Uighur Cultural and Ethnic Genocide in 2021: Understanding Humanitarian Crises Through the Lens of a Continuing Pandemic
BY SHERRY CHEN What happens when a humanitarian crisis overlaps with a global pandemic? Uighurs living in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) are met face-to-face with this issue on a daily basis. The Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) was an American counterterrorism effort, initiated by President George W. Bush in response to the September…
The Doctor with a Gavel: Keeping the Gates to the Constitutional Right to Health in Brazil
BY MURILO DORION João da Silva is a 61-year-old Brazilian man with a severe hernia that causes constant pain and nausea. He was diagnosed in March but, because of the pandemic, the local government relocated his doctor to a field hospital, pushed non-emergent surgeries, and left João waiting for his urgent procedure at least up…
The Rise of an Unlikely Public Health Ally: Brazilian Drug Cartels
BY SOPHIA DE OLIVERA As I peered outside the window of a bus shuttling me to my grandmother’s house from the Rio International Airport, I found myself exceedingly curious about the towering multicolored slums decorating the outskirts of the Brazilian city. These vast stretches of impoverished housing, known as Favelas, were unlike anything I’d ever…
Why is Our Genome Data So White? A Discussion on the Lack of Representation in Genome-Wide Association Studies
BY ANN-MARIE ABUNYEWA The public health research consensus is that predominantly social and economic factors contribute to the health disparities observed in the United States. The determinants that contribute the least to health disparities are biology and genetics, which is understandable, as all humans share roughly 99.9% of DNA, and modern access to quality healthcare…
COVID-19 and Mental Health: Sleep, Anxiety, and Suicide
BY MIKA YOKOTA Introduction The Spring Festival on January 25, 2020 has become an unexpected and unforgettable memory for the people of China. On December 31, 2019, Wuhan Municipal Health Commission authorities reported multiple pneumonia cases of unknown etiology in Wuhan, Hubei Province. A series of events that followed disallowed the country to celebrate the…
Mass Incarceration & COVID-19
BY AMMA OTCHERE Faced with the looming coronavirus threat, governments around the globe have employed a number of strategies to curb the spread of COVID-19. As prisons have emerged as a hotbed for coronavirus, one of the strategies has included attempts to reduce prison populations through methods such as early release and reduced admissions.1 By…
On Average, What People Think About Covid-19 Responses, and the New Vaccine
BY RYAN BOSE-ROY With 317,800 Covid-19 deaths in the United States and 1.7 million deaths worldwide, the recent emergence of suitable Covid-19 vaccine candidates is a refreshing sight. However, vaccine availability is just a stepping-stone to the end goal; public opinion of the pandemic response and trust in the vaccine are crucial for adequate coverage…
A COVID-19 Vaccine: What’s Been Done and What’s to Come
BY MAIYA HOSSAIN The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has completely taken the world aback, forcing individuals to alter their usual ways of life. From abruptly transitioning to Zoom classes in March to requiring masks in virtually all public spaces, COVID-19 has affected all facets of society, which has paved the way for what some dub the…
The COVID-19 Pandemic isn’t the Only Outbreak We Need to Face
BY VANESSA BLAS The first case of the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, was reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and has spread to 185 countries in just three months.1,2 However, the virus is not the only outbreak that is spreading rapidly–the pandemic has become racialized, targeting millions of Asians and Asian Americans. COVID-19 is…
Palliative Care: An Analgesic in an Impossible Time
BY SHAAN BHANDARKAR The coronavirus pandemic has forced healthcare providers into a difficult ethical gridlock. How do physicians choose which patients to treat with a serious deficit in essential supplies like ventilators? What consolations can physicians offer families who cannot meet their loved ones in their final moments? In many horrific ways, the pandemic has…
Modelling Equity in Global Health: Using Participatory Action Research to Bridge the Gap Between International Agencies and People in Southern Africa
BY SAM BRAKARSH Introduction Global health is a paradigm aimed at increasing equity through access to health. However, it is riddled with contradictions. It operates within a hierarchy of power where decisions are frequently made at a great distance from those upon which the interventions are enacted and so the voices of communities are lost.…
How Climate Change May Fuel the EEE Outbreaks in the United States
