalence responses along many margins. We describe some important response channels, discuss emerging empirical results on these margins from a nascent literature, and stress important avenues for future work.
Community-Based Crisis Response Christensen, Darin; Dube, Oeindrila; Haushofer, Johannes ...
AEA papers and proceedings,
05/2020, Volume:
110
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Postmortems on the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa suggest that effective community engagement helped slow transmission by encouraging people to come forward and be tested. We evaluate the ...impact of Community Care Centers: a new crisis response model designed to allay fears about western medical care and, thus, encourage early reporting, isolation, and treatment. We employ new panel data on reported Ebola cases and a difference-in-difference design and find that Community Care Centers dramatically increased reporting, potentially reducing the spread of Ebola. Our results highlight how community-based efforts to increase confidence in health systems can be critical for crisis management.
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