It’s Time to “Pop the Bubble”: The Implications of International Programmes Supporting Public Health Growth and Development
Introduction
Let’s face it— Canadians are some of the healthiest people in the world. With programmes covering both health protection at the clinical level, and health promotion at the policy level (e.g. The Public Health Agency of Canada), Canada easily has a population that can call themselves healthy relative to much of the rest of the world. To test this, let’s examine a hypothetical: a Toronto couple, married, has arrived back from Sierra Leone presenting with a fever and cold-like symptoms. Here in Canada, thanks to our medical advancements and public health systems, the couple would be quarantined immediately …show more content…
The first stage was the Age of Pestilence and Famine—an era defined by deadly epidemics and an extremely variable average life expectancy between 20-40 years old. It was in this era that people were so concerned with survival and sustenance that there was an inability to consider developing public health in other nations. The next two stages, the Age of Receding Pandemics followed by the Age of Man-made and Degenerative Diseases revolved around a shift from the individual to the public level in terms of health care. This was due to many factors, with Omran’s paper citing socioeconomic, political, and medical determinants. Several advances in the medical field were also made during these eras. Edwin Jenner invented the vaccine when he performed his experiment using Varicella viruses from cowpox sores. The first public health intervention famously known as the “Broad St. Pump Intervention” was conducted by Dr. John Snow (No relation to the Game of Thrones character!), who removed the pump handle off of a water well on Broad St. that was later discovered to be infecting its users with cholera (Williams, Slides on Different Perspectives on Health & History of Public Health, 2014). This was the birth of public health interventions with this being the first documented case of an epidemiological study. …show more content…
Health disparities can be further seen as inequities of which the international community has an imperative to fix because it is the just thing to do. Despite the current state of public health systems developing internationally, health disparities and inequities still exist between social classes in states and—perhaps more obviously—between states themselves.
The state of today’s public health systems differ based on geo-political location as these systems have many determinants that are not simply confined to scientific discovery, but rather are drawn from more abstract sectors like economic stability, natural susceptibility to pathogens and disease, and policy. For example, countries that have borrowed from the World Bank or IMF may have less developed public health programmes than countries that have not loaned from these organizations due to the binding conditions regarding economic reform when
Introduction
Let’s face it— Canadians are some of the healthiest people in the world. With programmes covering both health protection at the clinical level, and health promotion at the policy level (e.g. The Public Health Agency of Canada), Canada easily has a population that can call themselves healthy relative to much of the rest of the world. To test this, let’s examine a hypothetical: a Toronto couple, married, has arrived back from Sierra Leone presenting with a fever and cold-like symptoms. Here in Canada, thanks to our medical advancements and public health systems, the couple would be quarantined immediately …show more content…
The first stage was the Age of Pestilence and Famine—an era defined by deadly epidemics and an extremely variable average life expectancy between 20-40 years old. It was in this era that people were so concerned with survival and sustenance that there was an inability to consider developing public health in other nations. The next two stages, the Age of Receding Pandemics followed by the Age of Man-made and Degenerative Diseases revolved around a shift from the individual to the public level in terms of health care. This was due to many factors, with Omran’s paper citing socioeconomic, political, and medical determinants. Several advances in the medical field were also made during these eras. Edwin Jenner invented the vaccine when he performed his experiment using Varicella viruses from cowpox sores. The first public health intervention famously known as the “Broad St. Pump Intervention” was conducted by Dr. John Snow (No relation to the Game of Thrones character!), who removed the pump handle off of a water well on Broad St. that was later discovered to be infecting its users with cholera (Williams, Slides on Different Perspectives on Health & History of Public Health, 2014). This was the birth of public health interventions with this being the first documented case of an epidemiological study. …show more content…
Health disparities can be further seen as inequities of which the international community has an imperative to fix because it is the just thing to do. Despite the current state of public health systems developing internationally, health disparities and inequities still exist between social classes in states and—perhaps more obviously—between states themselves.
The state of today’s public health systems differ based on geo-political location as these systems have many determinants that are not simply confined to scientific discovery, but rather are drawn from more abstract sectors like economic stability, natural susceptibility to pathogens and disease, and policy. For example, countries that have borrowed from the World Bank or IMF may have less developed public health programmes than countries that have not loaned from these organizations due to the binding conditions regarding economic reform when