BY VANESSA BLAS Between August and October 2019, the Center for Disease Control received word of over thirty cases of patients infected with the eastern encephalitis virus, including twelve deaths, confirming a series of unprecedented outbreaks occurring in the United States.1 Three of those deaths occurred in Connecticut. A press release by Connecticut Governor Ned…
The Hypocrisy of Hippocrates: Ethics from Medical Oaths
BY SHAAN BHANDARKAR Long before the horrors of Tuskegee and Mengele, medical ethics claimed a center stage in the world of healing dating back to the times of Ancient Greece. Throughout the Classical era, patients reserved a comparable trust in both faith healers and the more traditional practitioners, who received training from other established practitioners…
Expanding Emergency Contraceptive Access: An Exploration of the Pros, Cons and Current Conversation on a U.S. and Global Scale
BY RYAN SUTHERLAND, FRANCESCA MAVIGLIA, ALEJANDRA MONCAYO, JULIA SPINNENWEBER Emergency contraception (EC) is a key tool for women to avert unintended pregnancy in a safe and effective manner shortly after having unprotected sex. EC is designed to be used in cases of non-use or inconsistent use of other contraception, and there are two categories of…
The State of the Field: Legislation Addressing Disparities in Birth Outcomes and Maternal Mortality among Black Mothers and Infants
BY RYAN SUTHERLAND Introduction A recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that among the top economically developed nations, the United States ranks first for child mortality and 47th in the world among all nations for maternal mortality.1 More than 50,000 American mothers each year will experience life-threatening, pregnancy-related complications and…
The Power of Human Touch
BY NINA UZOIGWE Caregiving across continental borders is a multifaceted experience within global healthcare. Arthur Kleinman, a professor of medical anthropology and cross-cultural psychiatry at Harvard University, stated in his publication in the Lancet that caregiving is “a deeply interpersonal, relational practice that resonates with the most troubling preoccupations of both carer and sufferer”.¹ In…
Tuberculosis: Returning to the Disease that Never Disappeared
BY KELLY FARLEY One third of the world’s population is infected with a latent form of it.1 Without treatment, 50% of those with the active form will die.2 We have a cure. And yet every day 5,000 people die of tuberculosis (TB).2 Background TB is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis.3 A…
The American Response to the AIDS Epidemic Among African Americans and Continental Africans
BY DEBBIE DADA “How we think about disease determines who lives and dies.”1 This is a quote from 1986 by Evelynn Hammonds, a scholar of the History of Science and African-American Studies. How does the manner in which disease is perceived affect the level of governmental and community mobilization to help afflicted populations? How might…
Humanitarian Challenges in the Congo’s Ebola Epidemic
BY BEN GROBMAN In December 2013, an unidentified disease began to spread in the small Guinean village of Meliandou. On March 22nd, more than 3 months after the initial transmission of the disease, the World Health Organization, confirmed the identity of the disease as Ebola virus disease.1 By the time Guinea was declared Ebola-free in…
Trump Must Embrace Global Health
BY JUDE ALAWA In his 2018 budget, President Donald Trump called for a 24 percent reduction in spending on foreign assistance for global health. Though some of the greatest achievements in U.S. foreign policy history proceeded from global health investments- namely the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the U.S. response to the…
The Silent Killer in Northern Nigeria: Implications and Challenges in Addressing Malnutrition
BY AASTHA KC Imagine a child whose survival is challenged even before it is born. Imagine a child whose mother was shot in the chest while escaping a terrorizer from Boko Haram and has ended up at the hospital not because of her gunshot wounds but because her child is malnourished. Such is the story…
Global Health Security: Cracking the Code to a More Health-Secure World
BY TOMEKA FRIESON Breaking news flashes across your phone screen. A new drug-resistant superbug, with symptoms such as fever, extreme fatigue, diarrhea, and searing muscle pain, has taken hold in a small Ethiopian town. So far, only one individual has died, but scientists are working as fast as they can to respond to the sudden…
Starvation and Sickness in the Wake of Venezuela’s Economic Collapse
BY BEN GROBMAN On Wednesday, January 24, 2018, Marcos Carvajal, a former pitcher for the Colorado Rockies and Miami Marlins of Major League Baseball, died in Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela. The cause of death was pneumonia, a common disease which is easily curable by simple antibiotics. However, due to dire shortages of medicine in Venezuela, the…
Gendercide: Sex-Selection in India
