The Unequal Pandemic Bambra, Clare; Lynch, Julia; Smith, Katherine E
06/2021
eBook
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Rated as a top 10 book about the COVID-19 pandemic by New Statesman: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2021/07/best-books-about-covid-19-pandemic
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under ...CC-BY-NC- ND
It has been claimed that we are ‘all in it together’ and that the COVID-19 virus ‘does not discriminate’.
This accessible, yet authoritative book dispels this myth of COVID-19 as an ‘equal opportunity’ disease, by showing how the pandemic is a syndemic of disease and inequality.
Drawing on international data and accounts, it argues that the pandemic is unequal in three ways: it has killed unequally, been experienced unequally and will impoverish unequally.
These inequalities are a political choice: with governments effectively choosing who lives and who dies, we need to learn from COVID-19 quickly to prevent growing inequality and to reduce health inequalities in the future.
COVID-19 is an unequal pandemic.
Scaling up: The politics of health and place Bambra, Clare; Smith, Katherine E.; Pearce, Jamie
Social science & medicine (1982),
July 2019, 2019-07-00, 20190701, Letnik:
232
Journal Article
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Research into the role of place in shaping inequalities in health has focused largely on examining individual and/or localised drivers, often using a context-composition framing. Whilst this body of ...work has advanced considerably our understanding of the effects of local environments on health, and re-established an awareness of the importance of place for health, it has done so at the expense of marginalising and minimising the influences of macro political and economic structures on both place and health. In this paper, we argue that: (i) we need to scale up our analysis, moving beyond merely analysing local horizontal drivers to take wider, vertical structural factors into account; and (ii) if we are serious about reducing place-based health inequalities, such analysis needs be overtly linked to appropriate policy levers. Drawing on three case studies (the US mortality disadvantage, Scotland's excess mortality, and regional health divides in England and Germany) we outline the theoretical and empirical value of taking a more political economy approach to understanding geographical inequalities in health. We conclude by outlining the implications for future research and for efforts to influence policy from ‘scaling up’ geographical research into health inequalities.
•Health-place research commonly examines focuses individual and/or localised drivers.•Health geography should ‘scale up’ analysis of health-place relationships.•Research needs to account for wider, vertical and structural factors.•Political economic approaches add value to insight on geographic health inequalities.•Considers the policy implications of taking a political economy approach.
Non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is one of the most deadly cancers worldwide, with poor prognosis once the disease has progressed past the point at which surgery is a viable option. Whilst ...chemotherapy has improved survival over recent decades, there is still great need for improvements in treatments for patients with advanced disease. Over the last decade, a variety of such drugs have received market approval for treating NSCLC, with a variety of others in the pipeline. Here, we review the development of targeted therapies for the treatment of advanced or metastatic NSCLC, including those already in clinical practice and those in early trials. The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitors, gefitinib, erlotinib and afatinib; the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) inhibitor, crizotinib; and the anti‐vascular endothelial growth factor receptor monoclonal antibody, bevacizumab, are already providing improved survival for patients with NSCLC. Moreover, the discovery of EGFR mutations and ALK rearrangements has enabled the identification of patients who are more likely to benefit from a specific drug. The recent approval of the immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab, along with the designation of alectinib and MPDL3280A as breakthrough therapies by the FDA, demonstrates how rapidly this area of research is expanding. Over the last decade there has been significant progress made in the treatment of advanced NSCLC, and the large and varied selection of drugs currently undergoing trials provide great promise for improving the prognosis of this highly prevalent and deadly form of cancer.
Taxes on alcohol and tobacco have long been an important means of raising revenues for public spending in many countries but there is increasing interest in using taxes on these, and other unhealthy ...products, to achieve public health goals. We present a systematic review of the research on health taxes, and aim to generate insights into how such taxes can: (i) reduce consumption of targeted products and related harms; (ii) generate revenues for health objectives and distribute the tax burden across income groups in an efficient and equitable manner; and (iii) be made politically sustainable.
Six scientific and four grey-literature databases were searched for empirical studies of 'health taxes' - defined as those intended to increase the costs of manufacturing, distributing, retailing and/or consuming health-damaging products. Since reviews already exist of the evidence relating to traditional alcohol and tobacco excise taxes, we focus on other taxes such as taxes on retailers and manufacturers of unhealthy products, and consumer taxes targeting unhealthy foods, such as sugar-sweetened beverages.
Ninety-one peer-reviewed and 11 grey-literature studies met our inclusion criteria. The review highlights a recent, rapid rise in research in this area, most of which focuses on high-income countries and on taxes on food products or nutrients. Findings demonstrate that high tax rates on sugar-sweetened beverages are likely to have a positive impact on health behaviours and outcomes, and, while taxes on products reduce demand, they add to fiscal revenues. Common concerns about health taxes are also discussed.
If the primary policy goal of a health tax is to reduce consumption of unhealthy products, then evidence supports the implementation of taxes that increase the price of products by 20% or more. However, where taxes are effective in changing health behaviours, the predictability of the revenue stream is reduced. Hence, policy actors need to be clear about the primary goal of any health tax and frame the tax accordingly - not doing so leaves taxes vulnerable to hostile lobbying. Conversely, earmarking health taxes for health spending tends to increase public support so long as policymakers follow through on specified spending commitments.
