Ebola and the weak link of public health
It has long been my contention that one of the chief symptoms of the age of constraints we have now entered would be the decline of public health systems globally.
public health
It’s the Sugar, Stupid: A Review of the Documentary ‘Fed Up’
The messages we hear in advertisements have a huge impact on our food choices. This reality is the starting point of the documentary Fed Up, produced by Katie Couric and Laurie David and directed by Stephanie Soechtig.
Treating Food as an Investment
We need to rethink our calculus on food spending. Rather than looking at food as an expenditure with no long term implications, we instead need to view our food spending as an investment.
A Manifesto for Planetary Health
One of the most fascinating things I read recently was The Lancet’s Manifesto for Planetary Health…
“You have to join health and sustainability”
Health is an outcome really, and everything that the Transition movement is doing is good for health because it’s about clean water, clean air, good food, safety, security, connection with nature and towns that are liveable.
“2 + 2 = 0” – Whitewashing the potential health effects of shale gas
Public Health England’s report on shale gas amounts to scientific misconduct according to Paul Mobbs.
Greening Philly’s vacant lots
Community access to vacant land has the potential to reduce crime rates in the US.
The Downwinders
More than 70 years ago, a chemical attack was launched against Washington State and Nevada. It poisoned people, animals, everything that grew, breathed air, and drank water. The Marshall Islands were also struck. This formerly pristine Pacific atoll was branded “the most contaminated place in the world.” As their cancers developed, the victims of atomic testing and nuclear weapons development got a name: downwinders. What marked their tragedy was the darkness in which they were kept about what was being done to them. Proof of harm fell to them, not to the U.S. government agencies responsible.
Public health, thermodynamics and the cat food commission
A previous article discusses the future of health systems operating under neoliberal ideology as it comes a cropper in a world undergoing degrowth. Here I consider how this thrusts public health into in a “Which side are you on?” dilemma likely to separate its institutional administration from its frontline professionals –and the public it is meant serve- as part of the larger process of political/economic conflict, cultural and environmental decline, chaos and (possibly) cultural renewal.