BY DEBBIE DADA INTRODUCTION An estimated 40 million females are missing from classrooms, boardrooms, and political offices due to actions stemming from son-preference in India alone.1 Within the past thirty years, the frequency of sex-selective abortions against females has increased rapidly. This practice is most often cited in Asian countries, and India has one of…
A Conversation with Dr. Bandy Lee: The Mental Health of President Trump
BY MATTHEW PETTUS Dr. Lee is a distinguished psychiatrist and expert on violence who has written books and held conferences on the mental health and stability of President Trump. Her actions throughout 2017 have subsequently created opposition from political and psychiatric professionals regarding the proper interpretation of the Goldwater Rule (a section of the APA’s…
A Necessity: The Healthcare Systems Abroad and at Home
BY INDIRA FLORES On January 30, 2018, Trump delivered his first State of the Union address. Prior to the speech, 82% of registered voters in one poll stated that improving the healthcare system was important for the president to discuss, making it their most highly prioritized topic.1 To the disappointment of these many Americans, one…
The Opioid Crisis: An Epidemic Without a Vaccine
BY KRISTI WHARTON Tommy Hill played many different roles in his life: a son, a boyfriend, a brother, a mentor. All of this ended July 10th, when he was found dead in his apartment after overdosing on heroin. For about a year, Tommy managed to stay clean, going to meetings and even mentoring others struggling…
Young Mind, Global Health: A Conversation with Dr. Sten Vermund on Ways Today’s Youth Can Address Top Global Health Issues
BY TOMEKA FRIESON Currently serving as the Dean of the Yale School of Public Health, Sten H. Vermund (MD, PhD) is a pediatrician and infectious disease epidemiologist focused on diseases of low and middle income countries. His work on HIV-HPV interactions among women in Bronx methadone programs motivated a change in the 1993 CDC AIDS…
Global Health Efforts Poised to Take Off with Novel Drone Technology
BY ROHAN GARG Drones have long been associated with violence and destruction. Used frequently as a tool for surveillance and bombings in military conflicts, drones have inadvertently killed countless civilians and deteriorated mental health in warzone populations. Recent technological developments in healthcare, however, suggest that drones may soon serve the polar opposite purpose: saving lives.…
The Yemen Civil War and its Effects on Civilians
BY KRISTI WHARTON In a country plagued by civilian casualties, potential famine, and a cholera outbreak, the Yemeni civil war rages on between the Houthi rebels and government forces, with the citizens of Yemen stuck in the middle. The Houthis goal is to end government corruption, and to end Western influence, while ultimately creating a…
Cultural Interpretation of Somatic Symptoms: The Mexican American Explanatory Model of Type II Diabetes
BY DEBBIE DADA INTRODUCTION Type II diabetes is a leading health concern that is often viewed as a “disease of modernization” because of its prevalence in developed countries, most notably, the United States of America.1 This illness is particularly prevalent among Mexican immigrants living in America: over one in every ten Mexican-Americans is diagnosed with…
A Malnutrition Crisis: Its Past, Present, and Future
BY HANNAH VERMA In early 2010, a massive earthquake decimated the Republic of Haiti. As one of the most poverty stricken nations in the world, it lacks the resources both to prepare for natural disasters and deal with the aftermath. The result? 1 in 5 children are malnourished. Approximately 50% of the population lives on…
Latin America: Understanding Teenage Pregnancy
BY ELANOR COOK Currently, over one tenth of births worldwide are to girls aged 15 to 19 years old.1 Although this number has been decreasing globally for the past few decades, there is one region in which fertility, meaning the number of births per women, has remained stagnant or even increased among teenage girls. In…
Women’s Health: The Basis for Global Health
BY RACHEL JABER CHEHAYEB The diversity of biological, environmental, social and governmental factors that contribute to shaping overall population health, and the extent of interconnectedness of these factors make trade-offs between interventions and decisions of resource and fund allocation exceedingly difficult. Nevertheless, women’s health perseveres as an accurate indicator of and contributor to overall health…
Relief: Is there a Difference in How We Rise?: A comparison of the medical relief efforts among areas recently affected by natural disasters
BY TOMEKA FRIESON August 25, 2017, was a day of unanticipated shock and grief for many Americans. Texas had been struck by Category Four Hurricane Harvey and, during those next four days, would experience extensive damage to its people, places, and infrastructure all across its southern region.1 On August 29, 2017, when the torrential rains…