CRD42016048603.
We performed hypothesis-free linkage analysis and exome sequencing in a family with two siblings who had neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (NCL). Two linkage peaks with maximum LOD scores of 3.07 and ...2.97 were found on chromosomes 7 and 17, respectively. Unexpectedly, we found these siblings to be homozygous for a c.813_816del (p.Thr272Serfs∗10) mutation in the progranulin gene (GRN, granulin precursor) in the latter peak. Heterozygous mutations in GRN are a major cause of frontotemporal lobar degeneration with TDP-43 inclusions (FTLD-TDP), the second most common early-onset dementia. Reexamination of progranulin-deficient mice revealed rectilinear profiles typical of NCL. The age-at-onset and neuropathology of FTLD-TDP and NCL are markedly different. Our findings reveal an unanticipated link between a rare and a common neurological disorder and illustrate pleiotropic effects of a mutation in the heterozygous or homozygous states.
Objectives: Area-based measures of socio-economic status are increasingly used in population health research. Based on previous research and theory, the Canadian Marginalization Index (CAN-Marg) was ...created to reflect four dimensions of marginalization: residential instability, material deprivation, dependency and ethnic concentration. The objective of this paper was threefold: to describe CAN-Marg; to illustrate its stability across geographic area and time; and to describe its association with health and behavioural problems. Methods: CAN-Marg was created at the dissemination area (DA) and census tract level for census years 2001 and 2006, using factor analysis. Descriptions of 18 health and behavioural problems were selected using individual-level data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) 3.1 and 2007/08. CAN-Marg quintiles created at the DA level (2006) were assigned to individual CCHS records. Multilevel logistic regression modeling was conducted to examine associations between marginalization and CCHS health and behavioural problems. Results: The index demonstrated marked stability across time and geographic area. Each of the four dimensions showed strong and significant associations with the selected health and behavioural problems, and these associations differed depending on which of the dimensions of marginalization was examined. Conclusion: CAN-Marg is a census-based, empirically derived and theoretically informed tool designed to reflect a broader conceptualization of Canadian marginalization.
Of all the social sciences, social policy is one of the most obviously policy-orientated. One might, therefore, expect a research and funding agenda which prioritises and rewards policy relevance to ...garner an enthusiastic response among social policy scholars. Yet, the social policy response to the way in which major funders and the Research Excellence Framework (REF) are now prioritising ‘impact’ has been remarkably muted. Elsewhere in the social sciences, ‘research impact’ is being widely debated and a wealth of concerns about the way in which this agenda is being pursued are being articulated. Here, we argue there is an urgent need for social policy academics to join this debate. First, we employ interviews with academics involved in health inequalities research, undertaken between 2004 and 2015, to explore perceptions, and experiences, of the ‘impact agenda’ (an analysis which is informed by a review of guidelines for assessing ‘impact’ and relevant academic literature). Next, we analyse high- and low-scoring REF2014 impact case studies to assess whether these concerns appear justified. We conclude by outlining how social policy expertise might usefully contribute to efforts to encourage, measure and reward research ‘impact’.
Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are both highly inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, collectively known as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Although the cause of IBD ...is still unclear, several experimental IBD murine models have enabled researchers to make great inroads into understanding human IBD pathology. Here, we discuss the current pre-clinical experimental murine models for human IBD, including the chemical-induced trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS) model, oxazolone and dextran sulphate sodium (DSS) models, the gene-deficient I-kappa-B kinase gamma (Iκκ-γ) and interleukin(IL)-10 models, and the CD4+ T-cell transfer model. We offer a comprehensive review of how these models have been used to dissect the etiopathogenesis of disease, alongside their limitations. Furthermore, the way in which this knowledge has led to the translation of experimental findings into novel clinical therapeutics is also discussed.
Global rise in human infectious disease outbreaks Smith, Katherine F.; Goldberg, Michael; Rosenthal, Samantha ...
Journal of the Royal Society interface,
12/2014, Letnik:
11, Številka:
101
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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To characterize the change in frequency of infectious disease outbreaks over time worldwide, we encoded and analysed a novel 33-year dataset (1980–2013) of 12 102 outbreaks of 215 human infectious ...diseases, comprising more than 44 million cases occuring in 219 nations. We merged these records with ecological characteristics of the causal pathogens to examine global temporal trends in the total number of outbreaks, disease richness (number of unique diseases), disease diversity (richness and outbreak evenness) and per capita cases. Bacteria, viruses, zoonotic diseases (originating in animals) and those caused by pathogens transmitted by vector hosts were responsible for the majority of outbreaks in our dataset. After controlling for disease surveillance, communications, geography and host availability, we find the total number and diversity of outbreaks, and richness of causal diseases increased significantly since 1980 (p < 0.0001). When we incorporate Internet usage into the model to control for biased reporting of outbreaks (starting 1990), the overall number of outbreaks and disease richness still increase significantly with time (p < 0.0001), but per capita cases decrease significantly (p = 0.005). Temporal trends in outbreaks differ based on the causal pathogen's taxonomy, host requirements and transmission mode. We discuss our preliminary findings in the context of global disease emergence and surveillance.
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