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…
Where Being Queer is a Risk Factor: The Unseen Health Effects of Being Gay in Southeast Asia
BY SARAH HOUSEHOLDER On June 27th, 2015, hundreds of Americans waiting outside the Supreme Court building erupted into cheers as it was announced that the Supreme Court had officially ruled that “same-sex marriage is a legal right.”1 Celebrations across the nation broke out and couples rushed to courthouses to legalize longstanding relationships. On such a…
Zika: What History Can Tell Us About the Current Epidemic
BY ELI RAMI ZIKV, more commonly known as the Zika virus, has quickly evolved from a little-researched virus into a global public health threat. Virologists first discovered the pathogen during the late 1940s in a species of monkey that inhabits Uganda’s Zika forest. For decades, scientists believed that ZIKV was a mosquito-borne virus that could…
Photo Feature – Brazil
Risk of Zika for Brazil’s Indigenous BY HARLAND DAHL Although most cases remain concentrated in northeastern and southeastern Brazil, the distribution of the Zika virus continues to grow throughout the country. As of February, Brazil was one of thirty countries in the Americas facing a Zika threat. Since the outbreak of Zika virus in Brazil,…
Addressing Urban Violence: The “Cure Violence” Public Health Approach
BY SOPHIA KECSKES This July, in response to the tragic killing of a seven-year-old boy in Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said, “adults here are letting the children down—from failures of the criminal justice system to the immoral nature of street gangs. You have a time and place where you have too many guns on the…
Saying Goodbye to China’s One Child Policy and Aging Population
BY VICTORIA LOO Over the past decade, the demographic of the world population has always been unbalanced with young children outnumbering elderly people. However, the proportion of the world’s population over 60 years of age is rapidly growing, and between 2015 and 2050 it will reach a new high of nearly 714 million of the…
Photo Feature – Burma
BY KIRA TEBBE The leaders of my gap year program had heard about a nearby refugee camp. There were Burmese citizens who had fled to the border of Burma and China, where crossing the river would bring them into China. We timed our visit with a global health organization, who was there for regular vaccinations.…
An Evolutionary Perspective on Ebola and Marburg Viruses
BY RACHEL ARNESEN “Ebola in the air? A nightmare that could happen.” “Ebola: World Goes on Red Alert.” “Ebola: ‘The ISIS of Biological Agents.’” These headlines, taken from real CNN and BBC articles, capture all too well the fear mongering that occurred during the most recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. From 1996 to…
Yale Global Health Review 