Turing Pharmaceuticals: A Price Raise, a Name Change, and an Outrage
BY INDIRA FLORES As of September 2017, notorious ‘pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli has taken up residence in a federal prison in Brooklyn, New York.12 After bragging that he would only ever be sent to a luxurious, low-security ‘Club-Fed’ for his earlier convictions of fraud, he was sent to a federal prison for a completely separate…
Stigma and the Opioid Epidemic
BY YASHEEN GAO When Victoria, a young woman from San Antonio, went to her doctor, she thought back pain was the extent of her medical problems. Her doctor prescribed Vicodin® to cope with the pain1. Victoria realized Vicodin could be addictive, but she never imagined that fact would impact her. That was something that happened…
Water Security: Novel Techniques in Increasing Access to Clean Water Around the World
BY JENESIS DURAN The necessity of water cannot be denied. Consisting of over 60% of the human body by mass, it is the sustainer of life and vitality. As ubiquitous as water seems, in today’s world over 40% of the global population suffers from water scarcity, with around 783 million individuals worldwide lacking access to…
70th World Health Assembly Recap
BY MATTHEW PETTUS This past May, leaders of health from across the globe met in Geneva, Switzerland to participate in the 70th World Health Assembly. Serving as the highest level decision-making body in health policy, the World Health Assembly assembles health ambassadors from 194 member states to oversee how the World Health Organization (WHO) is…
Q&A With Gregg Gonsalves: Global Health Justice Now
BY KARINA XIE Gregg Gonsalves (PhD) is a longtime HIV/AIDS activist who started working with ACT UP in 1990 and founded the Treatment Action Group. He now teaches at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale Law School, where he is the Co-Director of the Global Health Justice Partnership. The Yale Global Health Review…
Indigenous Responses to Violence against Women
BY EMMA PHELPS Every February 14th, indigenous women call attention to missing and murdered Native American and Alaska Native women. This year, Yale Sisters of All Nations, a group of indigenous women at Yale, held an art exhibition in the Ezra Stiles Art Gallery in collaboration with Yale Native American Arts Coalition. The show commemorated…
Coinfections: Managing a dynamic network of diseases
BY COLIN HEMEZ When it comes to infectious diseases, the presence of one usually means the presence of many. Differences in environment, socioeconomics, and even genetics all conspire to leave some populations with high burdens of many diseases and other populations with low burdens of few diseases. This inconsistent distribution unfortunately results in many cases…
Bangladesh: In Practice
BY SREEJA KODALI Last summer I had the immense privilege of travelling to Dhaka, Bangladesh to assist in the implementation of a new epidemiological study from Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) at the National Institute of Neuro-Sciences (NINS). The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), investigates the relationship between epidemic arsenic poisoning and…
Consider the ASHA: A Qualitative Analysis of Accredited Social Health Activists’ Experiences in Udaipur, India
BY SARA LOCKE Khushi Baby is a wearable mHealth platform tracking maternal and child health to the last mile. Its mission is to reduce infant and maternal mortality due to vaccine-preventable disease. As explained in the Khushi Baby 2016 Annual Report, the Khushi Baby system comprises of a culturally tailored NFC necklace, which digitally stores…
Why International Agreements Won’t Solve the Health Crisis of Palm Oil Deforestation in Indonesia
BY AKIELLY HU Last spring break, I had the opportunity to travel to Indonesia to learn about sustainable palm oil with a group from the Yale International Relations Association. As a naïve freshman, I remember asking the group leaders before we left, “What sorts of activism efforts might we do once we get back on…
CRISPR/Cas9 and The Future of Global Health
BY AKHIL UPNEJA The discovery of CRISPR/Cas9 has revolutionized the field of genetic engineering in countless ways. From targeting genes conferring antibiotic resistance to creating disease models in animals, the technique offers scientists a fast, cheap, and accurate alternative to every other gene-editing system on the market. While its applications in human disease continue to…
Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
BY SARAH SPAULDING Throughout much of known human history and prehistory, tuberculosis (TB) has surged and receded along a time scale that challenges much of the accepted scientific understanding of typical epidemic cycles of infectious diseases. Written records of TB appear in Greek literature dating as far back as 460 BCE, with Hippocrates’ description of…
Digital Health in the Context of China’s Healthcare System
