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Archives: May 2000

Last updated: 2 June 2000






  • 27 May 2000:
    The International Labour Organization (ILO) provides access to its report Your Voice at Work, the first global report on working conditions and occupational health and safety. "It examines trends in relation to respect shown for freedom of association and collective bargaining rights around the globe."

  • 27 May 2000:
    UNDP has published the Poverty Report 2000, which is availabe online at: http://www.undp.org/povertyreport/tableofcontents/tableofcontents.html

  • 27 May 2000:
    The MacArthur Research Network on Poverty and Inequality in a Broader Perspective "is a loosely knit research group concerned with a wide range of issues, all of which relate to poverty and inequality. It seeks to improve traditional definitions of welfare and living standards by going beyond the usual income or consumption based measures".

  • 23 May 2000:
    The University of Texas Inequality Project provides access to "movements of inequality in wages and earnings and patterns of industrial changes around the world. Our work so far has emphasized two techniques: the use of Theil's T statistic to compute inequality indexes from industrial data, and a combination of cluster analysis on rates of wage change and discriminant analysis to isolate the principal time patterns in changing wage structures. We apply our techniques to data from the United States, the OECD, and UNIDO, with interesting results for both developed and developing countries."

  • 23 May 2000:
    Health Research: Powerful Advocate for Health and Development based on Equity is a COHRED issues paper - Document 2000, 2 March 2000
    This paper seeks to better equip those who promote and advocate health and development based on equity. It describes how health research can be a powerful instrument to reach that goal. It is part of the publications programme of the Council on Health Research for Development (COHRED) that seeks to document experiences and insights from and for countries implementing Essential National Health Research (ENHR).

  • 23 May 2000:
    Sociological Research Online offers online access to research papers. Health is one of the topics covered.

  • 22 May 2000:
    Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland's statement to the 53rd World Health Assembly on 15 May 2000 has been made available on the WHO server at:
    http://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/2000/20000515_wha.html
    It is an interesting document, to say the least, and it requires careful reading to get the real messages.
    Her final statement, wrapping up the discussions as she sees them, is available as a WHO press release at:
    http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2000/en/pr2000-WHA08.html

  • 19 May 2000:
    "What makes some societies healthier than others? One of the most powerful influences on health in developed countries is their level of socioeconomic inequality. The greater the income differences within populations (whether of whole countries or of cities or larger administrative areas within countries), the worse their health. This helps explain why the United States, the richest and most powerful country in the world (spending more than any other on health care), ranks below 25th in the league of countries ordered by life expectancy. Income differences between rich and poor are bigger in the United States than in any other developed nation". The International Health Program of the University of Washington (USA) researches this issue and you can access their web-site offering papers at:
    http://depts.washington.edu/eqhlth/
    Here's more on the topic from Canada:
    Canada’s Great Divide: The politics of the growing gap between rich and poor in the 1990s, by Armine Yalnizyan http://www.socialjustice.org/java/javaindex_new.html

  • 19 May 2000:
    "Is globalization dangerous to our health? When asked about globalization, Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, replied, "There is no alternative." Her reply was shortened to "TINA," which some people think is a newly discovered law of nature. Yet, public resistance to this new corporate-centered trade is increasing. What relevance does this have to American physicians? Does globalization affect health?" - This is an article by Stephen Bezruchka, and it's available here: http://www.ewjm.com/cgi/content/full/172/5/332.

  • 19 May 2000:
    The Journal Health and Human Rights, Vol. 4, No 2 is out and its main theme is "Reproductive and Sexual Rights"

  • 18 May 2000:
    The New York Academy of Medicine Library offers access to "grey literature" on its Grey Literature Page. The site focusses on the USA, but there are lots of reports you might be interested in.

  • 17 May 2000:
    The extra-budgetary funds made available to WHO can be checked with the WHO Department of Budget and Finance at: http://www.who.int/bfi/. Be prepared for some surprises, if you take the time to check the data.