BY MEGAN LAM China’s “Medical Ruckus” March, 2012: Li Mengnan, 17, walked into the First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University in Northern China. He carried a four-inch fruit knife. He impaled the first person he encountered in the neck, injured several medical staff, and then unsuccessfully tried to kill himself before fleeing the scene.…
Zika as a Catalyst for Reproductive Rights Reform in Latin America
BY GRACIE JIN 18-year-old Ianka Barbosa cradles her baby daughter, Sophia, in her parents’ tiny brick house in northeast Brazil. She was 7 months pregnant when she learned that Sophia had microcephaly, the incurable condition causing atypically small heads, severe birth defects, and intellectual disability, which doctors blamed on the Zika virus. Before Sophia was…
A Legacy of Imperialism: Health Disparities in the Pacific
BY ERICA KOCHER The Pacific Islands, sometimes known as Oceania, include the regions of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. These three regions encompass tens of thousands of islands, each of which has a distinct culture. Although Oceania covers approximately 15% of the Earth’s surface area and is home to millions of Pacific Islanders, the unique issues…
An Examination of the Opioid Crisis: Methods of Mitigating Pain
BY NANCY LU On January 27, 2017, the image of the Florida couple passed out in their car with a 2-year old toddler in the backseat bore deeply into the hearts of parents, people nationwide, and even addicts themselves.1 Here was one image with a clear representation of the havoc that addiction could wreak. The…
A New World Health Organization: The Search for a Director-General
BY MATTHEW PETTUS Dr. Margaret Chan, Hong Kong-Canadian physician and Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), will be leaving her position this June, after a ten-year term. This means that the World Health Assembly must commence the search for a new Director-General, someone who can poignantly address the intersection between policy, global health, and…
Overcoming Challenges to Hospice Care in China
BY EVALINE XIE Lucius Annaeus Seneca, an ancient Roman statesman and Stoic philosopher once wrote in his essay “On the Shortness of Life” that “it takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and […] the whole of life to learn how to die.”1 As courageously as the Roman Stoics faced death, Seneca…
Failure to Fund: The Mexico City Policy’s Impact on Global Health
BY CAROLINE TANGOREN On January 23rd, just two days after the historic Women’s March on Washington demonstrated popular support for women’s rights, President Trump signed an executive order to reinstate the Mexico City Policy, dealing a horrible blow to women’s health globally.1 Broadly speaking, this hot-topic policy prevents any international non-governmental organization (NGO) that provides…
White Male Suicide: The Exception to Privelege
BY LAURA MICHAEL In recent years, both the American government and public have given increasing amounts of attention to mental health issues and awareness on college campuses and among adolescents. While college students and adolescents represent two vulnerable populations in America, they are not necessarily at the highest risk for suicide. Although white men historically…
Colonialism, Civil War, and Ebola: Historical Perspectives On Contemporary Healthcare in Sierra Leone
BY ELIJAH RAMI During the mid-twentieth century, the British Empire rapidly succumbed to a striking decline. After the Second World War, its colonies in Africa and the Caribbean in particular witnessed a wave of nationalist movements that began to call for self-determination and independence from bureaucratic colonial administrations. Sierra Leone gained independence from the United…
Strange Ways: What Virus Evolution Can Tell Us About the Next Epidemic
BY COLIN HEMEZ A New Virus Emerges In mid-November of 2002, a few farmers in the Guangdong province of China began falling ill with pneumonia-like symptoms. This was not necessarily out of the ordinary for the region, but the disease spread rapidly, infecting some 806 people and killing 34 by mid-February of 20031. A doctor…
Inside the Doctor-Patient Relationship of China
BY SOPHIA YIN For Chinese doctors, patient satisfaction can be—quite literally—a matter of life or death. Official data from China’s Ministry of Health reported “9,831 ‘grave incidents’ of medical disputes in 2006, with 5,519 medical staff injured and 200 million yuan (over 29 million dollars) in property damage.1 Such violent incidents are widespread across the…
Is Fracking Safe?
BY EMMA PHELPS Hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as fracking, is a drilling technique that allows the extraction of previously inaccessible natural gas from shale formations. The United States has experienced a fracking boom in the last decade. In February of 2016, the United States was producing 92 billion cubic feet of natural gas per…
Healthcare: Is there only one correct answer?