  • 17 May 2000:
    Population mobility and HIV vulnerability in South East Asia: An assessment and analysis is a UNDP South East Asia HIV and Development Project publication, which was developed through extensive consultation with researchers, practitioners, government AIDS authorities and NGOs. The purpose of this publication is to stimulate alternative perspectives in responding to mobility related HIV vulnerability in South East Asia. However, this kind of process will only occur through open discussion of the paper's content and conclusions. If you wish to contribute to this debate, join the SEA-AIDS list at: http://www.hivnet.ch:8000/asia/sea-aids/

  • 13 May 2000:
    The London School of Economics (LSE) offers via its multidisciplinary research centre LSE Health access to policy papers and a quarterly newsletter eurohealth. A recent publication deals with "Public Health in the European Union: Making it Relevant" and is available as a PDF-file (300KB) at: http://www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/lse_health/publications/dp17correct.pdf

  • 12 May 2000:
    Clyde Hertzman, Professor in the Department of Health Care and Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Canada) has published a book on "The Social Dimensions of Public Health", which is offered by the WHO Regional Office for the Americas (PAHO) as a downloadable PDF-file (968 KB) at:
    http://www.bireme.br/bvs/equidad/clyde-h.pdf

  • 10 May 2000:
    The WHO Regional Office for the Americas (PAHO) has published a report on "Health and Human Development in the New Global Economy: The Contributions and Perspectives of Civil Society in the Americas". The full report is available as a PDF-file of roughly 1MB on this site at:
    galveston.pdf

  • 10 May 2000:
    The UN Commission on Sustainable Development has finished its 8th session. Amongst other items, it was decided that there will be a world summit "Rio +10" in the year 2002, reviewing the progress made so far.
    Further information is available at: http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/csd8/csd8_decision.htm

  • 6 May 2000:
    The UN Commission on Human Rights has adopted resolutions on the rights of children and on establishing a permanent forum on Indigenous issues.

  • 6 May 2000:
    UNEP, the United Nations Environment Program, has published a Handbook on Environment and Trade, which is available for downloading as a PDF-file (397 KB) at: http://www.unep.ch/etu/. The Handbook, which will be frequently updated, offers information on how global trade may affect the environment and subsequently public health in so-called developing and developed countries.

  • 4 May 2000:
    WHO's new organizational structure has been made public. You may remember the news-item from last month. Here's the PDF-file, which provides you with the latest version of WHO's structure - and health promotion has been reduced to a label.

  • 4 May 2000:
    The RAND Corporation (USA) is one of the leading think-tanks influencing US and international policy formation. Among many other subjects, they are also involved in health policy formation. You may wish to check their web-site, read and/or download some of their reports and you may get stunned what this organization has to say. The URL to their health activities is:
    http://www.rand.org/organization/health/healthpubnav.html

  • 3 May 2000:
    If you wish to be updated regarding human rights and public health and HIV/AIDS, please subscribe to the list-service "Health and Human Rights Conference", which is provided by Catherine Briggs from the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Foundation and Association.
    To join the Health and Human Rights Conference e-mail list:
    Send an email message to: hhconference-request@fxb.org
    with the words SUBSCRIBE HHCONFERENCE as the message
    Joining is also possible at the following website:
    http://mail.wdcnet.net/guest/RemoteListSummary/hhconference

  • 3 May 2000:
    "What I learned at the world economic crisis." is an article by the former World Bank Chief Economist (1996-1999), Joseph Stiglitz, published by The New Republic Online. It provides some shocking insight into the performance of the IMF and other governmental organizations dealing with development in the context of globalization.

  • 3 May 2000:
    Ani Lucia Ruggiero of the WHO Regional Office for The Americas (PAHO) offers a list-service on equity and public health. You may wish to subscribe to this service by mailing: listserv@listserv.paho.org, leave the subject line blank and put into the body text:
    subscribe equidad your name (i.e.: subscribe equidad j.doe@somewhere.com)

  • 2 May 2000:
    Check out the Peoples' Health Assembly, a project which aims "to re-establish health and equitable development as top priorities in local, national and international policy-making, with primary health care being the strategy to achieve these priorities. The Assembly aims to draw on and support people’s movements in their struggles to build long-term and sustainable solutions to health problems"

  • 2 May 2000:
    The World Bank and the Panos Institute sponsor an electronic discussion forum on Globalization, Development and Poverty, which will take place from 1-31 May 2000. The web-site of the forum is accessible at: http://www.worldbank.org/devforum/forum_globalization.html

  • 1 May 2000:
    The British Medical Journal (BMJ) offers on its web-site a collection of articles on socioeconomic determinants of health. The collection is regularly updated and provides full-text access to BMJ articles on the subject. This is an excellent resource for professionals and the general public.

    You may also wish to consult the WHO-EURO report "Social determinants of health. The solid facts." from 1998, which was edited by Richard Wilkinson and Michael Marmot. You can download it from: http://www.who.dk/healthy-cities/sf.htm.


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