BY ELIZABETH LI The United States (US) healthcare system and the European healthcare system are ideologically and functionally different. When it comes to rankings, the US consistently ranks below other countries, such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom in terms of life expectancy and health-care spending per capita. This disparity in the rankings begs…
Delhi’s Air Pollution and Its Effects on Children’s Health
BY REBECCA SLUTSKY Which of our world’s cities has the worst air pollution? According to the World Health Organization, it’s Delhi, the capital of India.1 Although air pollution affects the entire population of this metropolis, Delhi’s children are the most defenseless against its toxic effects. Recent studies have confirmed serious deterioration of air quality in…
Transforming the Narrative of Bangladesh’s ‘Mini-Deserts’
BY MINH VU Situated on the Ganges Delta and the Bay of Bengal, the nation of Bangladesh is constantly devastated by flooding from the 230 rivers surrounding it. Pockets of farming villages often have their growing crops and farmland destroyed by the torrential water, forcing families to leave in search of new villages and livelihoods.…
Q&A: Dr. Seth Wanye on Eye Care in Developing Countries
BY KAI DEBUS Seth Wanye (MD, PhD) is an ophthalmologist in Ghana, a lower-middle income country in West Africa. His focus is to make healthcare, specifically ophthalmic care, more accessible to people in remote areas. In 2005, he partnered with Unite for Sight, a non-profit based in New Haven, Connecticut, to expand his ability to…
PTSD in Children and Adolescents: Equivalent Exposures, Distinct Diagnoses
BY HOLLY ROBINSON One in four children living in the United States experiences a traumatic event before reaching adulthood.1 These distressing encounters, which include experiences from sexual abuse to natural disasters, affect the mental health of the individual as well as the overall wellbeing of the population. Because they are still in their formative years,…
Bringing Sustainable Healthcare to Under-Resourced Populations: Field Experiences from OneWorld Health
BY ONEWORLD HEALTH Global health is a rapidly growing field, and the need to improve access to high-quality care in developing countries has become increasingly apparent. Various charitable organizations, missionaries, and NGOs have attempted to supplement the health care provided by the government with short-term relief efforts. However, there is still a desperate need for…
Female Genital Mutilation: A Global Health Perspective
BY JESSICA SCHMERLER Imagine a procedure in which a child is cut in a highly personal area in a highly painful manner, with no say in the matter whatsoever. Associated with this procedure are complications ranging from infection and bleeding all the way to death. From many perspectives, this procedure is a violation of the…
A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Fight Cancer
BY GRACIE JIN In September, a team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine discovered that the addition of glucose, a simple sugar, could transform a plant extract into a drug with potentially anti-cancer effects. To put it another way, Mary Poppin’s age-old lyric “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down”…
The Global Health Implications of a Nuclear War
BY SARAH SPAULDING In recent years, the topic of nuclear weapons has been a hotbed of political controversy across the globe. Many argue that the widespread use of nuclear weapons is a more plausible reality today than ever before, but the threat of nuclear war has existed ever since the culmination of the US Manhattan…
Gaining Ground: Implementation Research and Viral Load Monitoring in Kampala, Uganda
BY ISLA HUTCHINSON MADDOX HIV/AIDS and Viral Load Monitoring in Uganda At the 21st International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa in July 2016, a prevailing sense of optimism filled the room as thousands of the brightest minds in HIV/AIDS research and care flooded the Durban International Convention Centre. This annual conference provides a unique…
The Covert Realities of Immigrant Healthcare
BY GRACE KANG With the new President, there are clear sentiments of fear within many minority populations. One of the most feared of these groups is the illegal immigrant and refugee population. During and prior to the election season, major news journals failed to cover the realities of the healthcare received by immigrants and its…
Jamaica’s Nursing Problem
BY AKHIL UPNEJA On January 10th, 2017, NPR published a piece highlighting the dire shortage of specialized nurses in Jamaica. Jamaica’s nursing population numbers 4500, with 1000 of these nurses specialized to work in urgent-care facilities such as intensive care units (ICUs) and emergency rooms.1 However, over the past few years, there has been a…
Public Policy in Chinese and Indian Public Hospitals
BY JING (SARAH) SHEN China The Chinese public hospital system is widely influenced by its federal policy towards healthcare. With shifts in policy in the past century, the country rapidly reformed its healthcare system . In the 20th century China’s economy underwent drastic changes from being a centrally planned, command economy to a capitalist, market-based…
7 Global Health Breakthroughs: A Year in Review
BY MATTHEW PETTUS In light of several recent deaths and tragic setbacks, millennials have begun to blame these dark times on 2016, calling it “The Worst Year Ever”.1 However, as we are at the start of a new year, let us take a moment to create a resolution, and reflect on the great innovations and…
A Conversation with Kaveh Khoshnood: Paths Through a Career in Global Health
BY CASSIE LIGNELLI Kaveh Khoshnood knows global health. He has been at the Yale School of Public Health since completing his MPH, working almost exclusively on HIV/AIDS and health among the most vulnerable populations in the US and worldwide. Even more remarkably, he has devoted his career to training the next generation of public health…
America’s Forgotten Cities: Public Health Crises in the Texas Colonias
BY ELI RAMI Texas is the second most populous state in the US. An economic powerhouse of the United States, if Texas were a sovereign nation it would rank as the fourteenth largest economy in the world.1 With a gross state product of over 1.6 trillion dollars in 2014, Texas has the second largest state…
Food Insecurity: In the “Salad Bowl of America”
BY CLAIRE CHANG Nicknamed the “salad bowl of America,” the Salinas Valley of Monterey County, California, reigns as one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. As a whole, Monterey County contributes significantly to America’s total annual vegetable production. For example, the county produces 61% of leaf lettuce, 57% of celery, 56% of…
The Unseen Consequences of War: Responding to Sri Lanka’s Mental Health Burden
BY OHVIA MURALEETHARAN Although many refer to Sri Lanka as a success story in achieving high health outcomes despite its low income, a crucial side of its past often remains unaddressed. An island country of only 25,300 square miles, Sri Lanka has a bloody history, full of war and ethnic conflict.1 After a brutal 50-year…
A Cultural Approach to Domestic Violence
BY MARISA LONDON In March 2016, the New York Times released an article titled “To Maintain Supply of Sex Slaves, ISIS Pushes Birth Control.” The article discussed the ways in which a corrupt interpretation of Islamic law, coupled with the various contraceptives supplied by modern medicine, allows for the group known as the Islamic State…
Dengue Fever: Endemic to Epidemic
BY SARAH SPAULDING Today, a bite from the wrong mosquito can cause severe fever, organ failure, and even death. No, this mosquito is not carrying malaria as you may have thought, it is carrying dengue. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), dengue fever is a viral infection carried by female mosquitoes of the species…
Republic of Korea: An Increased Response to a Decreased Fertility Rate
BY SUKRITI MOHAN In a world where we often worry about overpopulation, there are certain nations struggling to stimulate higher numbers of births. Concern about declining fertility and birth rates has risen drastically during the last few decades, and many worry that the decreased number of young residents will weaken the future labor force and…
North Dakota: The Decline of Rural Healthcare
BY MYLES ODERMANN In the past several decades, the population of rural America – particularly the Midwest – has seen a drastic decrease. This plummet in rural citizens has led to schools closing and local businesses failing due to lack of students, employees, and customers. Despite this steady decline of rural Midwest residents, the average…
Depression in Mexico: Stigma and its Policy Implications
BY DIANA GONZALEZ AND MAURICIO ALVAREZ The Vice-Minister of Integration and Development of the Health Sector of the Mexican Ministry of Health, Eduardo González Pier, claims that “an important segment of the population with a mental health problem does not seek medical attention, simply because they do not consider it an illness; however, this is…
Ireland: Restrictions on Abortion
BY ARIELA ZEBEDE Ireland has some of the strictest abortion laws in the world, only allowing abortion in order to save the life of the mother. The laws are unclear in some situations, however, sometimes leaving pregnant women trapped in situations that may damage their mental or physical health. Moreover, victims of rape and incest…
At The Helm: United States Foreign Policy and Reproductive Rights
BY AVIVA RABIN-COURT In January 1973, the United States Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade. That case, a watershed decision, acknowledged a constitutional right to abortions and rejected a theory of personhood based on religious convictions, creating a more secular national policy.1 Roe v. Wade shifted the national understanding of abortion from a largely criminal…
Low-Cost Diagnostics: Advancements in Global Health
BY WEN YI LOW Imagine you are in a rural clinic in a Zimbabwe village. A child walks in with a fever. Such a fever could be a symptom of any one of a number of life-threatening infectious diseases. There is limited health infrastructure available. There is a lack of storage equipment, access to sophisticated…
Pakistan & Brazil: The Current Narrative of Healthcare Reform
BY MAHRUKH SHAHID Earlier this year, the Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, launched a state-run health insurance program called the Prime Minister’s Health Program (PMHP). The scheme initially targeted 15 districts, but PM Sharif quickly announced plans to expand PMHP to 23 districts and expressed hope that the program would soon become available…
Russia: The Sickness of a Nation
BY CHANEY KALINICH The probability that a 15-year-old boy in Russia will die before he reaches the age of 60 is greater than 40%.1 The ongoing health crisis in Russia presents a frightening picture of a nation’s leaders undermining its own citizens’ lives through neglect, corruption, and a quest for power. Russia is a wealthy…
Blood Transfusion Costs
BY COLIN HEMEZ In mid-November 2016, the United States Food and Drug Administration announced that it now requires all blood banks in the country to test for Zika virus in blood donations. Many banks have already begun complying, and results suggest that Zika prevalence remains extremely low in the United States — of the 800,000…
Sex Education in India: A Public Problem with a Private Solution?
BY AKILA SHANMUGHAM Housing over a quarter million of the world’s adolescents within its boundaries, India provides the counterpoint to Japan’s hyper-aging society.1 While a society of young people presents the potential for a revitalized workforce and a progressive societal spirit, it must have the resources necessary for the cultivation of its young populace—including sex…
Trump’s Healthcare Proposals
BY EMMA PHELPS Although Donald Trump promised to “not let people die in the streets” throughout his campaign,1 his healthcare proposals will increase the number of Americans without healthcare coverage and make insurance unaffordable for many low and middle-income Americans. He has laid out his bare-bones plan to repeal Obamacare, “modernize” Medicare and “maximize flexibility…
Fecal Microbiota Transplantation: The Future of Feces
BY MCKENNA TENNANT With almost a third of the world’s population either obese or overweight, and no end to the epidemic in sight, the need for pharmacological aids to stem global weight gain has only increased over the past decade. This issue most deeply affects the United States, since we have the highest proportion of…
Blue Gold: The Global Cost of Water Privatization
BY FRANCES FAGAN Major shifts in the availability and purity of water have already begun to affect the health of the Earth’s water cycle and water-dependent ecosystems. Through carbon emissions and other unregulated business practices, we spew large quantities of harmful pollutants into the atmosphere that leech into our soil and limited groundwater reservoirs. This…
Red Meat and Processed Meat and the Risk of Cancer
BY REBECCA SLUTSKY It’s a tough time for lovers of hot dogs, bacon and beef jerky. After twenty years of research, the World Health Organization’s cancer research group recently announced that there is significant evidence that processed meat is a carcinogen that can cause colorectal cancer in humans.1 In addition, the research concluded that there…
Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Pediatric Emergency Department
BY AVA HUNT In recent years, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has been at the center of one media frenzy after another. Although far less data exist about the prevalence of ASD outside of the United States, the rising prevalence of autism, the apocryphal allegations that autism could be caused by vaccines, and the increased portrayal…
The Plight of Syrian Refugees in Turkey: A Global Health Crisis
BY JUDE ALAWA Imagine your hometown in chaos. Airstrikes every day. The grocery store down the street is suddenly destroyed, your friends are fleeing, and you watch a family of seven be reduced to just two. Each day, a red truck arrives in the morning, just to drag away the piles of dead bodies. You…
Inclusion, Not Exclusion: Expanding Healthcare Access to Undocumented Immigrants in California
BY JADE HARVEY With 2.55 out of the nation’s 11.2 million undocumented immigrants living in California, the Golden State is host to the nation’s largest percentage of undocumented immigrants in the country. While undocumented immigrants make up approximately 6.8 percent of the state’s residents, they also represent an overwhelming 24 percent of the uninsured population.1…
The Limits of Moral Ideology in Foreign HIV/AIDS Intervention
BY AKIELLY HU From the first cases reported in the early 1980s up until today, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has emerged as one of the world’s foremost public health crises. In 2014, there were 36.9 million people living with HIV – an increase of 6.9 million from 29.8 million in 2001.1 Such a drastic global issue…
A Conversation with Joanna Radin: A Historical Approach to Global Health
BY ANABEL STAROSTA Professor Joanna Radin is an Assistant Professor of History of Science and Medicine, and last semester taught a course called Historical Perspectives on Global Health. Today, the term global health describes a crucial, widespread framework that brings together public health workers, philanthropists, economists, politicians, activists, and students worldwide. But global health did not simply spring up…
Turning a Blind Eye: A Look at Unjust Health Outcomes among the Deaf, Blind, and Physically Disabled
BY HOLLY ROBINSON Health care providers have a responsibility to the most vulnerable members of their communities. However, problems arise when a population’s most vulnerable members are not part of the community, when they are pushed to the side and deemed unfit to contribute to society. This is the reality for many around the world…
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Yale Global Health Review 